Gift Horse trotted onto the scene a few years ago with their debut album Cultural Payout, a psychedelic experiment bookended by sprawling synth odysseys pushing beyond the seven-minute mark. While maintaining that core instrumental-electronic sound, the duo of Jonathan Schenke and Matthew Hord have since expanded into a trio, enlisting songwriter Ryley Walker to accent their sound with guitar shredding that adds a whole new dimension to the 11 songs on their newly announced second LP, A Career in Architecture. Lead single “Rebar Redux” is actually a reinterpretation of their debut’s expansive closer, which has since become a highlight of their live show with Walker’s riffs providing a whole new sonic element to get lost in.
Schenke—who also played a role in the recently disbanded P.E., served as one half of the 2010s darkwave project Eaters, and has engineered records for Parquet Courts, Snail Mail, and Girl Talk—shares that the track has taken numerous shapes over the years before landing on this new “Redux” version with the help of the band’s new asset. “Every performance is unique, from the earlier iterations around the first cassette into more expansive versions with Ryley, often stretching beyond the 10-minute mark,” he shares. “For this recording, we tracked the song live in the studio to capture that unrestrained dynamic.
“We decided to take a similar approach with the video,” he adds, regarding the trippy performance clip the trio is sharing along with the revised single. “Director Rebecca Shenfeld filmed a live take with a 360 camera, editing and effecting the footage to match the intensity of the song.” Check it out below, and pre-order A Career in Architecture here ahead of its November 6 release via Walker’s Husky Pants Records.
