Currently based in Leeds, UK, The Horn The Hunt is the duo of Clare Carter and Joseph Osborne who perform live with heavy synths, desert guitars and powerful vocals. GIITTV caught up with Clare recently and put a few questions to her…..
GIITTV: By my rough reckoning The Horn The Hunt has existed as a musical entity for some seven years now. For those who may not yet be familiar with the THTH experience can you please give us a potted history of the band?
CC: We have been a band in our heads for about 5 years, and self-released our first record 4 years ago. But we wrote our first song at a residency in Greenland in winter 2006. At the time we had no idea that THTH was on the horizon – too busy getting to grips with the 24 hour darkness! – but you could say the thought of making interesting pop music has been with us both for a long time. I was a practising visual artist for years before I started taking songwriting seriously, and now I know it’s the only artistic process that fully satisfies me. We released our second album on a small independent label in 2011, and did a bit of touring but left the label soon after. Since then we’ve been working on our third album and have it finished now. We intend to release it in 2014.
GIITTV: I understand that the album was inspired by Las Cañadas del Teide in Tenerife, an area I have visited myself. The music certainly captures for me what is the almost post-apocalyptic, lunar landscape of that part of the island. What was your experience of that magnificent landscape and how did it translate into the music on the album?
CC: As a child I was obsessed with prehistoric stuff and volcanoes, especially islands like Iceland and Hawaii. I used to watch geeky 
programmes about them, fascinated by the drama of the earth. My favourite film was One Million Years BC, which is shot on the volcanic islands of Tenerife and Lanzarote. There are incredible scenes in Las Cañadas, with Teide exploding along to this apocalyptic orchestral music. That was it for me – the music and the landscape exploding together! A few years ago I started writing the songs for our third album, and it felt like the feelings and the sounds we’re coming from this childhood fantasy place. Of wandering through a beautiful, petrified desert, lost, with only the cactus, rocks and winds as company. So I watched the film again, this time with Joe, so he could see where I was coming from with the new material, and he said ‘hey that’s Tenerife! We used to go there nearly every year when I was a kid… it was where I first heard Nirvana and Sonic Youth.’ So we took a trip out there, and I was blown away, it felt like my special place! And I guess Joe felt the same, it’s his childhood fantasy place too. So it’s a landscape that connects us.
GIITTV: On the album you use some mariachi-style horns on the song ‘Not Sure’; is that also borne of the Spanish/Canary Island experience?
CC: I guess it could sound like that! I just needed to find an instrument for the song that had a bossy personality. Like a fat cactus looking down on the valley, all proud. There is some saxophone in there too, like a slow-moving snake through the sand.
GIITTV: Another song that reflects the wide-open desolation of the area surrounding Mount Teide on Tenerife is ‘Terrafidella’. Can you talk us through the creative process of a song such as this?
CC: I always start with a feeling, usually generated by a vocal line, which I make the point of never trying to formulate; I just capture it and put it in a safe place in my head, ready for when the time is right. But sometimes Joe will write these amazing riffs on guitar or bass, he’s so expressive and often doesn’t realise he’s written something great. If I’m around I tell him to record it and put it in a safe place for later! This was one of those riffs. I immediately saw a desert emerge, the colours and textures, the heat of the sun. It was effortless to write the vocal, I just felt like a piece of the scenery, or the wind passing though. We got our drummer Conor to play along to the riff, like talking a stroll through the landscape. The vocal at the end is one of the scratch vocal takes, performed in the corridor of his basement!
GIITTV: What are your hopes and expectations for this record?
CC: That we’ve made our first mature album and people get to hear it and enjoy the landscape within it.
GIITTV: The reason I ask the previous question, in part, is picking up on some things that David Byrne said in a recent article for The Guardian where he suggested that “The internet will suck all creative content out of the world”. Do you feel there is any merit in this assertion?
CC: Possibly. Technology is ancient because people have always developed tools to help them do extraordinary things and learn about the 
world. Technology can make beautiful art too. But it doesn’t make people more creative, or better art. In a similar sense the internet is this great tool that allows us to connect with each other, and being a social species this is revolutionary. But I don’t think it makes people more sociable, in fact I reckon it has made us a bit lazy. Great things take time to develop, and that’s what the internet fails to expose – in all its exposing glory – that to make something great happen or get fulfilment from things you need to dedicate time. The turnover of bands is so fast; music gets swallowed and spat out at a rate few people can follow. It feels like I have become impatient, so I often wait for word of mouth recommendations for new music, otherwise it’s overwhelming for me.
