Is it possible for an instrument to be cursed? Every sound on 'Horns of Death' comes from a replica fox-hunting horn bought online. The album is an open-ended investigation of this replica, exploring how a copy of a tool designed for a specific function could act as an instrument when misused and removed from its intended role. Recorded in a bedroom in a small flat in south-east London then squeezed into a computer, for some tracks the horn is (literally) pulled apart to find what other sound sources it contains, the squeak of parts being unscrewed, flicks of the reed, the jangle of its chain. On others, the horn’s intended sounds are extended and disrupted using a DAW and a sampler. 

The replica contains sounds that felt inherently loaded. Adjust the way it’s blown, and it starts to evoke mammalian cries. Play with proximity, and the sounds of the horn begin to have an eerie beauty when heard from afar, an effect which sits in bizarre relation to their intended function. Up close, the banal movements of metal and air that make the horn blast become more pronounced. That replica hunting horns exist, at a time when fox hunting is illegal in the UK, is in itself strange, a reflection of a specific techno-cultural moment. Who buys these? It can’t always be sound artists. The decision to obtain one reflects a morbid curiosity on my part. Horns of Death attempts to explore what happens when this horn is broken away from its history. The intention is to investigate the relation between its inherent acoustic properties and what’s projected onto it. What use can a hunting horn have if we aren’t hunters ourselves? Horns of Death aims to ask a genuine question: is it possible to extricate a hunting horn from its history or is it cursed by design?