Nicholas Chamberlain Hunt.
A musician, sound engineer and producer since the 1980s. He started Horizontal Records in 1999.
The Freaks Collective, currently around 30 musicians (The Freaks) is an ever growing collective of musicians that release their music projects on Horizontal Records if they wish.
The label name is intended to reflect the philosophy of the label in addition to the general music type.
It's a great way to appreciate our music, lie horizontal.
The label is multi genre, embraces the 1990s genre of Trip Hop,( through the inclusive sponge like nature of the genre, and through past connections, namely the band Baby Fox and Christine Ann Leach), but also ethnic, film music, psychedelic and more.
The main band on the label is undoubtedly the Acoustic Lounge Freaks, with the largest proportion of the collective playing on these Trip Hop albums and EPs, but there are many other combinations of the collective that have their own projects, such as African influenced Ni Kidogo, the psychedelic sounds of Hikkaduwa, the poems and music of Ze Zook, deeply experimental sounds of Dr Ono Ishido, the piano compositions of Fumihito Watanabe, Manam, The Chamberlain Quartet, Narwargarl, Juniper Pool, Prince Doobi, Belle Onni, The Zybrations, Joseph Mwama etc etc.
On a deeper personal note:
Chamberlain Hunt adds
“I have been making music for 40 years, the journey happily continues. I feel that wisdom, even enlightenment are maybe in music somewhere, the rhythms of life and music still have undiscovered connections whose secrets may benefit future generations in undiscovered ways. Who knows where it could go, the possibilities? We know that listening to music stimulates more areas of the brain than anything else! Mine has certainly had plenty of stimulation and I've touched something :). The human being is a very complex creature, music a fabulous play-thing for the mind”.
The world music bar is high, very high, it seems like it's all been done before, can't be bettered. Something needs to be different, to those ends we have grown and developed our own sound and feel, over 250 pieces of musical art based on an improvisational approach in the composition, mixing and production.
Somewhere in every track is beauty, a beauty not all will hear. We are coming from a good place, a healing space. That’s the essence of the label. Music is a play thing for the mind, but the mind has to open, open as wide as possible. Time and space is required, so make some time for us and get Horizontal.
Nicholas worked in his early career with cult electronic band Neu Electrik on the Some Bizarre label with fellow artists Soft Cell, The The and Depeche Mode. Nicky worked as a sound engineer in recording studios and at live venues, culminating in being a resident sound engineer at the 101 Club and the Mean Fiddler.
In 1999 Nicholas started his own label" Horizontal", in the same year touring America and Europe as a member of Baby Fox being their dubman and front of house engineer. He has been working on the London underground music scene ever since creating the Horizontal Label sound and catalogue.
Singer Christine started her recording career as vocalist for jazz nubiles Spring at the age of 15 with Niall MacColl. Since then she worked on many projects including underground club records with tracks on renowned producer William Orbit’s label, [Guerrilla Records]. This led to further collaboration and songs on William Orbits’ “Strange Cargo” series of ambient albums.
At the same time her own band Baby Fox began making a name for themselves with two singles of the week in the NME and a couple highly rated albums in a genre that became labelled as trip hop. Christine also co-wrote “Ray of Light” and performed the song with William Orbit at the Astoria and Phoenix Festival before Madonna used it and on her “Ray of Light” album.
Originated in the 1990s in the uk. The term first appeared in the press in June 1994 by Andy Pemberton writing at the time for the magazine “Mixmag”. It is a fusion of Hip Hop and Electronica incorporating a number of styles, it can be highly experimental, dubby, jazzy, spoken word, bizarre noises, slow beats that give the listener the impression they are on a musical trip. Often featuring melancholic vocals, more often female than male with old school scratching, slow heavy drum sounds, swathes of ambient sounds and manipulated samples.
As a 30 year old experimental genre it’s tentacles have now stretched across a vast swathe of the world’s musical landscape but remaining at it’s heart pumps recognisable elements of hip hop, female vocals, down beat tempos, scratching, ambience.
Most notable Trip Hop (or post trip hop) bands include Massive Attack, Portishead, Baby Fox, Morcheeba, Lamb, Sneaker Pimps to name a few.
Nicholas Chamberlain Hunt - guitar, bass, keys, percussion, trumpet, vocals
Christine Ann Leach - vocals, guitar, percussion
Gavin Hans Jack - drums, percussion
Arthur Presser - bass, keys
Tommy Owen - scratching, percussion
Lawrence Henderson - bass
Michael Levison - bass
Steve Wellington - guitars
Alan McGuire - saxophones
Dan Spanner - saxophones, flute
Rob Mason - harmonica
Dwight Clarke - spoken word
Yannick Aellen - vocals
Angus MacCrae - production
Orel Mayor - keys, guitar, vocals
Tom Burton - guitar, vocals, keys
Una Murphy - flute
Ze Zook - spoken word
Gavin Alexander - spoken word
Gokce Sahbaz - flute
Andrew Stock - rapper
John Staples - vocals, guitar
Ingrid Malone - keys, vocals, percussion
Rich Wright - keys
Nina Perry - keys, vocals
Sophie Nicholas - vocals, percussion
Kristina Bieganski - vocals, percussion
Alex Forster - vocals, violin
Fred Azamar - guitar
Jack Boughton - bass