Forest Lieberman, bio
One day on the middle school blacktop, circa 2007, Forest confidently announced that he hated techno. He probably didn’t even know what techno was at the time. In all likelihood, the only thing he actually “hated” about techno was that it wasn’t early 2000’s alternative rock. Indeed, his Myspace username was “Forest! At the Disco” and he sure as heck had never heard of Jeff Mills.
Forest was young and dumb. He had no idea that, soon enough, techno would occupy a very warm spot in his heart. It was the unshakably catchy tunes of Avicii that first opened Forest’s heart to dance music. But as the years passed, Forest’s taste moved underground.
He spent a year in Madrid, Spain, where the locals are known as “gatos” (cats) for their habit of roaming the streets all night, partying. Enmeshed in Madrid’s late night culture, Forest experienced the thrill of all-night raving for the first time.
His go-to spot in Madrid was “Café Berlin,” a humble club where the drinks were cheap and the house music was funky. Near the end of his Spanish interlude, he saw Honey Dijon play an open air show in Bilbao at the Guggenheim Museum. The show brought together his old love for modern art and a newly minted love for house music.
After Spain, Forest got a schooling in techno courtesy of Los Angeles, the Dirty Epic home base. It was the rough and ready warehouses of LA that brought techno to life for him. Their unpretentious grit was the perfect backdrop for the slamming, hypnotic edge of techno. Although Forest leans toward house and breakbeat for home listening, he’s desperate for techno once he enters the warehouse.
Luckily for him, the LA warehouses are never far. He now lives in LA, where he is an eviction defense lawyer by day and a raver by night.
Selected reviews:
VSN 4 A BETTER WORLD;
Leon Vynehall’s “Rare Forever”;
MoMA Ready’s “Untitled” (2021);
Nova Cheq’s “Untitled” (2021);
Ayesha’s “Potential Energy.”
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