Horse Lords

Ars Nova Workshop presents the intricate and exacting music of Baltimore-based avant-rock band Horse Lords, at Solar Myth on March 20. 

Horse Lords – the quartet of Andrew Bernstein (saxophone, percussion, electronics), Max Eilbacher (bass, electronics), Owen Gardner (guitar, electronics), and Sam Haberman (drums) – craft a relentless and intensely focused sound, making music that is alternately tight and loose, real-time risky and process oriented, reconciling the sweaty force of a killer basement show with the icy precision of conservatory training. The band transmutes experimental tactics (polyrhythm, arcane tunings and modular synthesis) into direct, muscular and surprisingly funky songs. The result is an ambitious sound with the volume, energy and density of great rock music but an expansive wanderlust that draws on a wider range of reference points. Elaborate but not self-indulgent, wide ranging but tightly executed, Horse Lords are at once trance inducing, ecstatic, and rhythmically compelling.