GIITTV: Do you have any views on streaming (be it through Spotify, youtube etc.) as a means of getting music “out there”, particularly when taking account of artists trying to make a living from their music?
CC: I’m old school ritualistic when it comes to obtaining and consuming music; there’s nothing special to me about downloading a track or listening to Spotify. I want to go out and buy a physical thing, open it and look at the artwork whilst sitting in my house, listening to it on good speakers with a glass of wine and a cigarette. Hopelessly romantic. Music is for escaping, relaxing, journeying with the senses and I find it hard to escape online. So I don’t often listen to music that way, which means I’m always behind everyone else but that doesn’t bother me, I’m not really interested in keeping up with the fashion. I have my entire life to discover music. But no, I don’t think Spotify does anything to help artists make a living from their music. I agree with Thom Yorke’s opinion that it’s ‘the last desperate fart of a dying corpse’. There must be another way.
GIITTV: Speaking in general terms, is it possible in this day and age for emerging bands/artists to make a reasonable living from selling their music without, say, having to find alternative/allied employment elsewhere?
CC: I’ve no idea, I’m not there yet and personally don’t know anyone who is!
GIITTV: Which leads me on, albeit somewhat obliquely, to The Horn The Hunt the live experience. The new album used entirely live instrumentation (including drums and Joe on bass) without any programming. Given you are performing as a duo, what challenges/opportunities does this present when playing this material live?
CC: As songwriters we are always preoccupied with the song itself, its character and how to articulate its emotions best, so this also applies to performing. But there have been bigger compromises to our live sound because we are a duo making music that sounds like 10 people are playing it! So we always have to strip it down, rework parts or sometimes even re-contextualise it, to make it work in a live context. It’s challenging but often rewarding when you manage to reduce a big layered song down to just vocals and guitar or synth. We’ve added some analogue beats in places and synth bass but most of the current live set is performed by us – the guitar and the voice are the central characters to our new material. We are in the process of finding musicians to form a band though, this is what we really want to deliver on stage – a big show.
GIITTV: I saw you perform at the (very recently opened) Belgrave Music Hall in Leeds on 12th October 2013? It looked and sounded great from where I was standing, but how was that show for you? What was it like playing in a new venue like this?
CC: It was a dream to play! Great sound system, high stage, atmospheric lighting…and great pizza downstairs! Plus the crowd were very generous.
GIITTV: It was my first time in the Belgrave Music Hall and I thought it was a really great place to see live music (location, the building, sound and atmosphere). There is undoubtedly a most vibrant music scene in Leeds but I was wondering if the city can really sustain another live music venue?
CC: I think so. It can only be a good thing for any city to have options.
GIITTV: I also understand that the man who played saxophone on ‘The Wild Gaze’ (a song from the new album and which also appeared on the recently released single ‘Black Fire’) was supposed to have joined you on stage at the Belgrave show. Any thoughts on one Matthew Perrot, Joe’s former musical cohort in the band Buzzkill?
CC: A lovely chap! Very articulate saxophonist too. I hope one day we will play together on the stage.
GIITTV: That self-same man suggested to me that Joe can cook, and I quote, “an insanely delicious curry”. Would you care to comment upon
this?
CC: We both love cooking. But Joe is a curry connoisseur, and is exceptional at making them.
GIITTV: And in a similar culinary vein I also understand that Joe knows where to go to get the best take-away pizzas in Leeds. Are you prepared to share any of that knowledge?
CC: Of course, more people should eat good pizza! Depends what you’re after though… authentic, experimental or dirty? For authentic – or as close as you’ll get in Leeds – we both recommend Francos, for experimental slices try Dough Boys at Belgrave, and for a dirty pizza get yourself to Grove in LS6.
GIITTV: More seriously, and going back to your music for my final question, what are the immediate plans for the future for The Horn The Hunt both in terms of your recording music and performing live?
CC: We have a few shows lined up for November – Bristol, Manchester and Leeds. We’re releasing the album we finished this summer in the first half of 2014, and getting a band together so we can aim to tour the album next year. There will be a new single out to launch it too. Also we’ve been working on some new music videos, and are thinking about filming a live session with our new stage visuals. We already have a lot of new material for our next album too, so are already starting to put new ideas down!
GIITTV: Good luck with the new album and thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to answer these questions for God Is In The TV
CC: Thanking you!
