The Common Task

Horse Lords make music for the liberation of mind and body. The Baltimore quartet's new album The Common Task points to a utopian, modernist ideal, recalling as diverse a cohort as The Ex and Glenn Branca to raucous Saharan guitar music, Albert Ayler, and James Tenney. As evidenced by the album’s title, as well as songs like “Fanfare for Effective Freedom” and “People’s Park,” the band’s penchant for radical politics is especially accentuated on this release. Horse Lords are the Pied Piper of experimental music and radical thought. Their music is unabashedly fun, and experiencing it in a live context is an experience of collective ecstasy, each body moving to its own notion of what the beat may be. By showing just how joyous it can be to imagine new futures and possibilities, by making us dance and howl with each tectonic shift, they show how dazzling the path towards utopia could be.

Horse Lords songs are intricate, methodical patterns that seem to pulse and shift the longer you stare. Their tension is rooted in anticipation, the only relief the relinquishing of control.

Baltimore quartet Horse Lords play a complex, polyrhythmic form of music that incorporates just intonation, algorithmic composition, and microtonal harmonies.

The music of Horse Lords – like all the best music – can be tough to categorize, but it's also a study in contradictions.