Interview: East Forest

Arguably the most surprising thing about East Forest’s Saturday, Aug. 9, show at The Orange Peel is that it’ll be his first performance in Asheville. The ambient/electronic artist feels like a natural fit for the free-spirited city: He bills his work as exploring “sound as a tool for inner journeys and consciousness expansion,” hosts guided meditations through his podcast Ten Laws, and his most recent release is a more than six-hour album explicitly designed to accompany psilocybin mushroom trips.

The West Coast-based musician blames geography and circumstance — including the interruption of earlier tour plans by the COVID-19 pandemic — for his previous absence from Asheville. But he’s eager to rectify the situation with a Southeast tour and a Saturday night date in the Land of the Sky. He’ll also be playing Sunday, Aug. 10, at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw.

“It’s kind of been a long time coming,” he says.

East Forest spoke with Asheville Stages by phone to dive into more detail about his performance practice, the benefits of seated shows, and why the rise of AI has made live music even more vitally important. The conversation has been edited for concision.

Daniel Walton: Your most recent release is titled Lovingly: A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner. I want to ask about that last word, “practitioner.” Why choose that language?

East Forest: That word came up in the first iteration of that series, Music For Mushrooms: A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner, which came out in 2019. As hard as it is for us to remember, back then psychedelics were still not as culturally accepted as they are now. I’ve been doing this work since 2008, and for many years I kind of kept it a little more in the closet and didn’t speak so overtly about what it was for.

But I felt in 2018, when I started that record, that it was time to put something out that was more definitive. I wanted to be very explicit in the title — not being ambiguous at all. And a lot of the pop culture stuff around psychedelics, particularly then, was always a joke. I’m being quite serious: it’s music designed to take you through a journey. I think the word "practitioner" refers to anyone entering this space with a bit of intention.

DW: Since 2019, we certainly have seen a cultural explosion in openness around psychedelics — I mean, people are now talking positively about them on Oprah. How has that shift in the culture influenced how you go about your work?

EF: More than anything, I’m just trying to make forward-thinking, modern, interesting music. I make other records that are, in my mind, not explicitly designed for psychedelic use, but people sort of see my work that way. In this evolution of psychedelics becoming more mainstream, I find myself wanting to say less now and let the music speak for itself. It’s less literal. It’s just about feeling and art, and I don’t have to explain it as much anymore as I thought maybe I needed to six years ago.

DW: Your upcoming run of shows encourages people to be very focused on the music, with all of them being seated performances. Why does that setup appeal to you as a performer, and do you feel like anything is lost for the audience when you discourage movement?

EF: The reason I’m moving more into a seated position is because the sound can be better and I can guarantee a more positive sonic experience for the listener. I’m most interested in having the audience comfortable so they can really drop in, just relax, and fully experience emotionally what we can do there together in the room. To me, it’s an up-leveling of the sound.

I remember I had a powerful experience with Sigur Rós in 2005 at the Beacon Theater in New York City at a seated show. And it was because it was really relaxed, and the sound was so incredible because you could direct it in a particular way. That’s my main focus — just trying to have everyone have a happy, comfortable experience.

DW: What are some ways that your live performance setup has been evolving over the past few years? Have you adopted new tools or techniques to make you more effective as a performer and improviser?

EF: I’m definitely bringing in more acoustic instruments as I can, and I’ve started to play more with visuals and the theatricality of it. What can we do with these spaces that are available to us to make it more of a show? I’m very mindful of that.

For those who haven’t been to one of my shows, they’re not just like ambient washes of experimentation for two hours. I pay a lot of attention to the arc of the show itself. That theatricality makes it deeper, more interesting. Beyond the fact that it’s a better show, I think that attitude creates better art.

Photo by George Evan

DW: The arc of a concert is more compressed than the arc of an album like Lovingly or Music For Mushrooms, which clocked in at a little over five hours. How do you think about shaping that somewhat shorter presentation of your music?

EF: A two-hour arc is still a long time, and I think, for a lot of people, that’s more than enough. In mushroom ceremonies or medicine retreats, those are pretty customized spaces where, because people are on some kind of substance, that’s what’s allowing them to have their attention be focused for five or six hours.

A concert is a hybrid space, a public space. Like any public event, there’s a sense of personal responsibility: What are we bringing to the table, collectively, as audience members and as a performer? How deep can we go together? I’ve found that the community that shows up to the events is there for depth. We’ve created some really beautiful, ephemeral moments that can only be done in the live space. It’s not really about length; it’s more about intention.

DW: What does “depth” mean to you, in the context of a live performance like this?

EF: For me, it’s about emotional resonance, and that happens through the attention we decide to put into the room. The depth of a show is directly proportional to the amount of attention we’re all putting into the present moment.

If you’re playing somewhere that has a group of people talking with their backs to you — when that happens, it’s like a hole in the boat. All the energy is just leaking out, for everybody, but definitely for me. 

When we all decide to be here for the next couple of hours and pay attention, that is the fuel. That is what feeds experimentation and improvisation. It gives me permission to say, “Oh, I’m being supported. Let’s try things; let’s really go there.” I don’t have to work against a current.

DW: Speaking on attention, in a 2023 conversation with Billboard you used the term “information sickness” in reference to the attention economy and the rise of generative AI. It’s safe to say those technologies have only gotten more powerful since then. What concerns you most regarding those trends in the music industry, and how do you work to combat them?

EF: I think that AI-generated music is going to be much more prevalent. There’s been some recent news stories about the major record labels making deals with Suno and other companies making generative music, where they become equity partners in the same way they did with Spotify so that they’re part of the business. I think it’s probably going to wash out the recorded music industry.

What happens a generation down the road where things that were hard to do, like create recorded music, are no longer hard? Do we value that in culture? What does that mean? I don’t know, but I do know it’ll be disruptive.

I also think it’ll make live events much more powerful and interesting for people, and more desired. We’ll be really hungry for authentic human experiences. I think you already see that, but it’ll be even more.

IF YOU GO

Who: East Forest
When: Saturday, Aug. 9, 8 p.m.
Where: The Orange Peel, 101 Biltmore Ave., theorangepeel.net
Tickets: $44.20 advance/$61.58 VIP

(Photo by Cdigi)