HORSES is wordless music and sound by Robert Stillman. The spirit of 'Horses' music is somewhere between the fairground, the rural parlor, and the stars; while the shrewd listener may be able to pick out hints of Stillman's influences, (among whom he counts John Fahey, Kurt Weill, Scott Joplin, and Maurice Ravel), his music exists on its own terms, a detailed musical territory unto itself.
Attendees of Stillman's live shows have come to expect the unexpected; a 'Horses' performance can mean a one-man-band, tape-based sound collage, live accompaniment of silent archive footage, or a full ensemble event.
Stillman's most recent release, Early Maine Films (l'animaux tryst field recordings), is a CD/DVD featuring original sound and music composed to accompany turn-of-the-century archive footage from Stillman's native corner state. Selections from the project were performed live with the films at the 2007 H&M High Line Festival (curated by David Bowie) in New York City.
2009 will bring the release of two new "HORSES" works, the LPÂ Machine's Song, a musical account of life as a one-man-band, and the EPÂ Masterbox, which focuses on the wood and metal sound-making machine, "Piano."Â Both recordings explore the music that lies within mechanica, realized in song, and dream-narrative sound design, applied to the tape-hiss canvas.
This music combines the epic scope of radio-days orchestral glamour with unorthodox mis-use of recording equipment. They feature piano rags of rage, unravelling marching-band rhythms, abandoned skating-rink organ, and cymbal crashes like the man in the bar's first shocking realization of his own drunkenness.
In addition to his own work, Stillman collaborates with a diverse cohort of idea-and-action people-including Kurt Weisman (Feathers/Witch), Flying, Luke Temple, the Subjects, and the End of the World.
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"In an age of so many genres and subgenres, it's refreshing to come across a disc that defies categorization. So it goes with 'Horses'... It's elegant, graceful music that's in no rush to get anywhere in a hurry..." Billboard
"Wonderfully sympathetic music that has the feel of Glass or Reich, whilst retaining an organic warmth."Â -The Terrascope
Robert Stillman's music is not Americana, it is American. It is made from real blood, a line we insist on remembering the magic in...he plays the real Ragtime of Now with a contraption and he is crying and all the real flooding waters of American pain and blood coarse through his body." Camp Studio
"...'Horses' whirls like a dancer in a slit skirt, each slow turn and quick step showing you a glimpse of something you desperately want to see again, and each track another chance to capture it." The Washington Examiner
"He is interested in the mystery and ambiguity that remain when you take slivers of life away from their worldly signifiers...the sound of the world captured with magnets and wires." The Bollard
"Stillman is a master of small gestures, and it's his ability to let sound escape in measured doses--like an author slowly revealing each wrinkle in a potboiler--that makes Horses consistently engaging." Magnet
EXCERPT: 'LOGGING IN MAINE 1906' FROM 'EARLY MAINE FILMS', 2007
