Beachers - Horns of Death

 

Released: September 12

Beachers is one of those projects that always provokes a sense of intrigue whenever a new album come out. There’s always a central item to every album, previously an archaic phone system and all of its idiosyncrasies or maybe a persistent cicada. For this newest exploration, the centerpiece is relic of a time passed years ago that saw rich men hunting down small frightened animals - a replica fox-hunting horn. A rather ghastly item itself, this album takes it and breaks it down into all manner of sounds and rearranges them with the help of modern sampler tools into uncomfortable soundscapes. 

Some of the tracks take the sound of the item as it was intended, blowing out long and ominous horn blasts as is to signal the macabre event about to unfold. The track sharing the name of the album, “Horns of death,” is almost exclusively this. The layers of horn blasts stack on top of one another in successive fashion while a more guttural and blatty sounding one echoes behind them occasionally. In other instances, the horn is partially disassembled and become something of a percussion instrument as on “pursuit” with its errant and seemingly slightly panicked rhythms. 

It’s an interesting exploration on this album. There’s this constant and overarching theme of gloom that hangs in the air. Each prolonged or strained or airy blow of the horn sends a message of impending doom and fear. Not in a way that would really frighten the listener, but in a way that is visceral and understandable to them. It is haunting, if not also eerily pretty at the same time while also displaying a certain creative element of exploration that Beachers is always wont to bring to their creations.