Horse Lords - Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! Horse Lords

The music on Horse Lords’ Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! feels both impossibly detailed and eminently human. The twelve pieces assembled are layered, interwoven, tonally and rhythmically complex––moiré-like patterns of interaction and tessellation that play out for both mind and body, full of sonic warrens with an inescapable groove. Artists aren’t necessarily scientists, logicians, or spiritual leaders, but through their personal understanding of order and experience, they provide experiential access to heightened states of both materiality and immateriality.
Horse Lords were founded in Baltimore in 2010; they evolved from another group called Teeth Mountain and began as a trio with guitarist Owen Gardner, bassist Max Eilbacher, drummer Sam Haberman, soon adding alto saxophonist Andrew Bernstein to the core ensemble. Though the quartet grew out of a fertile noise and experimental rock scene, a storied environment for artists and weirdos that has nurtured many an influential outsider band (Lungfish, Matmos), their approach across six albums, various collaborations and as a celebrated live act has been more omnivorous than the stippled rhythms of instrumental electric rock would indicate. For this outing, they are augmented by bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone, trombonist Weston Olencki, and in a first for Horse Lords, vocals courtesy Nina Guo and Evelyn Saylor.
The process of constructing D2BT2HA! involved geographic hurdles, as the unit’s four members have lived in different cities since 2021. Given sixteen years as a working band, their shared language transcends locale. German transplants Gardner, Eilbacher, and Bernstein met in Berlin for tracking sessions while Haberman put together drum parts in Baltimore. One would not necessarily know this from listening, nor is it rare these days to collectively create remotely. The band notes that “trusting each other’s concepts and visions was more important than repeatedly playing a section to see if the music worked, although this trust was only made possible through working very closely together.”
While D2BT2HA! isn’t a suite per se, the music influences and interacts with itself in complex linkages. Horse Lords observe that “we like the idea of art as a tool for changing your perspective, being able to rotate ideas and see/hear/feel them from a different vantage point.” Or to use a phrase attributed to Swami Satchidananda Saraswati, “understanding is standing under where you are already standing.” The opening piece, “Eureka 378-B,” is an arrangement of 19th century sacred harp music, lead by Guo and Saylor’s vocals; its melody flowers outward, setting a tonal launching pad for much of the music that follows. There are the brief “Rotations,” which isolate fragments from other pieces; and “a transformation algorithm was used to structure the title track, ‘Brain of the Firm,’ and part of ‘Second Galactic Utopia.’ This lends itself to a recursive approach where… the compositional scale becomes more ambiguous.”
There’s clearly a lot of weight in the language used to title pieces, and D2BTA2H! is no exception––transcendence and uplift are inherent in the music’s operation and if all art is political, Horse Lords’ leanings are optimistic and community-centered. Transformation and re-viewing are not just a compositional strategy but a philosophical outlook, given such themes as “A City Yet To Come,” the title track, or utopic references. As they put it, “we try to make music that challenges the status quo and offers a path toward liberation for the listener. The study and exploration of sound and music has a spiritual and ecstatic dimension, and we have a great reverence for its impact on the individual and the world.”
The tension between striving for something beyond and what constitutes our lived reality is not lost, either, as “After the Last Sky” draws from poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “The Earth Is Closing in on Us,” which “uses the Palestinian case to problematize our utopian quest, acknowledging that this rests on a sense of security that is out of reach for many.” There are numerous sonic and conceptual layers in D2BTA2H!, but given the music’s undeniable power and humanity, the process of unpacking them is enthusiastic and deeply rewarding. Rare indeed is the record that grabs one by the lapels yet lands utterly anew on each hearing.