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Need to pump up your cardio with a soundtrack that gets you from the club to the gym? Brian Forrester has you covered.
Forrester produces music under the moniker Veruca for other artists, but recently he made his foray into releasing music of his own. Veruca’s first EP, the six-track Drive, dropped back in August, and Forrester—who produces the quarterly queer dance party Betty—performed it for Halloween weekend parties at the night clubs Holocene and Process.
Drive pulls influences from across the early ’90s bathhouse scene up to 2010s movements like melodic house and crunchy EDM drops, creating something that spans history while being of the moment. Veruca (who, yes, was inspired by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), has produced music for nearly 20 years but DJed since 2017. He admits his music got better after he came out of the closet. On Drive, Forrester was not only inspired by the queer underground, he got help from some of Portland’s undiscovered stars.
Virgo and Sophora—vogue ballroom stars formerly of the House of Ada, the latter of whom appeared on the scuttled HBO Max series Legendary in 2022—lend their vocal sensibilities to Drive tracks. Though neither is an experienced singer, Forrester says he was inspired by the unique qualities of each artist’s voice. He also challenged himself by laying down vocals that he then modified beyond easy recognition.
“We experiment with, ‘can you try and be gravelly and we’ll see what that sounds like?’” he says. “We’re using the voice as an instrument in not just the traditional ‘sing a song’ way but, let’s growl a little bit or let’s shout or be weird a little bit and see how it works.”
The opening track, “LVE,” is an epic, heart-racing soundtrack to kick off a night out. It works as well for a pregame track with friends as it does at peak dance floor hours and even into the next morning at the gym. “LIAR,” meanwhile, is one of the least-bitter songs to bear that name with both its light, twinkly instrumentation, fluttering drums and bass, and vulnerable lyrics.
“If I said I goodbye/That’d make me a liar,” the vocalist repeats ad infinitum. “My heart’s here/This love is on fire.”
Things get decidedly hornier hereon. “PUMP,” “NEED IT,” “BASS UP” and “HYPERDRIVE” throw back to a time without smartphones and livestreams, when dancers really left their sweat and inhibitions fall freely on the floor. Virgo’s bass-rich growls contrast with Sophora’s higher femme range for suggestive and sexy club bangers. Veruca says he had fun directing them with prompts, along with the Italian musician boyrebecca who contributed to the EP’s closing track. Forrester went all the way to Italy to meet and record with her after playing her music at club gigs for several years.
“I’m really proud of them all—but ‘HYPERDRIVE,’ I listen to it and I’m like, I made that?” he says of his favorite song from the project.
Hailing from the Willamette Valley, Forrester started Betty shortly after the pandemic. Drive pulls from a pool of roughly 30 songs that possess common traits. Forrester tells WW that next year he will pull again from the same pool to make a melodic project that he teases will sound so different that he considered releasing it under another alias.
“I fluctuate between jumping around, bouncy, fun, queer, often a little humor and a little slutiness in the lyrics, to maybe somber, reflective, shed-a-tear kind of music. It’s fun to bounce between the two depending on how I’m feeling.”
