East Forest (feat. Keith Sweaty) collaborative album, "Cairn" When Trevor Oswalt (a.k.a. East Forest) translated his last name from the German to English (Ost=East, Wald=Forest) he never anticipated the musical journey it would take him on. The solo project’s genesis in 2008 came from humble beginnings as Oswalt started leading underground ‘sound healing’ ceremonies all across the country. Playing in the private shadows allowed the patient sound of East Forest to emerge: an emotional and spacious musical lexicon with a sound that took shape out of a practical need to play solo for five to six hours while guiding a room full of listeners all lying on the floor in deep meditation. Live looping and layered keyboard melodies filled the musical space while angelic vocals and original field recordings floated above. “East Forest is tied to both nature and to everyday urban life, giving it the qualities of a sort of ethereal and mystical modern-day fairytale. It’s just blissful.” (NPR) Word organically spread and a devoted community shared East Forest’s early albums, many of which were live recordings captured directly from his sound healing performances. Creating sounds that are also ‘a musical tool’, carried forward as East Forest branched out to more public work and started performing widely, including multiple tours across the U.S. and Europe. Electronic beats and diverse live instrumentation occasionally joined in, from strings and analogue synthesizers to african kora. East Forest’s electro-acoustic ethereal sound continued to evolve and Oswalt found himself performing in a diverse range of settings from SXSW, Google, Mysteryland, to Grace Cathedral, Summit at Sea, and his own TED talk in 2015. A dozen albums later East Forest continues to explore a path of emotionally driven music that pulls from ambient, classical, electronic and indie-pop genres. In 2016, his stripped back piano record, “Held,” was released on 1631 Recordings and his electronic collaborative album, “Ritual Mystical,” (with MC YOGI) reached #1 on the iTunes Electronic charts (Aug. 2016) as well as #8 Billboard Dance. His newest release (Sept 8, 2017), CAIRN -- a full length LP in collaboration with electronic producer Keith Sweaty -- is a collection of beat driven tracks, analogue synths, acoustic piano and a wealth of vocals and lyrics by Oswalt. The timing of Cairn coincided with a time of deep personal change for Oswalt as he left a long-term relationship of many years and found himself in unexpected emotional depths. You can hear in the lyrics of Cairn a highly personal and honest dive into the world of loss and individual choice. With the added acoustic instrumentation of trumpet by Brad Lee of The Album Leaf, and rhymes by Scarub of Living Legends, along with stings by the ‘Bizarre Strings’ trio (Band of Horses, My Morning Jacket, Joanna Newsom), Cairn transformed into a grooved out electro-acoustic experience that is as simultaneously booty shaking as it is genuinely introspective -- both a personal and societal call to arms exploring contradictory truths such as destiny, choice, and personal responsibility, all against the backdrop of a civilization undergoing fundamental transition and transformation.