Photos provided by Gavin Pine
Story by Emma Burden
Is Horse Saturday a one-hit wonder? Neigh.
Popularized by word of mouth and stickers plastered around MTSU’s campus, “Horse Saturday” is a full-length EP and field recording compilation created by childhood friends and bandmates Gavin Pine, Noah Harrison and Jake Schantz. Pine is a music business student at MTSU, and Schantz will attend MTSU this spring.
Pine, who doesn’t necessarily consider himself a musician, explained that the idea to create a field recording album was “a running joke” between himself and his bandmates.
“There’s a whole community online of people that make their own field recordings. But, in terms of that community, it’s definitely an older crowd, a much more mature crowd,” Pine said. “They’re not approaching it with irony. No one making field recordings like ‘Horse Saturday’ are treating it with an Internet-Gen Z approach. “
A field recording album consists of sound recorded outdoors, typically as a form of documentary, and is a hobby inclined toward older individuals. “Horse Saturday” takes an avant-garde approach to this genre. The three college students took a trip to Retirement Home for Horses at Milcreek Farm in Alachua, Florida, and completed an entire album rollout for the collection of recordings.
To add to the novelty, “Horse Saturday” was created in a single day.
“If we were going to do this horse noise field recording project, we should do it all in one day,” Pine said. “We woke up early the next morning, went to the grocery store to buy carrots, apples and bananas, then we hit the farm. We rushed back and started putting it together and we had the whole thing released that night — we even had CDs and posters for it.”
Horse Saturday the band was supposed to form and break up all in one day. However, after the success of “Horse Saturday” the EP, the band decided to move forward.
“We might continue the series and do a field recordings project for every day of the week,” Pine said. “We’re brainstorming what new animals we could do.”
Pine envisions “Horse Saturday” as the first in a series of seven field recordings. The future of Horse Saturday, beyond their seven album series, is still up in the air. The band is open to recording sequels, such as “Horse Saturday 2.” As well, they’re considering recording prequel albums or side projects.
“I won’t say too much, but we’ve been in talks about potentially recording the next album at a zoo or a farm,” Pine said. “Instead of just doing one animal, it could potentially be different animal noises for every song.”
The modest success of “Horse Saturday” is rare for a field recording. What started as a fun project and running joke between three friends led to over 1,000 views of the EP on YouTube and wide-reaching promotion, garnering almost 3,000 followers combined on the Instagram accounts of the band members. Bands such as Xiu Xiu, Panchiko, Sniper2004 and Palomino Blond have all supported Horse Saturday.
Silly, over the top comments under the release of the “Horse Saturday” EP on YouTube sing its praises. User @tiktokmalek shared that “Horse Saturday is ‘a legendary debut… unlike anything I’ve ever heard,’ and user @defaultpfp said they ‘Played this at Ichiban over the speakers and every table got up and saluted for the entire 11 minute duration. Breathtaking.’
“I don’t think that there is another field recordings project that has ever been so appreciated by Gen Z before,” Pine said.
“Horse Saturday” is streaming on YouTube.
Emma Burden is a Reporter for MTSU Sidelines.
To contact the Lifestyles Editor, email lifestyles@mtsusidelines.com.
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