Horse plus Donkey

Horse + Donkey’s music is as stubborn a hybrid as the offspring of their namesake. Drawing from psychedelic gloom, fevered surf rock riffs, shades of shoegaze, and dark-core drones, H+D craft intensely heavy yet invigorating waves of distortion to sound like Echo and the Bunnymen trudging the Velvet Underground alongside Sonic Youth. It’s an appropriately elusive comparison, but simply put, Horse + Donkey is what the Black Angels should aspire to approach – more energy, more complexity and more fun. Horse + Donkey are playing two shows this week. You can catch them either at the Mohawk on Friday night with Ghost of the Russian Empire and Bayta Darrell or at Trophy’s on Saturday with Fairchild. Of course, if you’re really daring, you can attempt to survive both. - Austin Sound

Horse + Donkey's debut meets the imagery of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky at the crossroads of shadowy figures and lysergic imagery, the soundtrack to a prism-hued trip. At 15 songs, Horse + Donkey deftly delivers a companion to the local trio's live shows, which are all about dynamics. Guitarist Jaime Zuverza and bassist Oliver Valdez rarely play in tandem; instead, Valdez keeps a galloping, shape-shifting bassline going under Zuverza's staccato axe work, while drummer Luis Martinez fills in just outside the lines, creating a textured drone that slithers and bucks. On opener "At a Station," strum becomes a heatstroked surge of guitar as Zuverza offers this Mancunian bit: "Draw a circle in the dark air; spiral staircase grows a white hair. You were looking for a little pleasure, but it was already measured." The lyrical fodder of Horse + Donkey is obtuse, and it's often hard to understand what Zuverza's singing about under the reverb. The music, however, is hypnotic, jerky, moody. "Riddle," with its paranoid skitter of rhythm, and the clumsy, gripping momentum of "Indian" demonstrate the group's muscle, closer "Big End" bringing the drone back around with Krautrock precision. There's more Manchester in the opening chords of "Dead Dog" and "Amorous Mare," but as with the balance of Horse + Donkey, it's filtered in an appropriately possessed manner.

***.5 - Austin Chronicle