Five Years by Horse Bones

From the muddy banks of the Mississippi on the Iowa side. Surrounded by endless mazes of cornfields, ghost towns, collapsing silos, dilapidated barns. Mired in hopelessly hot summers and impossibly cold winters. The howling of wind in the black shroud of night, fragrant and forlorn through the weeping willows and unsettling silhouettes of corn stalks on star-dotted nights with a moon bright enough to glimpse shadows one could mistake as apparitions. Or sometimes a crimson red like a terrifying omen.

Here lies a small omnibus of songs. A compendium of love, loss, mourning, isolation, fear, desperation, depression, anxiety, alienation, confusion, both urban and rural decay, anger towards the powerful oligarchs of my country raining down hellfire on the poorest nations for whatever financial or political gain. But also hope. If not for hope none of these tracks would exist, and neither would I.

All songs were recorded at home over the course of five years (save one, When All Is Lost, recorded by Mitch Pilon in 2011), utilizing whatever tools and instruments I had at my disposal at the time with cheap microphones and no real knowledge of how to record. Just the desire to document what I was feeling at the time and doing my best to make it audibly palatable.

All instruments were played by me. Some even included a glass being tapped with a vape pen and a computer table being hand-beaten, altered during mixing (somehow) to mimic a tom drum in a cave. Take advice from the Minutemen when they said We Jam Econo. Make music however you can with whatever you have or can borrow.

This collection is free to download if you like, or pay whatever money if you want. The Bowie tracks are obviously free. Thanks for listening.

Jason Humphreys

P.S. I have a crust punk band on Bandcamp, including a full length album with amazing professional recording (Flat Black Studios) and mastering (Audiosiege) if interested. www.tongpo.bandcamp.com