The Leeds Gig Guide

Band Biography for The Horn The Hunt:

“The Horn The Hunt make their music atmospheric, but not in the same way that the current wave of Witch House are. Instead of slowing down and distorting samples, there’s a building presence that runs through their tracks, nuanced arrangements that serve to engulf rather than overawe.”
Pigeon Post

“The darkness of the human mind and our difficult relationship with nature, these are the things that became apparent, and the most therapeutic way to deal with them, in all cultures, is through art.” Explains Clare Carter, a visual artist and one half of Leeds based pop duo The Horn The Hunt.

Talking of hers and fellow band member Joseph Osbornes’ three-month stay in Greenland, Carter details how they spent half their time in perpetual darkness, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle on a tiny island next to the icecap, completely isolated. “Our time in Greenland was significant, artistically speaking. Being exposed to landscapes, the people and their history, their paganism. It made us realise why we had put ourselves in such an extreme environment.”

With influences as diverse as Kate Bush, David Lynch, The Knife, Rammstein, China, Peter Doig, Tom Waits, One Million Years BC, Yves Netzhammer, Bjork, taxidermy, Angelo Badalamenti, The Jesus Lizard, Lars Von Trier, Beastie Boys, The Fall, Luc Tymans, Babes in Toyland, Murakami, Leonard Cohen, a plethora of early 90s British alternative bands, geology, kebabs, Russian landscape painters from the 1800's, Melanie and Goya. The Horn The Hunt aren’t like other pop bands, or the current flourish of Witch House acts to grace the current music scene. Their songs are magical and accessible. Reminiscent of long forgotten folk stories, embellished with futuristic sounds and contemporary beats. Visually intriguing and sonically cool.

Their self-titled debut album, ‘The Horn The Hunt’ released independently in August of 2009, was recorded over a four-year period; Carter and Osborne began writing and recording songs in a flat in Sandnes, Norway in early 2008. Then they made some more in a room carved into the side of a canyon in the middle of Spain, before departing for an old school in Dordrecht, Holland, and then to a bedroom studio in Leeds, England, where they completed the album, where they are now based.

‘Raptor’ is the first single to be taken from their second album ‘Depressur Jolie’ which is set to drop in the spring of 2011, on White Label Music. Remixes for the single come by way of renowned producer Dean Honer (I Monster/Human League) offering not one, but two renditions. They signed to Ann Shenton of Add N to X (Mute Records) record label, White Label Music, in February of this year.
thehornthehunt.com