“Living like a ghost. Making the most. Gone. Lost, I’m still lost, I feel lost.”
In a chilling exploration of the human psyche, “I Feel Lost,” the new song from Cleveland dark synth project 2 Forks delves into the mind of a serial killer. The lyrics evoke a profound sense of internal conflict, a battle between the self’s dark desires and the search for redemption. Its imagery, with sharp knives and hazy mazes, evokes claustrophobia, with hints of surfacing defiance. When paired with a disconcerting matter-of-factness about violence, they hint at a dehumanizing distance from empathy. The jarring juxtaposition of the song’s wanton brutality against the internal pleas for freedom makes it clear: this is not just a tale of terror, but also a portrait of torment.
“I Feel Lost,” is a nod – if nightmarish – to the Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder classic “I Feel Love.” The moody, synth-driven second single and video from the album Quanticode is heavily influenced by disco and early synthpop, stepping away from the heavier industrial-rock-inspired route of their last single, ‘Take It.”
Quanticode is a concept album revolving around the story of a fictionalized hunt for a serial killer: each track representing a different chapter in the larger story. ’I Feel Lost’ represents a part of the story where the killer, already struggling with split personalities, begins to experience increasingly severe mental breaks.
In the previous single/video “Take It,” the narrative unfolds with the killer experiencing a chillingly palpable exhilaration. However, as with the insidious nature of addictions, repetition has eroded that initial thrill. With each successive act, the frequency and brutality amplify, yet the satisfaction diminishes. “I Feel Lost” continues this narrative, capturing a moment immediately post-murder. Here, the world is altered; hues appear distorted, illumination off-kilter, and even the taste of blood, once a perverse pleasure, has lost its allure. It’s a profound disorientation, a grim realization for the killer: amidst the macabre, he feels utterly adrift.
Take a look at the self-directed video below, drawing inspiration from film-noir, and perhaps grab some Pine Sol for the ensuing cleanup.
Watch the video below:
In the kaleidoscope of music, 2 Forks stands out with the flair of Danny 2 Forks, aka Daniel C of The Wake fame. He’s paired up with that wry beatmaker from Compound Studio, Gil Singer of Scrapdata. And let’s not forget a nod to old Wake guitarist, Mark Gamiere. These chaps have been thick as thieves since their high school capers in the early ’80s. But lo and behold, with the unfortunate pause of The Wake’s tours during that tiresome lockdown, Daniel found himself rather unoccupied and thus 2 Forks was, quite serendipitously, conceived.
“I wanted to break out of my comfort zone,” he explains. “Having been primarily the drummer for The Wake for several decades, I felt like I should test my boundaries and see what else I might be able to produce. My first instrument was piano, so I thought maybe I would go back to my roots and try working on music from the aspect of a keyboard. Before I joined The Wake, I was heavily into industrial music from the 1980s and ‘90s, but before that, my guilty pleasure was dance music and disco. Nothing perks my ears up more than a nice arpeggiated bass and keyboard line. So, as a relative novice in need of inspiration, I went back to disco and started listening to what Robbie Wedel was doing with the Moog on ‘I Feel Lost’; trying to figure out how to generate those sort of pulsing, arpeggiated tones. The twisting of the title completed the nod.”
The ‘I Feel Lost’ video-single meanwhile launches presales for the album from Bandcamp. ‘Quanticode’ is scheduled for release on the 10th of October 2023.
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