Rock Island, IL - FRIEND LESS, Horse Lords

$25 DOOR / $20 ADVANCE / $15 MEMBERS
all ages
7pm doors, 8pm show

HORSE LORDS
https://horselords.bandcamp.com/album/interventions-expanded​

Horse Lords were founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 2010; they evolved from the experimental collective Teeth Mountain and began as a trio with drummer Sam Haberman, guitarist Owen Gardner, and bassist Max Eilbacher, soon adding alto saxophonist Andrew Bernstein to the core ensemble. Though Horse Lords grew out of the fertile Baltimore noise and leftfield rock scene, a storied environment for artists and weirdos that has nurtured many an influential outsider band (Lungfish, Matmos), their approach is more omnivorous than the stippled rhythms of instrumental electric rock would indicate.

​Across sixteen years of frequent touring, Horse Lords have released ten studio, live, and collaboration albums in addition to a split EP with fellow Baltimoreans Lower Dens, a handful of singles and compilation tracks. For RVNG’s FRKWYS series, the band collaborated with Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt, a onetime student of La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros whose just intonation chamber music was a crucial part of the post-Fluxus Downtown New York City environment.

With the relocation of three of the four members to Germany beginning in 2021, the potential for more further creative exploration, and performance opportunities including the Moers Festival (with an 11-piece lineup, interpreting Julius Eastman’s music as well as their own), the interdisciplinary phases of the band’s music was poised for fascinating new directions. The band observes “We are always trying to balance working within the limitations of the quartet and pushing beyond them.

For their second studio album on RVNG Intl., Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive!, Horse Lords have followed this notion and augmented the instrumentation, expanding the format slightly to include bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone (TAK Ensemble), trombonist Weston Olencki (Nate Wooley, RAGE Thormbones) and vocalists Nina Guo (Departure Duo) and Evelyn Saylor (Holly Herndon, Caterina Barbieri) across a program of twelve original compositions.

Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! is a reference to a line in a poem by Russian Futurist writer Vladimir Myakovsky, and the band have also name-checked the Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers (wife of painter Josef Albers), Islamic geometrical patterning, Dutch avant-garde group the Maciunas Ensemble (themselves named after Fluxus artist and typographer George Maciunas), composer/writers Tom Johnson, Henry Flynt and Catherine Christer Hennix, and musically draw from sources as diverse as Roscoe Holcolmb, James Brown, Kuwaiti/Bahraini sawt, and electronic composers Maryanne Amacher and Jaap Vink.

As the members are keen to point out, Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! is “a bid for the flattening of time and perception in favor of greater goods [and] the iterative nature of reaching/building a paradise in this life, not the next,” and the new album at hand is an illuminating starting point for eternal nowness.

FRIEND LESS
https://rhythmplex.bandcamp.com/album/energy-rippers

FRIEND LESS is a project by Jon Mueller. Its latest recording, Energy Rippers, aims to provoke the heart, mind and body through an unorthodox approach to rhythmic patterns. In performance, the pieces from Energy Rippers lean on a system of AIR (Acoustic Improvised Rhythm) using drums and voice to achieve a similar effect. More information about the project can be found at rhythmplex.com. 

Jon Mueller studied jazz drumming with Hal Russell at Columbia College in Chicago, and singing with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music in New York. A prolific performer, he tours extensively and has appeared at festivals and venues throughout the United States, Canada, England, Europe and Japan.

In addition to his solo work, Mueller has collaborated and performed with groups such as Who is the Witness?, Mind Over Mirrors, Volcano Choir, Collections of Colonies of Bees, and Pele. He has also worked with artists including Olivia Block, Aaron Turner, Faith Coloccia, Timo van Luijk, Dawn Springer, Chris Hefner, Jason Kahn, Hal Rammel, Asmus Tietchens, Z’EV, Rhys Chatham, Jarboe, James Plotkin, Duane Pitre, and Raymond Dijkstra. He has released music on renowned labels such as Room40, Astres d’Or, American Dreams, Table of the Elements, Type Recordings, Important Records, Taiga Records, SIGE Records, and his own imprint, Rhythmplex.