selected recordings

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Aboutface
Pop Research Solutions (PRS 001)
Released: 2026-10-23 (as Forrest Eidos)
Duration: 21 minutes

Aboutface (EP) launches a body of work I’ve come to describe as a kind of “post-pop.” It is work designed to deactivate the action space of pop music, turning it instead toward contemplative purposes. contemplative purposes.

Apart from my vocals, each of the EP’s four tracks (21’ in total) is based almost entirely off of a single synth patch and a single effects chain. Each preset is then morphed, reworked, and layered on top of itself in a variety of ways—generating a timbrally self-similar ensemble that nonetheless manages to simulate at least some among the range of instruments utilized in electronic pop music: leads, keys, basses, and sometimes percussion and electric guitar all emerge from, and retreat back into, this zone of timbral indistinction.

My attempt: a music that trades, at least to an extent, “expressivity” for “impressivity.” We turn our gaze inward as our voices collapse into mysterious yet efficacious “sines.”

The music is available on all major streaming platforms. Accompanying the project is a suite of lyric and music videos, which are currently available on YouTube.

Written, produced, performed by Forrest Eimold (as Eidos)
Mixed by Luke Smith
Mastered by Katie Tavini

Camera operated by Christopher Lu
Photo/video editing & directing by Forrest Eimold

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Michael Finnissy: The Organ Works
Metier (MEX 77208)
Released: 2025-10-10
Duration: 134 minutes

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This double album documents Michael Finnissy’s complete works for solo organ—spanning nearly six decades’ worth of music, from his student days to the 2022 composition Blackburn, written specifically for the occasion.

The undertaking centers around Finnissy’s monumental set of four organ symphonies (which itself can be viewed as a kind of four-movement mega-symphony). Most are cast in single movements, and patiently deconstruct 19th-century orchestral literature through the quiet electricity of a solo performer. The second symphony, in particular, additionally refers to the legacy of the organ symphony per se in the wake of Franck, Vierne, and Widor. In the words of the composer, symphony-writing is a matter of “locating a rhetoric which fearlessly approaches the ‘higher world of knowledge,’ and not so much a question of length as of depth. Abstract journeys, risking becoming part of what seem like traditions.”

Counterbalancing the symphonies is an intimate set of seven chorale preludes—which, along with the symphonies, are among my favorite pieces by the composer. These pieces juxtapose the composer’s research into Norwegian hymnody and his interest in shape-note singing from the American South. Rounding out the program are a short, aleatoric showpiece Xunthaeresis; the student work ...ere the set of sun...; and the elegiac Blackburn, which recounts some of the industrial and musical history of the English city where we did the bulk of the recording.

Organ Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, & 4, as well as Blackburn, were all recorded in the United Kingdom at Blackburn Cathedral, on their extraordinary, spine-chilling instrument by J. W. Walker & Sons in 1969 and revised by Wood of Huddersfield in 2002 (4 manuals, 68 ranks).

The Hymn-Tune Preludes, Xunthaeresis, and ...ere the set of sun... were recorded on two among the wealth of instruments available at Harvard University’s Memorial Chapel: the pristine Charles B. Fisk & Peter J. Gomes Memorial Organ by C. B. Fisk, Opus 139 (2012, 3 manuals, 54 ranks) in the gallery, and the Skinner Organ Company’s velvety Opus 739 (1929, 3 manuals, 44 ranks) in the chancel.

Engineered by Vidda Le Feber (U.K.) & Tony di Bartolo (U.S.)
Mastered by Vidda Le Feber
Produced by Michael Finnissy

Special thanks to John Robinson, Emma Kerry, Carson Cooman, and Edward E. Jones.

Forrest Eimold

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