Byron Metcalf & Jennifer Grais - They Were Here (2018)

Like the majesty and magic of America’s wild horses that informed the creation of this project, the music on this album is highly evocative and emotional – a mystical infusion of beauty and tenderness – of power and potency. The impeccable blend of Jennifer Grais’s beautiful and haunting vocals with Byron Metcalf’s renowned tribal-trance drumming and production style creates an astounding listening experience of numinous depth and sonic ecstasy. Horse as ‘Spirit Animal’ represents and mirrors the innate life-force, power, wildness, and the instinctual impulse for freedom within all of us. They Were Here takes the listener on a unique shamanic adventure – a freedom ride of soaring potential and along the way they are held gently and safely in the arms of Mother Earth.

From the opening sounds of hooves upon earth, They Were Here will quicken a bone-deep knowledge from the timeless cross-cultural caravan of ‘horse people’ you didn’t realize was dormant within you. Don’t bother with saddles. Entwine your fingers into the quicksilver mane that is They Were Here, and hold on!

Byron Metcalf and Jennifer Grais have created an unbridled sonic journey into the archetypal horse-human bond. They Were Here masterfully weaves polyrhythmic drumming, didgeridoo, and orchestral synth-scapes, with riveting, heart-rending vocal pieces that seem, all-at-once, part of the ancient past of our deep-ancestors and our present-day challenges on earth. At times blood-pumping, at other times soothing, healing, and almost lullaby-like, They Were Here is a truly windhorse-raising, trans-dimensional listening experience that will remind you that, Yes — they were here, and they and we are here now! – Frank Saizan Owen, poet