Get ready to indulge the weird fibres of your brain.  The Hornbook, the new album from former pro-snowboarder Gus Englehorn, will take you to places that you’ve never before imagined.

Release Date:  31^st January 2025

Label: Secret City Records

Formats: CD / Digital

AN EXPERIENCE LIKE NO OTHER

Brace yourselves.  The Hornbook, the new album from North American place-shifter and former pro-snowboarder Gus Englehorn will assault senses that you didn’t even know you had.

Every time he releases an album – and The Hornbook is his third such offering – Gus likes to invite his listeners into his own world, a world where intrigue, emotion and storytelling collide in a thrilling sonic journey.  Along the way, you’ll see points of reference that you think you recognize, but you won’t get close enough to anything you find familiar to feel truly comfortable.  A journey with Gus Englehorn is an experience like no other.

Gus Englehorn likes to describe himself as “A nomadic psych-pop prophet” who inhabits his own world, “Planet Gus” – a world “…created through a big-bang collision between serene beauty and apocalyptic chaos, populated by folk heroes, creepy characters and oversized insects.”  If that all seems a bit incomprehensible right now, I guarantee that it’ll make perfect sense, once you’ve heard the music.

AN ALIEN TRANSMISSION FROM THE FUTURE…

Whilst Gus’s previous album, Death and Transfiguration (2020) and Dungeon Master (2022) explored, respectively, the forced isolation of lockdown and “prog-scaled” storytelling, for The Hornbook, Gus turns his attention to the essence and energy of 20^th Century rock; garage rock, psychedelia, glam, punk, post-punk and grunge are all reimagined into “an alien transmission from the future.”  Summarising the album, Gus said: “When I was writing these songs, it felt like I was making a children’s book – every song was a little story; but it also felt like a little bit of a cipher for our whole world.”

Gus is helped along on this latest musical mission by producer Mark Lawson and by his musical (and matrimonial) partner, Estée Preda and, I’ll say right upfront: If you have a weird fibre anywhere within your brain, you’ll love The Hornbook and, if you’ve ever enjoyed the semi-serious challenges laid down by the likes of Frank Zappa, Syd Barrett, Captain Beefheart or Lou Reed, The Hornbook is a must-own album.  Just don’t take it all too seriously, that’s all…

MR ZAPPA – MEET MR TOLKIEN

The otherworldly rap of opening track One Eyed Jack pt. I and II (The Interrogation/ The Otherside) is introduced by Gus’s and Estée’s disorienting rendition of the old American folk song, I’ve Been Working On The Railroad, before the song finds a heavy, repetitive groove. 

Speaking of the song, Gus says: “I just came up with that riff and liked playing it real slow and sludgy.  The whole time, I was imagining people working on the railroad, all singing a song together as they’re hammering.  But then I thought that it was too slow to be like that the whole time, so I did a time change.  The song starts out like a worker on the railroad but, then, when it starts going fast, it feels more like he was going through another dimension, like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where there’s all these colours and time is warping.”  And the result?  An exhilarating sound that seems to herald a meeting between Frank Zappa and J.R.R.Tolkien.

Gus spits out lyrics which include recitations from Scarborough Fair, amidst the sharp, punchy punk of Thyme.  It’s a great song, one of several album highlights, and, if the more sinister aspects of the lyrics can be set aside, it’s refreshingly poppy.  “I am a jewel on the riverbed,” whispers Gus, as he imagines an underwater fantasy for the dreamlike The Itch.  Estée’s ethereal backing vocals add a feel that’s almost Beatle-like and the sound is as deep and rich as the river of Gus’s imagination.

GRACE AND GRANDEUR

The engaging Roderick of the Vale is suggestive (to me, at least) of what The Incredible String Band may have sounded like, had they had access to today’s technology and recording techniques.  It’s my favourite track on the album and I heartily agree with commentator Stuart Berman’s description of the song as “… a patient, slow-building anthem that exhibits newfound grace and grandeur.”   It’s a song that invites the listener to enter and explore, promising that a whole alternative world can be found, and enjoyed, within…

Current single, Metal Detector, is a spacy, scary, slice of crashing doom-metal, with a marvelous cry of “Plug that thing back in” in the brief break between cacophonous aural assaults, and things don’t ease up, either, for the strident heavy riffage of The Whirlwind’s Speaking.  Gus – as “The Whirlwind” delivers his bombastic, quasi-dystopian monologue, whilst Estée offers pleading responses to his proclamations.

SPIRIT OF SYD

The spirit of Syd Barrett inhabits the psychedelic whimsy of Sweet Marie, before the song blossoms into a widescreen ballad to eulogise “My Sweet Marie – My Temptress of the deep,” whilst the influence of Lou Reed seems to pervade the surreal A Song With Arms and Legs, another real album highlight.  Stuart Berman (him again…) has suggested that this is the song that best demonstrates Gus’s modus operandi – a claim that is, perhaps, validated as Gus recites his intense lyrics – “A song with arms and legs came walking in the room – a song with eyes; a song with a face” to a pared-back accompaniment of guitar and chiming piano.

A SPECIAL PATCH OF WEIRDNESS

And, to round things off, we go back to where we started for an Epilogue to the One Eyed Jack (remember him?) saga.  Chugging guitars take the lead in a tight, punky, outro whilst Gus gives us one final glimpse into the workings of his active imagination.

The Hornbook is an excellent album indeed – a timely reminder that, however weird the world might seem during these scary times, there’s always a special patch of weirdness that’s accessible only to the fortunate few.

Have a taste of Englehorn weirdness – watch the official video to Thyme – a track from the album:

Gus Englehorn online: Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / X (formerly Twitter) / YouTube / Bandcamp / Bandsintown

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