Horse Lords and Cloud Becomes Your Hand at Marie Antoinette / Friday 14.04.2017

West African rhythms collide with just intonation guitars, art-fire saxophone, minimalist grooves, and collaged zapdowns on Interventions, the powerful third full-length from Baltimore’s Horse Lords. The band’s Northern Spy debut is also the first Horse Lords album to explore the classic studio-as-weaponry strategies of yore, mapping the quartet’s raw Baltimore lightning onto the experimental musique concrète territory surveyed by elder heads like Faust and This Heat.

Founded by Andrew Bernstein (saxophone/percussion), Max Eilbacher (bass/electronics), Owen Gardner (guitar), and Sam Haberman (drums), Horse Lords quickly established themselves as avant-heavies with the two extended tracks of their powerful self-titled debut (Ehse Records, 2012). Playing custom electric guitars and basses refretted by Gardner, the band’s rolling polyrhythms chime with the strange and distinct harmonies of just intonation inspired by the master La Monte Young and other heroes.

Part of the newest wave of weirdos playing DIY spaces, Horse Lords’ soaring heaviness achieves a true poise that seems equally primed to make the leap to concert halls and festivals. Making appearances on freeform radio station WFMU and concert recording site NYCTaper, Horse Lords are recognized, too, as a galvanizing live act, powered by the double-drumming of Sam Haberman and Andrew Bernstein. Last year, their Hidden Cities Remix to benefit the local Living Classrooms’ Believe in Music featured the work of influential contemporaries including fellow Baltimore undergroundists Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt of Matmos (contributing separately) and Guardian Alien drummer/lead-brain Greg Fox.

Floating at the boundaries of composition and improvisation, electronics and performance, the underground and the vast improbable 21st century indie mainstream, Horse Lords exist in none of these places and all of them.