FORRM capture a collision of fine art, cinematic dread, and underground grit on their live recording, “FORRM LIVE IN NYC”. Led by Iranian-French artist, filmmaker, and musician Firouz FarmanFarmaian, the multidisciplinary outfit operates without borders, deliberately blurring the boundaries between sound, film, and visual narrative. Documented on a New York stage, this performance captures an evolving project in full flight: volatile, hypnotic, and completely uninterested in playing by standard genre playbooks.
Things open in stark vulnerability with “Hum.” The melodic spine barely survives the introduction a sparse, plucked motif evaporates almost immediately, leaving FarmanFarmaian’s deliberate spoken-word cadences framed only by ambient room hum and the physical rustling of paper. Then, the walls cave in. “Nomads Prayer,” rooted in the soundtrack for the film PATH, pivots violently into crushing sludge and doom-laden drone. Sustained, subterranean rumble and howling dissonant frequencies build an oppressive wall of noise, translating spiritual desolation into something heavy enough to rattle your sternum.
Yet the set pivots just as easily toward kinetic, asphalt-level energy. “Junky Ways” roars to life with ragged grunge and punk velocity, pushed forward by distorted low-end churn, screeching counter-melodies, and the sweaty defiance of an uninhibited night out. Its companion piece, “Junky Ways (Rivington Sessions),” drags that same nocturnal impulse into menacing post-punk territory, setting deadpan monologues and erratic vocal bursts against eerie, swooping electronics. In between these bruised urban snapshots, “GALACTICA” expands outward on sweeping synthesizers and steady, pulsating rhythms, offering a momentary, dreamlike sense of cosmic drift.
What sticks with you is the physical, uncompromising weight of the whole affair. By colliding gallery-honed concepts with the sweat and feedback of an unhinged room, FarmanFarmaian treats the live space as a canvas and a pressure cooker all at once. When the final drone dissipates into the Manhattan night, what are we left searching for in the silence?
