From TMT:
Quote:
16 Horsepower Put Out to Pasture
One of the most adventurous and idiosyncratic bands in the post-grunge era, 16 Horsepower has officially broken up. Too eclectic and creatively restless to ever fit inside the alternative country, traditional folk, or goth rock scenes that tried to claim them, the unjustly overlooked Denver quartet has decided to make permanent the hiatus that began following the tour for 2003's odds and ends collection Olden.
"It wasn't my decision," says David Eugene Edwards, the vocalist and songwriter whose firebrand vocals and tales of sin, judgment, and redemption formed the conceptual backdrop for the band's five studio albums. "They were tired of the religious aspect of it, I guess," he continues, suggesting that his band mates (Jean-Yves Tola, Pascal Humbert) grew weary of being assumed to share Edwards' faith. "That, and Jean has a horse business that he and his wife run, and they can't really hire anybody else to do it. So they can't go anywhere, and that's what they do now. He's not even playing music, I don't think," he says, seemingly bewildered by the band's dissolution.
Having formed in 1992, 16 Horsepower was swept up in the roots rock revival of the mid-90s, though their dark, Holy Ghost-haunted rock owed as much to Nick Cave and Tom Waits as it did to Johnny Cash. The band would go on to record 1998's Low Estate with PJ Harvey producer John Parrish and increasingly incorporate elements of Eastern European music into their sound to the point where 2002's Folklore included forays into Tuvan throat singing and other drone experiments. Legendary for their high-energy performances and Edwards' ominously foreboding vocals, the recently released 16 HP DVD catalogues a few of the band's live performances, interviews, and videos.
As signs of the band's slow unraveling began showing in 2000, Edwards began to experiment even more with traditional folk textures under the moniker of Woven Hand, going on to write the score for a modern dance project in Belgium entitled Blush Music. Tola and Humbert released two albums as Lilium, with 2003's Short Stories garnering rave reviews for its creakily haunted aesthetic. With the release of two widely acclaimed full-length albums under the Woven Hand name (2003's heart-stoppingly perfect Woven Hand and 2004's meditative Consider the Birds), rumors of the band's break-up had reached a fever pitch.
"We really haven't done anything for a while, and we had been trying to get together, and no one had any time to do anything," Edwards admits. " It was just time for it to be done, and it was quite amicable. Everyone still talks."
Luckily, Edwards has lost none of his fire-and-brimstone passion, having chased ghosts up and down the east coast during his first American tour with Woven Hand in July. If you missed it (and you live in Europe), you can still catch him here:
08.11.05 - Freiburg, Germany - Café Atlantik
08.12.05 - Salzburg, Austria - Rockhouse
08.13.05 - Ljubljana, Slovenia - Trnfest
08.14.05 - Wien, Austria B72
08.15.05 - Budapest, Hungary - Sziget Festival
08.18.05 - Paredes de Coura, Portugal - Festival Paredes de Coura
08.19.05 - Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
08.20.05 - Copenhagen, Denmark - Lille Vega
08.21.05 - Arhus, Denmark - VoxHall
08.22.05 - Hamburg, Germany - Knust
08.23.05 - Dresden, Germany - Star-Club
08.24.05 - Berlin, Germany - Café Zapata - Tacheles
08.25.05 - Hannover, Germany - Café Glocksee
08.27.05 - Oudenaarde, Belgium - Feest in Het Park
08.28.05 - Zwolle, Netherlands - Hedon
