Thursday 09.24 - Contemporary Arts Center - Doors Open 7pm - All Ages Are Welcome
Horse Lords
Fruit LoOops
Devils Cross Country
Horse Lords were founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 2010; they evolved from the experimental collective Teeth Mountain and began as a trio with drummer Sam Haberman, guitarist Owen Gardner, and bassist Max Eilbacher, soon adding alto saxophonist Andrew Bernstein to the core ensemble. Though Horse Lords grew out of the fertile Baltimore noise and left-field rock scene, a storied environment for artists and weirdos that has nurtured many an influential outsider band (Lungfish, Matmos), their approach is more omnivorous than the stippled rhythms of instrumental electric rock would indicate.
Across sixteen years of frequent touring, Horse Lords have released ten studio, live, and collaboration albums in addition to a split EP with fellow Baltimoreans Lower Dens, a handful of singles and compilation tracks. For RVNG’s FRKWYS series, the band collaborated with Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt, a onetime student of La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros whose just intonation chamber music was a crucial part of the post-Fluxus Downtown New York City environment.
Fruit LoOops is an art-punk, no-wave dance band spread across Ohio and Chicago. Combining manic live and digital percussion, frazzled keyboards, unhinged vocals, and theatrical performance art, they have made a name for themselves by creating a live show experience you must see to believe.
The group formed when frontwoman Jackie Switzer had a nightmare about an open mic night involving contact mics, kitchen equipment, and peeling fruit. She then posted it to an online dream journal collective and some local musicians wanted to make it happen IRL.
Over the last eight years, the group has evolved into a psycho-pop dynamo. Taking influence from reality TV, car accidents, Possession, the supernatural, and Kate Bush, the band makes white-hot explosions of songs, and pairs them with performance art that can take the form of a “Wizard Infomercial”, a recreation of Titanic, or anything and everything in between. They are currently promoting their untethered EP “Everything is Clear to Me Now” (Orange Milk Records) and finishing up their upcoming full length.
Devils Cross Country is a collaboration begun in NYC now based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Initial members Patrick Raneses and Jake Lee shared demos over Zoom and Google Drive links through the pandemic, with the project eventually nurtured into a live band in Cincinnati with Patrick on vocals and guitar alongside drummer Spencer Morgan and bassist Connor Lowry, eventually adding Nina Payiatis on violin and Patrick Zopff on banjo. In 2024, while the skin and bones of DXC’s music remain the melodic, DAW-brained bedroom songwriting — building off of the slacker-rock, Alex G-inspired Lawn EP from 2022 — the flesh is the volume and distortion, shaped with an ear toward the cold, rusty ferocity of Cincinnati's post-punks and the wild experimentation of Philadelphia indie rock. The band’s first full-length, Possession is Ninetenths, is pop smashed up into crooked guitar music with a digital hammer.
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