PLR Presents: Horse Lords with Brett W. Naucke & World Room

Monday, October 12th, 2026

AyurPrana Listening Room – 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 6 PM || Show 7 PM

Horse Lords

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 leftfield 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.

With the relocation of three of the four members to Germany beginning in 2021, the potential for more further creative exploration, and performance opportunities including the Moers Festival (with an 11-piece lineup, interpreting Julius Eastman’s music as well as their own), the interdisciplinary phases of the band’s music was poised for fascinating new directions. The band observes “We are always trying to balance working within the limitations of the quartet and pushing beyond them.

For their second studio album on RVNG Intl., Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive!, Horse Lords have followed this notion and augmented the instrumentation, expanding the format slightly to include bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone (TAK Ensemble), trombonist Weston Olencki (Nate Wooley, RAGE Thormbones) and vocalists Nina Guo (Departure Duo) and Evelyn Saylor (Holly Herndon, Caterina Barbieri) across a program of twelve original compositions.

Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! is a reference to a line in a poem by Russian Futurist writer Vladimir Myakovsky, and the band have also name-checked the Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers (wife of painter Josef Albers), Islamic geometrical patterning, Dutch avant-garde group the Maciunas Ensemble (themselves named after Fluxus artist and typographer George Maciunas), composer/writers Tom Johnson, Henry Flynt and Catherine Christer Hennix, and musically draw from sources as diverse as Roscoe Holcolmb, James Brown, Kuwaiti/Bahraini sawt, and electronic composers Maryanne Amacher and Jaap Vink.

As the members are keen to point out, Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! is “a bid for the flattening of time and perception in favor of greater goods [and] the iterative nature of reaching/building a paradise in this life, not the next,” and the new album at hand is an illuminating starting point for eternal nowness.

World Room

World Room is the trio of Ashley Paul (saxophone), Jake Pugh (electronics), and Shane Justice McCord (bass clarinet, piano). The music revolves around minimalist compositions, improvisation, and live processing. They’ve been blessed to perform at the Black Mountain College ReHappening experimental arts festival, Black Mountain College museum, and to have recently supported Wolf Eyes. Their debut album is out this autumn on Orange Milk Records.

Brett W​.​​ Naucke

Brett W​.​​ Naucke is an American experimental composer and visual artist from Chicago, IL currently based in Asheville, NC.

Naucke’s sonic output has been primarily focused on marrying an ever-evolving practice of synthesis with conceptual narratives. His most recent recordings have been released by a wide variety of acclaimed labels such as American Dreams, Spectrum Spools, Umor Rex, L.I.E.S, and Hausu Mountain in addition to many others since 2010. Beyond live performance, Naucke has provided the original scores for several films, sound design for interactive gaming, and presented many works for multi-channel audio and video installations.

All ages
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