Today, Oakland-based artist Geoff Saba, who uses the moniker Forest Floor, releases their new improvisational jazz style single ahead of their new album Hungers Haunt the All-Consuming, out on August 15th. The single, "Wild Herd - I Will Give Up My Patterns" is one in a four-part series titled “Wild Herd”, which explores philosophical inquisitions of autonomy and interconnectedness between living things. The series sits within a 9-track album, that further explores the nonlinear yet familiar patterns of organic networks found in unexpected places. Along with the single comes an accompanying video made by San Francisco multimedia artist, Laura Cohen. Check it out below!

While surrounded by redwoods at the Avenue of the Giants, Saba found a crushed frog along the asphalt after an unfortunate encounter with a car tire. They photographed the remains, unknowingly capturing what would become the philosophical foundation of Forest Floor’s Wild Herd series.

"I took a picture of it because I'm fascinated by death and things like that. But it came out highly contrasted and it was difficult to tell where the frog began and ended. I was like 'Okay, so there's a kind of pattern that creates a frog. The frog repeats a pattern of being a frog and thus separates itself from the ground around it. What constitutes the frog and the ground, and what keeps them separate?’”

As an avid reader of psychoanalysis, critical theory, and philosophy, Geoff Saba approaches the natural world with particular attunement to the structures that shape how events unfold. They listen deeply to the undercurrents of daily life, as if they are portals toward undiscovered cosmic truths about life, the self, and everything between.

“...So I was like, 'Okay. One day, I will give up my patterns, and I hope it happens before I die. I would like to, with agency, give up patterns that constitute who I think I am.'"

Leading with curiosity, Saba identifies interwoven patterns in everyday life as underlying truths that shape their understanding of the self and the cosmos.These questions stem from what feels like a sincere pursuit to understand what it means to be human. From this foundational curiosity,  Saba sought ways to translate philosophical language into sound.

"I thought a way to explore [these questions] musically was with a Wild Herd series within the record, questioning things like what is identity? What constitutes a herd -- what patterns create a herd and who is to distinguish between an individual antelope and a herd of antelope?"

The Wild Herd series is a decentralized sonic meditation on Saba’s unanswered questions. “Wild Herd - I Will Let Go of My Patterns” evacuates traditional narrative structure, instead approaching these tensions through an observer’s perspective. Forest Floor articulates philosophical complexities with sonic precision and organic flow while offering no resolve. The piece submits to unknowing with sincerity, demonstrating what vulnerability in art can look like.

"As a listener, I edited this piece and wondered what factors brought these different parts of the piece together so it felt like harmony and what factors created disharmony or are seemingly disunified. Then I realized the disunified pieces are just parts I don't consider as unified. Like maybe it's not a them problem. It's a me problem. I try to, in those pieces, step away from imposing where it should come together or dissipate. I try to let the improvisations unfold intuitively so that the process is protected from my intellectualizing of how the piece should unfold."

Hungers Haunt the All-Consuming functions like a sonic archive of Saba’s personal field notes from encounters with cosmic mystery. This fusion of theory and sound represents a rare approach to solo improvisation, attempting to capture the networked interplay found beyond music, from neural pathways to the fungal decomposition beneath the forest floor.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Saba excavates personal memory through layered instrumental voices. Forest Floor maps Saba's philosophical wanderings while inviting listeners at any level of curiosity into their own investigative journeys. 
In addition to the Forest Floor project, Geoff Saba can be found playing music with bands such as Fake Fruit, Hectorine, Gossimer, Naked Roommate, Lizzy Dutton, Adam Spry and others around the Bay Area. Saba also is a music producer, running Itinerant Home Recordings in Oakland. 

You can join Geoff Saba and the BFF community for Forest Floor's album listening party happening in the Secret Alley in mid-August! More information to come -- stay tuned!

For more information about Forest Floor, click here.