GARDE FORESTIER
“Garde Forestier”
(Field Hymns)




I’m probably not allowed to use the term “video mulching” when not referring to Luke Wyatt’s work (he’s also the lovely Torn Hawk), but Garde Forestier, from FRANCE, has probably got a bunch of VHS player guts strewn all about his workstation. What he does with those guts is anybody’s guess – maybe he tells the future like fortune tellers do with fowl entrails, only the future told by the innards of obsolete technology is far weirder and perhaps way more dangerous. (Unless of course the fowl entrails foretell, like, imminent death or dismemberment or something. Pretty bad stuff). It’s a future where the downtrodden citizens of a re-serf’d society fish through the garbage presets of Casio knockoffs that never got beyond the prototype stage in order to please their benefactors with the weirdest and wildest musical concoctions. If you can imagine this story as a Broadway rendition, you should – it’s probably the best place for it. Blade Runner’s Broadway, of course. Did you know they’re making a Blade Runner sequel? Garde Forestier’s horrific soundtrack warbles would work wonders in that environment. Heck, they could provide the perfect backdrop for a Blade Runner musical, starring Neal Patrick Harris as Rick Deckard and Lin-Manuel Miranda as Rutger Hauer. I’d be on board with that. I probably have the director’s cut around here on video somewhere –  I’ll send it to our boy Garde, and he can cue up some Vangelis scenes and run ’em through the ol’ meat grinder.



--Ryan Masteller