Bell Horses - Biography
Bell Horses is an electronic duo comprised of experimentalist Xian Hawkins (who also performs as the one-man project, Sybarite) and eccentric singer/songwriter, Jenny Owen Youngs. The merging of the two contrasting styles—who agreed to collaborate over drinks in New York City—accomplishes a more organic, heavily atmospheric electronic music that has been called left-field pop. They have recorded one full-length album on Hawkins’ Trysquare label, entitled This Loves Last Time (2009). Hawkins financed the album himself.
Hawkins was formerly of Silver Apples, before launching his own act—Sybarite—and releasing a series of EPs on labels like 4AD, Ghostly International and Temporary Residence. Known for his sample-based, mid-tempo electronic music with classical underpinnings, Hawkins returned to writing songs originating from an acoustic guitar for Bell Horses—which takes its name from a turn of the century phrase for horses passing in the night (wearing bells to avoid collisions).
Jenny Owen Youngs is a New Jersey-born singer/songwriter on the Nettwerk label, whose blend of cabaret pop and clever, often-funny lyrics distinguished her songcraft from contemporaries. She released her sophomore album Transmitter Failure in 2009, which explored new, bolder frontiers (electronic mostly) from her debut of four years earlier, Batten the Hatches (2005 Jenny Owen Youngs Music).
After hearing Youngs voice “and falling in love with it” on internet radio, the Bell Horses project began as the multi-instrumentalist Hawkins sent Youngs and Alexander Ericson (formerly of Swedish outfit, The Northern Territories, as well as Alberta Cross) song parts to listen to as a jumping off point for vocals. The eight-track album This Love Last Time was a long-distance email collaboration that was patched together from various spots on the globe, as far-reaching as New York to Berlin to London. Hawkins later mixed, recorded and arranged the songs from a converted Victorian church in Massachusetts (which doubles as his home), adding busy hovering electronic tones and Eve Boltax’s washes of string instruments. Michael Lerner (of The Antlers) added drums, and Youngs’ solo collaborator, Dan Romer, engineered and recorded her vocals. The album was mastered in Scotland.
Hawkins and Youngs, while maintaining their own projects primarily, continue to write songs together and have plans of another album under the collaborative effort of Bell Horses.
