4- track EP of wild drum tools for Paris-based Belleville Records, released in December 2020 - full press release below:

"On December 4, Belleville Records will unveil Stamina, a new 12” EP of bold, insurgent club-oriented pieces by Paris-based Franco-British percussionist, composer and producer, following his orchid series of dancefloor-ready 4-track outputs on his own Afraa Productions imprint last year: Waylay, Salvo and Rapture. Stamina’s name echoes a period of doubt, persistence and devotion: mostly composed in strict isolation throughout the lockdown in the musician’s small Parisian studio, the EP balances between moments of anxiety and ecstasy. Its four tracks are completely imbued with a wild quest for relief.

Equally at ease making club music than building eerie soundscapes and producing for rappers and pop artists, Sébastien Forrester has always had a recurring obsession for folk music and idiosyncratic sounds - his very first encounter with music and percussion as a kid was the Bwiti ritual drums, while he was living in Gabon and central Africa with his family in the late 1990s. Musically-speaking, 'Stamina' sees Forrester reunite with a forgotten yet pretty familiar sound: the bagpipe, a traditional ritual instrument that, as he recently found out, makes the link between his British roots from his father's side and the Occitan part of his family in Aveyron, France. Bathed in bagpipe music throughout his childhood, he now tries to reconnect with its special timbre: most synthesizers on Stamina were sculpted and crafted out of raw bagpipe recordings, as a way of investigating his origins and paying tribute to his ancestors' musical habits and relationship to trance.

The ritual dimension of the four tracks is directly emphasized by the notions of physicality and fortitude. Live playing and improvisation have a key role on the record. More than ever, Sébastien Forrester aims at creating spontaneous sound documents, and chooses to rely on imperfect live takes and impulsive drumming to build intricate though always dancefloor-friendly rhythmic architectures. A huge part of the drum sounds heard on the 'Stamina' EP were recorded live on a special kit conceived by his friend Léo Liégeois, or replayed digitally on a drum pad using his own personal bells and custom percussion samples and field recordings. This free approach, directly inherited from his background as a jazz drummer, provides a lively and utterly dynamic feeling to the music.

Sébastien Forrester has recently released the Spirals EP, recorded in Essaouira during a residency with Frànçois & the Atlas Mountains and Maâlem Saïd Boulhimas in June 2019, on French ambient label Kowtow Records, played percussion as part of Lafawndah's band, Clément Bazin's live outfit and afro-folk project Stranded Horse, co-founded the Gqomunion parties and DJed alongside DJ Lag, Citizen Boy and the Rudeboyz, and produced for French rapper Hyacinthe and soulful singer and songwriter Awir Leon. Stamina embodies a fresh new step in the producer’s relentless sonic research."

Early support from Ma3azef, Inverted Audio, Insert, Couvre x Chefs, Brodinski, 3Phaz, Forest Swords...