Sixteen Horsepower: Folklore

• Label Jetset
• Year 2002

If you are unfamiliar with the album Folklore and Sixteen Horsepower the band that unearthed it, we need to remedy that.

One of the purposes of the Kickass section is to expose music that for whatever reason has been overlooked, under-appreciated and/or lacked the exposure that it rightly deserves.

Nearing its 10 year anniversary, I look back at this album and it's sort of astonishing that it's only 9 years old. The album has a timeless quality to it.

The Sixteen Horsepower sound does not feel like something they themselves have created, rather something they tapped into and channel.

A sound which has existed since sound itself. And someone in tune with it has been able to open our ears to hear it, it comes with a familiarity, an experience of being human. Much in the same way that children play in dirt.

Weaving intricately through this sound are carefully crafted words, at times very abstract, others blatantly pointed that divide light from dark, failure from grace.

The overall weight of the sound in this album is very heavy. As when a person has lost everything dear to them, melancholy sets in, sinking six feet under ground, yet from the core of the spirit something forcefully rises up and grabs on to hope with fearless desperation and wreck-less abandon for acknowledgment and deliverance.

Sixteen Horsepower Folklore, pick it up. If it's up your alley, keep it going by getting Sackcloth and Ashes, if you're into that too, well, you'll own all of their albums in no time and move on to David Eugene Edward's progression of Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand.