The Forever Now
Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, The Forever Now’s Canadian / Filipino Monty de Luna came a long way since BIRP.FM referred to their song Throw it Down as, “an atmospheric sonic palette brought to life”. Combining cinematic elements with indie rock, synth-pop, and singer-songwriter music, the artist carves out a filmic experience with each release.
The Forever Now is ...?
... is a cinematic indie rock-ish project based in Copenhagen, but originally from the Toronto area—obsessed with a DIY approach even when it takes way too long and you should have given up ages ago;
music that makes you dance, smile, cry, or remember why you get out of bed in the morning, or why you can’t get out of bed in the morning, or why didn’t even go to bed at all last night; The Forever Now is figuring things out one step at a time.
If you take a look back, what were your first steps in music?
I saw a choir when I was 4 and I wanted to join, but they told me I was too young to join so I had to learn the piano instead. I picked up the guitar as a teenager, first classical, then rock music, and wrote my first song when I was in elementary school playing an electric guitar like it was a classical.
I think growing up I felt that music was the most evocative medium, and I always loved the power of music in movie soundtracks. I listened to the soundtrack to Sunshine by John Murphy constantly. I think that kind of melo-dramatic soundtrack vibe seeped into the songs I wrote, so that’s why we started calling it “cinematic indie rock”.
There’s a lot of experimentation that happens in the project, so sometimes there’s very few similarities between songs, but they pretty much always have that touch of drama, just like the end of “Lover’s City”.
"Lover's City ft. Trine Lyngvig" sounds simply great, what's the story behind the song?
The song is about saying farewell to someone and knowing that neither of you want to say goodbye, but life is taking you in different places and you can’t stop it. It started out inspired by a specific experience, but I think it ended up being about the feeling of not wanting to disappear from a lot of people’s lives.
I lived in Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Rotterdam, Toronto, New York, Sweden, and now Copenhagen, so I moved around a lot. That created a lot of experiences and connections that I wouldn’t want to trade for anything, but it also meant saying goodbye a lot and not knowing when I would see some people again, if ever.
How difficult was it to create this anthemic Indie Folk atmosphere?
Difficult! In truth the main parts came together very quickly. I think that often happens when you’re feeling something in the moment. You think like “oh, I need an arpeggiator doing triplets on this organ to make it feel like a train that’s moving along” or “the piano should be really sparse so it sounds kind of lonely”.
But once the original demo was up, it was a big fight. I put down the demo in February of 2019 in one day and didn’t touch it again until December. I spent 3 years adding and removing parts, re-arranging it, recording and re-recording the vocals, and searching for the right featured vocalist before I finally felt like it was finished.
I’m really glad I was able to get Trine Lyngvig so sing the duet with me because her vocals are just perfect for the song and it wouldn’t have been the same without her. In the end there’s something like 40 vocals stacked together by the final climax. I gave my mixing engineer, Peter Katis, 9 pages of mixing notes including diagrams and I think he truly thought I had lost my mind. But in the end, he did a great job and I’m really happy with the result. If I rushed it I think it would have been missing something.
What are your "All time Top 3 Songs", right now, in this second?
Very tough one, but recently I’ve been listening to
Call Me by Sarah Klang,
Falcons by Amanda Bergman, and
Gem of the Ocean featuring JFDR by AVES a lot.
Copenhagen's Indie music scene is …?
Lively! It feels impossible to keep up with music here, but it’s really great. It feels like there’s a lot of support for local artists and new artists keep coming up and gaining local followings.
I went to three music festivals and a show every week this year and I feel like I only scratched the surface. As a foreigner I’m still figuring out where the project fits in with all of that though. There’s a lot of things that just aren’t accessible when you’re an immigrant somewhere.
You can’t get funding from where you live or you lose your residency, you can’t get funding from your home country because you’re not a resident. You’re too Canadian to be put on the Scandinavian playlists, but too far away from Canada to be put on Canadian radio… there’s a lot of contradictions. I think that’s probably why our listener base is so international at the moment.
What’s next for you?
More songs! I have so many demos on my hard drive that are half finished that I’d love to work on more. I feel like I’ve finally hit a place where I know where I want the project to go and can consistently shape the songs into what I’m going for.
Collaborating with Trine turned out so well I’d love to do more collaborations in the future as well. Lover’s City is a bit of a new sound for The Forever Now, so I’m hoping to explore that a little bit and one day return to the synth-pop sound…
