In music, form is sometimes so intimately connected to experience as to speak meaning more compellingly than any word could. On After the Town was Swept Away, out September 5th on Leaving Records, BlankFor.ms, aka Tyler Gilmore, finds in rhythm a new vocabulary of self-collection. Confronting both grief and joy, its twelve tracks of tape loop manipulation festoon and murmur — the imperfect cyclicality of tape itself at once a metaphor for the record’s meditations on time, and the actual physical support shaping its sounds.
Composed in the aftermath of two quickly succeeding life-changing events for the artist — the birth of his first child, Ellis, in November 2023, and the loss of his mother after a two-year battle with cancer in January 2024 —, the sounds of After the Town was Swept Away were born of unmaking and remaking. The composition process was mostly one of revision: early drum machine sketches were emptied out and degraded, whole songs restructured, tape loops stacked to digest a complex rhythmical biography. Rooted in early experiences in jazz and a long-held love of house and drum & bass, BlankFor.ms’ beat allegiances surface in ways that are never obvious, a vehicle for reinterpreting one’s times anew.
| A1 | Never Left |
| A2 | A Fleet Of Celebrants |
| A3 | Crail Family Post Office |
| A4 | Kinship I |
| A5 | To Survive The Flood |
| A6 | Unfurled Atop The Peak |
| A7 | Formed By The Slide |
| A8 | Kinship II |
| B1 | After The Town Was Swept Away |
| B2 | Colter |
| B3 | Ferried Across |
| B4 | Kinship III |
