“More than a concert recording, LIVE IN NYC captures the moment when music, film, and contemporary art dissolved into one unforgettable performance.”
Some live albums are great recordings of a superb performance. Others are recordings of a pivotal moment. FORRM’s LIVE IN NYC (Museum of Arts and Design 12.12.24) is definitely in the latter camp. It’s being reissued in conjunction with the concert film’s selection for the 2026 Psychedelic Film and Music Festival in New York and what happened that night at the Museum of Arts and Design in December 2024 was the genesis of a language of music that continues to underpin the project to this day. Music that refuses to be confined to the parameters of a normal recording. Firouz FarmanFarmaian (Iranian-French artist, filmmaker and musician) has always viewed music as something that can exist in many different artistic realms. Alternative rock, electronics, live improvisation and cinematic music are all part of the FORRM project, but it’s LIVE IN NYC that really demonstrates how those disparate elements can become something far more potent when they are all present on stage. Rather than simply playing songs, the performance is a dynamic dialogue between the musicians, the moving images and the space itself.
The heart of the piece is Nomad’s Prayer which was developed in conjunction with FarmanFarmaian’s Path. In the live context it becomes something quite different to the mere performance of the score. It’s an audio visual experience where the music and the visuals are in constant dialogue. The projections aren’t just behind the band as you’d expect in a concert. They’re projected across the performers so that the images and the bodies of the performers and the instruments are all part of the same moving picture. It’s as if the music is shaping the images as much as the images are shaping the music. That’s what makes Nomad’s Prayer so good. It has a very subtle sense of movement which is very much in keeping with the nomadic theme of Path. The music (guitars, electronics, improvisation) doesn’t seem to be going for a conventional climax at all. It’s more interested in creating an atmosphere that is in a constant state of flux. It’s a piece that really rewards attentive listening as there are all sorts of textures that come and go, reappear in another form. The visuals are also in a constant state of flux. It’s an immersive experience without being at all overwhelming and you really do get the sense of being inside the piece rather than just watching it from the outside.
The venue itself is part of the experience. The Museum of Arts and Design is no ordinary rock club and FORRM are very much aware of that. The performance is somewhere between a gallery installation, an experimental concert and a film screening. That context is absolutely fundamental to the project’s ethos which is that music can exist very comfortably in spaces where different forms of art naturally intersect. It’s also the reason that the recording sounds so very different to a standard live album. There is definitely audience energy but the real impression is of the performance being shaped by the venue. The significance of this recording goes way beyond the one night it was captured. The live visuals from the show became the digital artwork Into the Vortex and the music has continued its journey with PATH. Now with the concert film returning to New York as part of the Psychedelic Film and Music Festival the re-release is a very complete story. A live performance becomes a film, the film gets to be seen by new audiences through festivals and the music comes back to the listener with a new dimension because of that film. FORRM’s history in France, New York, Venice and Morocco is a history of a project which has always been about cultural exchange rather than the traditional music industry route. Rather than chase the latest trend they’ve built their reputation on independent radio, specialist press, physical releases and a series of collaborations which have always been about the art of the thing rather than the commerciality of it. That independence is very much on show in LIVE IN NYC. It’s not a recording that has been created with any one genre or expectation in mind. LIVE IN NYC is more than just a recording of an experimental rock performance. It’s a document of the moment that FORRM fully realised their own identity as a project in which sound, cinema, improvisation and visual art all co-exist without any hard boundaries. It’s a recording which invites you into a world where a concert is an installation, a soundtrack is a live experience and the performance continues to evolve long after the final note has gone.
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