Every year an event of such grand proportions, with enough amplitude capable of macerating your aural ability to a granular pulp, comes along that makes venturing out of the house on frigid, glacial nights completely worth it. This annual event is none other than Mosh Core, a music festival in which an assortment of bands come together for one night of thundering rock riffs coupled with a massive amount of amplifiers. The festival is organized by Mosh Core Productions Inc., a relatively new, dynamic production company that provides services to local artists in all musical genres based on everything a band needs in order to get out and have an impact on the music scene. The company organizes shows, prints t-shirts, records demos and albums, prints flyers, business cards, stickers, posters and even builds press kits. Their mission statement: to create a musical community from which all musicians can benefit in order to maximize their artistic potential. With this in mind, company founder Angelo Russo conceived Mosh Core five years ago and has experienced an unforeseen great deal of success.
The shows Russo organized for the following two years meant that Mosh Core Productions eventually became a household name and a highly regarded new company. In 2004, Mosh Core hosted a mega festival showcasing 18 bands over two nights and attracted the support of prominent companies such as Diz Clothing, Marshall, Pearl, Sabian and Steve’s Music Store, among others. Alas, this year’s Mosh Core promises to be no different in terms of noteworthy acts. As of 6 p.m., in order of appearance, nine bands will hit the stage: Shock Therapy, Prometheus, Synastry, Forme, ForSigma, The Tempest, Derelict, 3 Mile Scream and simultaneously headlining the event and celebrating their record launch is Montreal’s own Mythosis. Additionally, all proceeds from ticket sales are translated into donations for the Canadian Cancer Society, so while you rock that mosh pit you know your money is going to a valuable cause.
Out of the many supremely talented acts that will be gracing the stage at Mosh Core next week, Forme is a band I recently had the opportunity to both speak to and to act as overt voyeur, attending their jam session in their co-owned poster-adorned, carpeted Christmas-light-decorated sanctum. Forme is a band that harbors the ability to rock the entire musical spectrum: raucous, guttural hard riffs are juxtaposed against lengthy melodic and highly intricate atmospherics with the smoothest of transitions. This is a band that understands the dichotomy between feral noise and coherent melody; everything that comes through those amplifiers is orchestrated perfectly, whether it be calculatedly incongruous or harmoniously consonant. They would describe themselves as a “progressive experimental fusion”, a sort-of “no limits” philosophy.
Like any group, their influences vary widely depending on the band member, among which are guitarists Tom Daigle and Andy Kerr, bassist Anthony Zavaglia, and drummer Noah Hassan. The bands they list as inspiring range anywhere from Tool and Metallica to Opeth, King Crimson and Godspeed you Black Emperor! “Music is a subjective experience” they remarked, “we’re trying to be the key to whatever subjective experience is in [the listeners’] minds. We hope to open up doors of inner experience that would be left untapped without something to trigger it.”
The correlation between artistic creativity and emotional release (catharsis, when referred to in the arts) has been known and sustained since the early Grecian days of dramatic arts. Forme views music as a catalyst for progress not only figuratively, but in ways that tie into the literal as well: “Music is a vehicle to grow through, to a place where we would be better people. At the beginning, one of our biggest things that helped us, being a progressive band, you grow from one place to another, and we brought that into our personal lives. our ideals. [It’s like] releasing our inner demons,” they said. The music is also often purposefully devoid of lyrics. “Words over music can be a limitation; [they] can take away from [the listener’s] discovery of an experience. Lyrics can be very good for certain things, but for other aspects of our music, lyrics are very unsure. There’s always the possibility of writing songs that will have them, but for the time being, we’re going to focus on the instrumental aspect.” Likewise, song titles are no more than a series of abstract symbols, such as a mere staircase, conceptual images which are for Forme a representation of “another language in life.” In fact, one Leonardo of Pisa, more commonly known as Fibonacci, considered by some the most talented mathematician of the Middle Ages, serves as the inspiration for the importance of numbers and sequences. “Symbols, we realized, are an important aspect in life. If you look at the Fibonacci sequence, it’s an important. equation that purports with everything else. Within numbers there’s meaning and multiple layers; symbols hold a definite power that is hidden in life.” In fact, Fibonacci sequences appear in biological settings, such as tree branches, the curve of waves, the fruitlets of a pineapple, and the arrangement of a pine cone and have often been alluded to in popular culture (Darren Aronofsky’s PI) and have even been applied to create architecture, visual art, poetry and music. “People will find layers of meaning that we might not have even known was there,” they said.
The band is currently getting ready to enter the studio. Tom has studied audio engineering and has a small studio in his home where the band does their own recording. “[The] recording process is different; our demo is done, and another we recorded at school and mixed at the studio. It’s fun because it’s creative, the layering of guitars, etc. Recording can be an extremely creative process that has no bounds.”
Forme plays Mosh Core on Feb. 3 at Club Soda. Tickets $15 at the door Proceeds to Canadian Cancer Society.
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