Extended bio and philosophy

Forest Mountain Lion grew up in the woods near Cottage Grove, Oregon. Unaware that the world had moved on from classic rock a decade before, he listened obsessively to the classic rock station, 96.1 KZEL, readily absorbing styles from Beatles, to Bowie, to Def Leppard and Van Halen. As a child, he taught himself to play the drums and guitar, and in high school he formed a band called Winston to play grunge, releasing the album Love Me Today. As a teen, he began thinking deeply about human civilization’s effect on the planet, and weaving themes of environmental defense and social critique into his music. Late in high school, Forest made a dramatic shift from grunge to progressive rock, switched from guitar to piano, and released What Do I Know?, the first of many albums available on all streaming platforms, recording all instrument parts himself. Standout tracks from this seminal album include Love, Again and Unscrew Corks. While studying classical composition for orchestra at The University of Oregon he recorded the shroom-fueled solo rock opera The Tying of Me Up With String, a heavy progressive rock “ultra-prog” album titled Too Much, a compilation of orchestral pieces influenced by the metal band Opeth, titled Sweet Bliss to Be Burned Apart by Her Fire, and the introspective solo album Bridges. Lyrics are central on every song, and themes on the early albums revolve around love and longing, but often depart into the realm of spirituality, philosophy, and environmentalism – often using romantic love as a metaphor for the bliss of spiritual awakening, and returning to reexamine the endless uncertainty of being alive. “I’ve always felt that if I’m going to ask people to listen to my music, I’d better be doing something new and different," says Forest. “So being original has always been paramount.”

Soon after finishing college, Forest packed his possessions into his car and moved to Hollywood, having never visited LA, and knowing no one in the city. “It was like getting the crap kicked out of you,” he says. “But sometimes that’s what you need.” Forest played with several bands on keyboards and drums, while developing a new style he calls “orchestral electronic progressive rock” – a melting pot of all of the new styles he was being exposed to in LA, from Nine Inch Nails’s Pretty Hate Machine, to Kanye West’s Yeezus and Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, to artists like Blank Banshee and Isao Tomita, although he remained deeply influenced by all the same old loves, like Neil Young, The Beatles, and progressive rock like Porcupine Tree and King Crimson. In 2016, Forest recorded the resulting album, The Struggle Is Not Real, and formed a five-piece band to perform it live. The band comprised four keyboardists and a drummer playing both acoustic and electronic kits. A heavy wooden structure containing a powerful central computer, called simply “The Box,” had to be built and lifted on stage for every performance to power the band’s processor-heavy software instruments, most of which were emulations of analog synthesizers and orchestral strings. Each band member had a keyboard and an iPad on which they could control all of the sounds and effects streaming from the central server. “It literally took 24 rehearsals before we were ready to play the first show,” says Forest. “Every single note had to be played live, just like the recordings. Nothing was pre-recorded or automated, and we didn’t even use a click track.” The band received immediate recognition from popular music blog Buzzbands LA, and went on to receive praise from the LA Times, listed as “a band not to miss.” Less than a year after forming the band, however, Forest began to feel that his current plan would take far too long to accomplish enough for the environmental and social movements he wanted to support. Longing for Oregon, his family, and to spend more time outdoors, he sold the studio of gear he’d accumulated until he could pack everything into his car once more.

Back in Oregon, he began reconnecting with the wild – outside and inside – backpacking and meditating, and reworking old songs, originally written on the piano, for his acoustic guitar, Lizzy, the same old Yamaha that’s been with him for every album and show since high school. In 2023, inspired by a passionate but deeply damaging relationship, he began writing a new set of songs, and started playing live again. Local violinist Anumi joined him in early 2024, bringing orchestral skill and an intuitive melodic complement to the songs, followed by bassist Jacob Sellars, bringing a deep knowledge of progressive rock into the mix. The trio is currently performing numerous upcoming shows in the Eugene area.

When asked what he’s trying to accomplish with his music, Forest says: “I’ve been trying to distill my philosophies, in the hopes of articulating what it is that the human race needs to figure out or go through, at the deepest level, so I can determine how to be of best service. I think we’re stuck in a cycle of disempowerment in a system that relies on alienation from each other and the natural world to maintain a global order built on the exploitation of humans and the earth. But, the power of the human spirit to redream a world of love and equality remains within all of us, just as potent as ever. I’m sure industrial civilization and infinite growth seemed like a good idea 70 years ago, but a lot of new information has come to light since then. Today almost every practice and product that defines our modern lifestyle is hopelessly unsustainable, and unworkable without the advent of magic technologies that haven’t been invented yet, and we absolutely do not have time to rely on them being invented. Plus everything is subject to the laws of cause and effect – there is always a consequence – and it seems like the techno-utopia we're still trying to build, at great cost to ourselves and the planet, relies on a dream that we can get around that. The only way I see to disconnect from the global machine that is destroying the planet and exploiting and dehumanizing all of us is to re-localize the production of everything we need, and reject anything damaging to the earth or the human spirit. In the process we’ll also rebuild real local community, and overcome our culture’s crisis of despair.” He plans to be part of the solution, and use his music as a rallying cry to empower like minded people. “At the deepest level I think this will require a spiritual shift to identify more with the whole than with our individual selves, both our local community and the living earth that provides for us. This is the spiritual freedom every spiritual tradition talks about, and it seems like a heavy lift, but it is accessible to all of us simply through silence. We can’t think or “do” our way out of this predicament, but in silence we can reconnect with the wisdom written in our bones by four billion years of evolution, which tells us what we really are isn’t what we’ve been told; what we really are is divine and invulnerable, and inseparable from the whole. The earth is begging us to do less, not more, and to remember that we are just one part of the larger whole of life on this planet. I think our story will be to learn that lesson – and I think it’s a magnificent story – but I’d like to try and help minimize how much suffering it takes to get there.”

This year Forest also began partnering with local wineries in the Eugene area to invite wine lovers to try the world’s first “perfectly paired” wine-and-music experience. He’s calling it Vinisthesia, from the Italian word vini, meaning wines, and the phenomenon of synesthesia, where two or more of the five senses meld into one. Three local wineries are now offering Vinisthesia in their tasting rooms and on their websites to experience at home: Iris Vineyards, Sarver Winery, and McBeth Vineyards, with more signed up to join soon. Each wine’s “sound signature” is a tiny piece of music, performed by Forest on the piano, that is intended to capture that wine’s unique emotion, and lasts just as long as the taste of one sip. The Vinisthesia website showcases each participating winery, plus dozens of recorded sound signatures.