A Chat with Horizon (19.10.2021)
With a loose narrative regarding relationships, Horizon connects the tracks of his latest album Tried to Swim in Lava. While many of the songs are very different in style and sound, they come together to form a cohesive unit through the threaded message of the album. With a touch of alt-rock and indie pop, he showcases his versatility and musicality in an engaging manner. We had the chance to talk with Horizon about the album, narrative choices, self-recording, learning instruments and much more!
OSR: Was there a moment or experience that made you decide to make music?
Horizon: There really wasn’t a specific moment or experience that made me start creating, I’ve always loved music and wanted to do something with it, whether that be playing in a band or creating it like I’m doing now. In my senior year of high school, it just felt like the right time, I had the motivation to create so I started to make everything I heard in my mind.
OSR: Through the tracks of your album Tried to Swim in Lava, you work through a relationship in the modern world, what prompted you to choose this narrative?
Horizon: The narrative from Tried to Swim in Lava didn’t originally start out the same way it ended actually! The same way the album came together through phases, so did the narrative. At the end of production, I had a brainstorming session with my good friend Shottythebeam. During us listening to what was gonna become the album he had described it in such a way that we restructured where the songs were and gave life to the whole project. The songs just fit perfectly in the cycle of modern relationships where it starts at meeting someone, the honeymoon phase, heartbreak, the prolonging of the heartbreak cause you don’t want to move on, acceptance of the end, and then it all starts over again.
OSR: Each track on the album is connected through a loose narrative thread, how difficult was it to create tracks that are snapshots of a relationship yet loosely connected in meaning and intention?
Horizon: The loose narrative and structured tracklist was actually probably the easiest part of the album because the main narrative came mostly after the album was finished. I had already created these varied songs showing different parts of relationships and by the time the project was finished, it had basically put intakes together.
OSR: What was your creative process for the album? Did you start with the idea or a single track?
Horizon: This album had a really interesting process coming together. It had originally started as just a small EP with a few songs using a beat pack created by Shottythebeam. The first song I had made was actually ‘Angel Wings’, after that song, this EP I had started quickly became much much more. As the songs started flowing I wanted to create my own songs fully to accompany the first couple of songs I’d made with the beat pack, so it really came together song by song with the main idea of using this album to showcase my skills and development as a musician.
OSR: You recorded the album in a small section of your apartment that has been turned into a home studio, what was the biggest challenge you had to overcome with this?
Horizon: The hardest challenge to overcome was probably the whole recording and post-production phases. I can’t get the real sound from an actual studio just yet so it made the recording rougher thus creating a lot more work mixing, mastering, and levelling to create the feel of a real studio recording.
OSR: The album covers a broad spectrum of the pop genre, was this something you intended or did it evolve on its own?
Horizon: I definitely intended it to cover as many genres as possible, I think versatility is one of the most important traits that an artist can have and I really wanted to show everyone my versatility in a big way. Because of how the album came together, song by song, it was much easier to create songs with mixing genres and styles while still keeping them similar enough to flow as well as they do in a project like this.
OSR: While each track is unique and stands out on its own, if people could only listen to one track, which would you recommend and why?
Horizon: That’s definitely one of the toughest questions I get, I really do love all of these songs on Tried to Swim in Lava so it’s almost impossible for me to really just pick one. I will say that the singles on the album were singles for a reason but there was also supposed to be one more single, that was the track ‘Sunshine’. So I think if I had to pin it down to any certain song it would be one of those three songs, ‘Ben Drowned’, ‘Angel Wings’, or ‘Sunshine’. Since I have to pick one I would say out of those three, I’m the proudest of ‘Ben Drowned’ as it’s one of my most experimental as well as cohesive songs. So if I had to pick one song for people to listen to, to encapsulate the album it would be ‘Ben Drowned’.
OSR: What is the one thing you would like people to feel as they listen to the album?
Horizon: As people listen to this album I’d really like them to just get surrounded by the feelings of this person going through this modern relationship, the sadness, happiness, longing, the icy cold feeling of loss, everything. That is also part of why I think the range of genres on the project is so important so that everyone listening can truly get the feelings I’m trying to portray.
OSR: What made you decide to release these songs as an album and not individual singles?
Horizon: Up to the point that I had started creating the album, or technically the original EP, I had released a lot of singles to keep the momentum of creativity moving. I felt like it was time to really buckle down and create an actual whole project to kind of showcase how far I’d come from when I’d started making music.
OSR: What else can we expect from you in the next 12 months?
Horizon: I’m currently working on multiple projects at once, I had technically started forming them during the creation of Tried to Swim in Lava but now I can buckle down and really do everything I can to make them as good as can be. Since the release of the album I’m also more fired up than ever to make new music, so keep an eye out for new singles, projects, and features from more amazing artists, I’ve finished some of my best work to date and I can’t wait to show it to everyone.
Thanks to Horizon for chatting with us! You can find more about him on his Twitter, Instagram and Spotify.
