Andrew Bernstein of Horse Lords on Imaginary Landscapes: New Electronic Music 
Sitting pretty close to the tops of my 2026 rotation has been the new record from Horse Lords. The band’s synthesis of geometric riffs, jazz propulsion, and German Progressive roots has long made them faves around here. The band takes some time out from touring for Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive to explore some roots and turn us all onto a late ’80s comp of electronic music that mapped the landscape of the genre as it was being built. The band’s Andrew Bernstein explores how the record came into his life and the impact it’s left in its wake.
“There is a compilation CD, Imaginary Landscapes: New Electronic Music, released by Nonesuch in 1989 with a lot of key experimental composers active in the 1980’s, including Laetetia Sonami, Maryanne Amacher, Alvin Lucier, Nicolas Collins, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny. It was lent to me by my computer music professor in college, Dr. Geoffrey Wright, along with Steve Reich’s Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint. I’ve certainly got a lot out of Reich’s music, but it was the compilation that seemed to open whole new worlds of sound and social connection. I was fascinated by who all of these people were and the world they came from. There were a lot of excerpts of pieces, so I was spurred to find the full recordings. In learning more about Nicolas Collins’ music I found his workbook “Handmade Electronic Music,” inaugurating a period of hardware hacking and instrument construction that still informs how I approach the more conventional instruments I play. Many of the tracks on the CD were recorded live at the legendary New York venue The Kitchen, tipping me off to the site of so much vital culture happening in the 70’s and 80’s as well as at the time of discovery (the mid-2000’s), and continuing to this day. Every piece seemed to spin out a web of connections that I was eager to explore. Coming back to it now, after quite a few years, I am finding new connections, and finding that I have now crossed paths with some of the figures on the compilation, adding my own tangential node in the rhizome.”
“Beyond my own young fascination with new musical worlds,” notes Bernstein, “the music itself is a greatest hits of 80s “downtown” electronic music. Lucier’s “Music for Alpha Waves, Assorted Percussion, and Automated Coded Relays” strikes me as a sort of sequel to his 1965 “Music for Solo Performer” where the performer uses amplified brain waves to excite percussion instruments in Lucier’s style of science-experiment-as-music-composition. “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s “Somewhere in Arizona 1970” stands out for its extremely lyrical melodies, sung by Thomas Bruckner and orchestrated with electric organ and what sounds like player piano, referencing but never quite breaking into the stride piano style you hear “Blue” Gene play elsewhere. It was a lot to absorb as a 20 year old, but it’s music that I’ve continually come back to.”
As Andrew notes, this is still a foundational work and one that remains readily accessible in an age where non-commercial releases tend to fall by the wayside. I second his recommendation to get this one into the brain if you have any interest in experimental music in the current age. The record’s still available direct from Nonesuch. Baste yourself in a few past cycles here and then get ready for Horse Lords’ latest, still one of the best of the year.
Support the artist. Buy it HERE.