Comradely Objects

I think I’m finally starting to enjoy Horse Lords.

Its structure is so strictly linear that it demands a lot of patience, but there’s just so much happening that it becomes easy to slip into its constantly shifting madness. Minimalistic shifts that eventually evolve the whole piece, hardly if ever making any sudden stops or transitions felt. You just follow the rhythms from danceable to heady psychedelia. I think listening to Karma by Pharaoh Sanders & Discipline by King Crimson helped prep me for this. Sanders takes a maximalist approach, but it shares the linear structure & shifting minutia of Horse Lords. While Discipline gives you a taste for nonstop minimalistic grooves.

This thing takes on some much simpler kraut rock grooves and meshes them in with their totalist approach. I love how much more space this thing provides between each instrument and how they’re all given a lot more breathing room, letting each tone ring out and resonate a bit better. The layers of everyone being stacked on top of each other contributes to this psychedelic disorientation that echoes off of each track, making this album a lot to soak in all at once. However, there’s a great flow to this project that can’t be beaten. A small-scale bout of instrumental overload that knows just when to scale back and let some of its ethereal synths wash over you. Establishing a sensual anxiety that I know won’t last long before my brain is going to be sitting at full attention picking out each player's part and what they’re adding and changing to the composition.