Horse Lords – “Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive!” (Released 19th June 2026)

The music on Horse Lords’ Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! feels both impossibly detailed and eminently human.

The twelve pieces assembled are layered, interwoven, tonally and rhythmically complex––moiré-like patterns of interaction and tessellation that play out for both mind and body, full of sonic warrens with an inescapable groove. Artists aren’t necessarily scientists, logicians, or spiritual leaders, but through their personal understanding of order and experience, they provide experiential access to heightened states of both materiality and immateriality.

The band notes that “trusting each other’s concepts and visions was more important than repeatedly playing a section to see if the music worked, although this trust was only made possible through working very closely together.”

While D2BT2HA! isn’t a suite per se, the music influences and interacts with itself in complex linkages. Horse Lords observe that “we like the idea of art as a tool for changing your perspective, being able to rotate ideas and see/hear/feel them from a different vantage point.” Or to use a phrase attributed to Swami Satchidananda Saraswati, “understanding is standing under where you are already standing.”

There’s clearly a lot of weight in the language used to title pieces, and D2BTA2H! is no exception––transcendence and uplift are inherent in the music’s operation and if all art is political, Horse Lords’ leanings are optimistic and community-centered. Transformation and re-viewing are not just a compositional strategy but a philosophical outlook, given such themes as “A City Yet To Come,” the title track, or utopic references. As they put it, “we try to make music that challenges the status quo and offers a path toward liberation for the listener. The study and exploration of sound and music has a spiritual and ecstatic dimension, and we have a great reverence for its impact on the individual and the world.”

The tension between striving for something beyond and what constitutes our lived reality is not lost, either, as “After the Last Sky” draws from poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “The Earth Is Closing in on Us,” which “uses the Palestinian case to problematize our utopian quest, acknowledging that this rests on a sense of security that is out of reach for many.” There are numerous sonic and conceptual layers in D2BTA2H!, but given the music’s undeniable power and humanity, the process of unpacking them is enthusiastic and deeply rewarding. Rare indeed is the record that grabs one by the lapels yet lands utterly anew on each hearing.