A few years back, BFF.fm DJ Katsy Pline curated a secret show at the BFF.fm studios in The Secret Alley, highlighting up-and-coming talent at the crossroads of her two main musical interests: Country Western and Esoterica. My role that evening was to hand out the free sparkling waters and point the way to the restrooms, but I found myself bowled over by both the talent in the room and the warm community that Katsy had brought together.

One artist in particular, Oakland-based Geoff Saba, who creates music under the moniker Forest Floor, really got me in my feels. So much so that after their set when I handed them a sparkling water I blurted out "that was emotionally devastating." and once that didn't terrify them away later added, "let's keep in touch."

Sounds dramatic, I know, but actually there is an undeniable drama in the way Forest Floor engages in a compositional tug-of-war between pop and noise, chaos and order. You can hear it in High Thunder Purification Sound, their last release from 2016, and it's very much the driving force behind a new single released today, The City Limits. Take a listen:

Here's what Geoff has to say about the first single off their album, Hungers Haunt The All-Consuming:

"The title of this piece is meant to be read 'The City Limits (Us).'

I feel conflicted living in a city. I’ve always felt more introverted and satisfied living a life of self-reflection. I find that my line of work (producing records) involves a lot of extroversion and the sharing of ideas, which I’ve come to accept as a factor in how I can continue to make records for myself (philosophically, financially, spiritually).

Deeper than this engine is the desire to live in the wilderness. To give up music, art, business, desire, and other manifestations of my modern subjectivity to look for a more grounded experience on the planet. I am afraid, though, that this desire could be manufactured as an unattainable object of desire that produces other, city-minded desires within this gulf of longing.

I’m afraid that once I’m out in the wilderness, I’ll discover that there wasn’t any escape from my city-ness. That the night sky isn’t majestic and mysterious enough to keep me out there. That I must crawl back to the city so I can plug back into its artificial womb. I also fear that even if I do eventually move out to the middle of nowhere, I will be forever a representative for modernity, infecting the wilderness around me, never being able to reunite with the divine. Lost innocence.

There is a certain naïveté that I think exemplifies the desire to return to earthly roots after becoming disillusioned to city life, and this is character I give voice to in the song. Maybe there isn’t a way back. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe I should just stay in the city, go out every night, be distracted by the bright lights, and grow resentful and resigned to the inescapability of capital."

Forest Floor is releasing their new nine-song album Hungers Haunt The All-Consuming on Friday, August 15th, 2025. The first single, The City Limits, is now available wherever music is streamed via Anxiety Blanket Records.