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High Horses is an EP by The Residents' Combo de Mecanico, a one-off side project by The Residents' primary composer and keyboardist. It was released in a limited, numbered CD edition on September 2nd 2001 by Ralph America.
High Horses is a six part suite which is designed to replicate the effects felt by one member of The Residents when experiencing an acid trip on a carousel at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in the late 1960s.
The suite was later reissued on the 2007 compilation Best Left Unspoken... Volume Two: High Horses and Other Selections.
History[]
Just prior to the third leg of The Residents' Icky Flix tour, in the spring of 2001, The Residents recalled a time 31 years prior, before they even existed, when they had taken LSD during a visit to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and decided to take a ride on the park's carousel. The Residents remembered the exciting and unique sound of the ride, decided that they must try to recreate that in their next project, and began composing.
After a show in Amsterdam, Holland, the group decided to venture to Utrecht's National Museum, only 40 minutes away, where they would record the sounds of various mechanical instruments found in the collection, before heading to their next show in Belgium.
For the next few months, the group worked on composing the material but soon found a problem. Whilst they were proud of the work, it was universally agreed that it sounded nothing like The Residents. Not wanting to let the piece go to waste due to its uniqueness, the artists decided to create a new group to which the music would be credited, and thus, Combo de Mecanico (or Group of Mechanics) was born.
Release[]
High Horses was released in a limited, hand-numbered edition of 1,149 copies by Ralph America on September 2nd 2001.
In 2007 the suite was included in its entirety on the compilation album Best Left Unspoken... Volume Two: High Horses and Other Selections.
Legacy[]
It has been said that High Horses was used as intermission music on the fourth and final leg of the Icky Flix tour.
The Combo de Mecanico moniker was quietly retired shortly after the release of the EP; to date, it has not reappeared on any Residents release.
A "pre-mix, pre-overdub" version of the EP, titled "Low Horses", was released as a free MP3 in the May 2024 issue of Cherry Red Records' Residents mailing list newsletter.
Track listing[]
- Part 1 (2:30)
- Part 2 (1:35)
- Part 3 (2:33)
- Part 4 (2:40)
- Part 5 (4:52)
- Part 6 (4:19)
Liner notes[]
You know how it is. You've all been there.
A warm Sunday afternoon in 1970. San Francisco's Golden Gate Park lures you with its rich green Eucalyptus trees. Over there, the children's playground. Slides, swings, monkey bars. A little further away, a merry go round is spinning. Its magnificent sound, a madman's mechanical Gamelan, tells you there is only one thing to do, ride this ancient carousel. Anyway, the acid hasn't really kicked in yet, so why not?
And so the story starts. The remainder is told with this recording.
The idea was simple: to complete the above story by researching 19th-century carousel music. writing arrangements that would illustrate the concept of "a madman's mechanical Gamelan," and construct a piece that included the elements of a moving spacial environment and drug altered awareness, and, maybe, even answer the final question, "why not?"
First, recordings were made of street organs and Orchestrations from The National Museum's mechanical instrument collection in Utrecht, Netherlands. The pieces were transcribed by ear, parts altered as necessary, and made into MIDI files so that they could be played and controlled by computer. The sounds of a mechanical 19th Century street organ were balanced with an array of electronic and ethnic instrumentation.
Rotation was an essential part of merry-go-rounds, so the arrangments had to reflect constant revolution.
Panning a mono signal back and forth proved unsatisfactory. Eventually, a system was developed using stereo comb filters which phase cancelled selective frequencies in a virtual 3-D space. A judicious focus on the effect of distance on sound and of movement on the pitch, also helped. The Residents eventually agreed that the effect they have settled for here was of the rotation of the music source rather than the listener.
As far as drug-induced perceptions, the Residents believed that audio 'druggie' tricks should be kept at a minimum and the drug transformation should be the way the music is slowly allowed to dominate and speak directly with the mind. This was about the power of music, not the power of drugs. The purpose of the drug in the story was to aid the rider in focussing on the music and sounds of the environment.
While listening to this conceptual piece, you are encouraged to don headphones, in lieu of drugs, and try to discover what the rider's answer would be to the question. "Why Not?"
Based on music in the public domain, titles unknown
Credits[]
- Composed and performed by The Residents and Combo de Mecanico
See also[]
- Coochie Brake
- Pollex Christi
- In Between Screams
- "Low Horses"