Horse Lords
opening set: Shinra Knives
Friday, September 25th, 2026 | 7pm Doors / 8pm Show
The Key StL ( 3225 Olive St, 63103 / map )
all ages event (please bring id)
Owen Gardner – guitar & electronics
Andrew Bernstein – saxophone, percussion & electronics
Max Eilbacher – bass & electronics
Sam Haberman – drums
Ian Jones – electronics
Horse Lords
Horse Lords are a Baltimore-founded (and now partially Berlin-based) experimental rock band whose music fuses the relentless, looping repetition of classical minimalism with the propulsive, motorik groove of Krautrock. The ensemble makes pulsating music that employs ideas such as serialist and minimalist composition, just intonation, polyrhythmic patterning, and free jazz and improvisation. Touring in support of their latest album, Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive!, Horse Lords delivers an omnivorous, gripping live experience that is equally at home in DIY basements and formal concert venues.
“…the members are so locked into their individual parts that it’s not always easy to tell if the melodic line is coming from one guitar, two of them doubling each other, or some third melodic line that suggests itself, like an auditory hallucination, in the middle space, where all these notes pool and mix together. It’s in these trembling, potential-filled middle spaces into which the band members pour their energy, and listening to them can feel like staring into the trembling center of some globular alien light.”
Formed out of the noise scene in Baltimore in the early 2010s, the lineup involves the talents of Andrew Bernstein (saxophone/percussion), Max Eilbacher (bass/electronics), Owen Gardner (guitar), and Sam Haberman (drums) 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. Horse Lords are noted not only for avant-garde aesthetics, but also for the use of refretted guitars tuned to “just intonation,” the tuning system utilized by La Monte Young and the basis for Harry Partch’s 43-tone scale. Just intonation tunes pitches to each other using ratios.
Across sixteen years of frequent touring, Horse Lords have released ten studio, live, and collaboration albums in addition to 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).
Shinra Knives
Shinra Knives, the moniker of St. Louis-based producer Ian Jones, creates electronic music that is emotional, unrelenting, and visceral that merges breakcore and heavy, maximalist music with enigmatic video projections. His tracks were notably championed by Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) who mixed Shinra Knives tracks such as “Black Mouth” and “Laced Blunt” as staples in his touring set.
Shinra Knives has released two full-length studio LPs: In Grief (2021) and you will never see heaven (2022). Both albums utilize a raw combination of glitch, IDM, and raw electronic experimentation, and have been pressed and distributed across digital, cassette, and physical vinyl.
