The Horrors Find Fans in Trent Reznor and Damon Albarn

Posted on Oct 28th 2009 4:00PM by Mike Ayers
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Everyone likes to be liked and in that regard, it's been a good few years for the Horrors. When Nine Inch Nails announced their whirlwind retirement tour this past summer, Trent Reznor hand-picked the British band to open his New York City shows, an honor that completely surprised them.

"Trent was tweeting somewhere in L.A., and we're like 'Wow, amazing,'" Horrors bassist Rhys Webb tells Spinner. "[Reznor is] someone who, as an artist, is really passionate about music, obviously about his band, and has a passionate audience. But you can understand that he has a similar passion about other artists and music."

"The shows themselves were kind of surreal," adds vocalist Faris Badwan. "For us, a venue like [New York's] Terminal 5 is huge, but for NIN it's tiny. It's maybe a tenth of the size they could play."

"If anyone you kind of respect in that way asks you to come and play with them, or expresses an interest or a love of your music, it's just a really cool thing," Webb says. "So that's kind of how it started."

Indeed, these sorts of things seem to keep happening to the Horrors. In a similar instance, they were asked to play All Tomorrows Parties in the UK by former curator Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame. That led to a friendship where Barrow, whose often cited as a founder of the '90s trip-hop movement, wanted to produce their second record, 'Primary Colours.'

"It was one of the last shows we did for [in support of debut album] 'Strange House,'" Webb recalls. "That was the first night we met Geoff. A lot of people say, 'The Horrors and Portishead, it's a strange mixture,' but for us it makes perfect sense. All of their references and their sounds and the way they attack music is similar to the way we do, even if it sounds very different as an end result. We knew that Geoff was someone that would take risks, experiment, try out new ideas, try things that shouldn't work, and that's kind of how we like to write."

Next up, the Horrors are working with Damon Albarn and will appear on the next Gorillaz album. Albarn has already produced their new single, 'Whole New Way,' which was released on Sept. 29 via iTunes and doesn't appear on 'Primary Colours.' For a band known for its dark image, the future is definitely bright for the Horrors.