CITY
OF HORNS
"ambient
performance art for agoraphobes" Hobart Rowland, Philadelphia
Weekly
City of Horns is the
audio brainchild of Harold Buck, who has been wowing Philadelphia
audiences for years as artistic director and founder of legendary
performance-art group Rusty Ladder Ensemble. "It's a chance
for me to combine my installation and performance work with my
long-standing love of ambient music and sound collage,"
explains Buck.
With one foot in the
early tape-loop experiments of Terry Riley and Brian Eno, one
foot in the modern Isolationist tactics of Main and Oval, and
both feet firmly planted in a $30 forest-green 2-person camping
tent, live City of Horns performances are trance-inducing, ear-bending,
and 100% improvised on archaic, malfunctioning devices with no
memory capacity. "I use Casio samplers to generate sounds,
and since they have no storage space, I'm forced to create new
samples every time I play, which guarantees that each performance
sounds new and different."
As for the tent that
Buck insists on performing in during every City of Horns show?
"It's a lot more interesting to look at a tent for a hour
than to look at a guy sitting on the floor turning knobs and
pushing buttons. The most boring visual information becomes fascinating
the moment you're denied access to it."
Fruit
of the Moon is
the debut release by City of Horns, but the prolific Buck claims
to have three more finished albums in the can and hopes to release
a second and third album this year.
Discography