Artist Profile: Gus Englehorn
Gus Englehorn, a Homer, Alaska-born indie artist, fuses a unique blend of post-rock, singer-songwriter, and acoustic skeletons into a Frankenstein’s monster of narrative bliss, combing the inner reaches of his consciousness for a simultaneously intense and light-hearted cavalry of subject matter.
As a child in Alaska, he grew up surrounded by his father’s record collection that, among many others, included myriad selections from Bob Dylan, The Clash, and Patti Smith. This gaggle of songwriters embedded themselves into his consciousness, and, later, artists such as David Bowie helped to form his personal music taste through his adolescence.
Gus, in the fashion-depleted North, always stuck out from the crowd; through high school, he dressed in full glam rock attire, contrasting against the drab winter clothes of his classmates.
Moreover, the alternative path he chose to take continued well into his early adulthood. An avid skateboarder and snowboarder, Gus’s professional life began as a world-touring snowboarder, helping him to develop a nomadic lifestyle and a portion of the transience that carries over into his current creative output.
While he continued snowboarding professionally into his late 20s, a brutal injury early on in his career led him toward music; he filled the empty space in his life with a sort of obsessive pursuit of creative expression.
“I couldn't snowboard or skateboard for nine months, and that was my whole life at that point. That's when I really started writing songs; I couldn’t do anything else. I was gonna go crazy if I didn’t pour my obsessiveness into something.”
When his snowboarding career ended, Gus’s creative itch returned, and he began working on his songwriting skills for hours on end each day, looking to polish his craft and ultimately produce an output he could be satisfied with.
At first, he experimented with multiple styles, but, ultimately, he found that a minimalist approach to his instrumentation best allowed his vivid storytelling to take the forefront.
“I was messing around with a lot of multi-tracking, synthesizers, and stuff like that. Obviously, people get great results doing that, but I was never getting anywhere. As soon as I really stripped down the process and simplified it, that's when I started making stuff that I was stoked on. [That was] the first obstacle, just trying to learn how to write things”
This style is best exemplified on his first project, Death & Transfiguration, which, in hindsight, showcases perfectly the early stages of his continual pursuit of musical ethereality.
On his last two projects, Dungeon Master and The Hornbook, Gus has continued to become more adventurous in his instrumentation, working toward a broader sound injected with a series of bare-bones, Americana-rooted motifs.
Yet, on his newest project, which he is in the process of recording, Gus says that he feels the most comfortable he ever has regarding both his creative chops and his studio presence. The project is being produced by the renowned Paul Leary of The Butthole Surfers, and, combined with the continued development of Gus’s ability to execute his unique musical intentions, it seems that it will be a special mark in his discography.
Stil, Gus remains exceedingly humbled by the breadth of the outlet that music has given him; in the course of such a drastic life transition, he has also embarked on a journey toward self-realization; music has given a new path as well as fresh avenues through which to perceive the world around him.