Horseback are one of those ephemeral one-man projects that flit about from boutique label to micro-indie with an almost defiant hide-and-go-seek mentality. Following a series of splits, 7 "s and split 7 "s the Jenks Miller-led act landed on Hydra Head Records for a 2011 collaboration with Pyramids. Hydra Head seemed like a good home for Miller's "anything goes" blend of drone, black ambient and doom, but wouldn't you know it? Aaron Turner put his pet label to bed just when things were starting to look interesting for Horseback.
Fortunately, Miller has found a reliable home on Relapse, who appear determined to round up all of the man's rarities, even as they seem incapable of preventing him from racking up even more concurrent small batch releases for labels like Handmade Birds and Brutal Panda.
Relapse got the ball rolling with 2011's The Gorgon Tongue comp, a 2CD round up of the out-of-print full lengths Impale Golden Horn (originally 2007) and Forbidden Planet (2010). They then financed the CD release of New Dominions, a formerly LP only split with Locrian, and most recently issued Half Blood (2012), Horseback's first material recorded exclusively for Relapse and most likely the one thing you're most likely to have heard from Miller to date.
The label is just getting started: A Plague of Knowing comprises no less than three discs worth of rarities, live recordings and various unreleased tracks. Unlike The Gorgon Tongue, which was a straight reissue of two stand alone Horseback albums, A Plague of Knowing is a bit more complicated. The first CD is a more or less complete overview of Horseback's singles and split contributions, ranging from 2009's MILH IHVH 7" – still some of the most impressive work Miller has rendered to date – to covers of Throbbing Gristle's "Heathen Earth" and a live go at "TV Eye" by the Stooges.
Having exhausted all the odd & sods that they could get their hands on, Relapse next licensed Stolen Fire, a cassette-only release that was published in an edition of 150 copies last year and included here on disc two (with numerous tracks remixed). This in itself was a collection of early work and shows Miller experimenting with electronic sounds to the general exclusion of his more abrasive, guitar-driven material. It's interesting stuff, but for a guy that already busies himself with multiple projects (most notably Mount Moriah) it's puzzling why this ended up under the Horseback banner.
Finally, the third disc sees Miller stretching out via a live medley of the Impale Golden Horn material as well as a 40-minute unreleased track, "A Plague of Knowing". The latter is almost a tacit love letter to fans of early Earth or Sunn O))) and pretty much singlehandedly makes this a must buy for Horseback completists.
It also makes a fine entry point: ordinarily compilations of obscurities aren't the best way to introduce one's self to an artist, but in the case of Jenks Miller it's pretty much all obscurities, and considering his penchant for releasing short EPs or splitting the difference by giving one side of the album to another artist, A Plague of Knowing constitutes a good half dozen typical releases worth of Horseback material. This first pressing is limited to 2000 copies and comes in a spiffy 3CD digi-wallet, so for 20 bucks you can acquire roughly a quarter of this man's discography in one fell swoop. Available at Relapse.com.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKURWZV9ew[/youtube]
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