Jason Forrest, Network Awesome

An electronic musician working in a variety of styles and founder and Creative Director of Network Awesome, an online TV Network, Jason Forrest also runs two record labels, Nightshifters (for club music) and Cock Rock Disco (for experimental sounds). It is obvious why host David Colosi calls Forrest a polymath. In this interview, Forrest talks in great detail about Network Awesome, describing it as longform media platform. It has a bright spectrum of content, carrying anything from documentaries to contemporary artists to Japanese cartoons to Vegan cooking shows. Forrest’s music is heavily sample based, intercut with hard drum and bass beats, classic rock and EDM influence, yet filtered through the perspective of an art student experimenting with art appropriation form. The artist remarks how this way of taking bits and pieces of culture and building works around them is fundamental in both his music and the structure of Network Awesome. Forrest’s sample-based music has been a pioneering force in the experimental music community since 1999. He has released records in the US, UK, EU, and Japan, has played on four continents, garnering him a large international audience along the way. In 2010, Forrest was asked to make the only official remix commissioned for Arcade Fire’s song No Cars Go for Merge Records 20 year anniversary remix compilation. The video War Photographer by Joel Thrussell was named video of the year by Res magazine 2006 and was included in the top 5 best music videos by Pitchfork media that year. It has been downloaded more than one million times (crazy, right?) The Steppin Off video directed by Jon Watts was also named video of the year by Res magazine, 2005.

• 
• 
•