Born in Brisbane almost a decade ago, Caligula’s Horse is the brainchild of frontman Jim Grey and lead guitarist Sam Vallen.
Determined to change the face of progressive rock in Australia, Grey and Vallen set themselves the monumental task of recording and releasing their debut album Moments from Ephemeral City as a duo, with Grey on vocals and Vallen taking charge of the songwriting, guitars, production, audio engineering, mixing and mastering. “I’ve always taken on many roles within the band,” Vallen says.
Now a five-piece and with four studio albums under their belt, Caligula’s Horse are critically-acclaimed and have become nationally and internationally known. They’ve shared the stage with luminaries of the rock world including Opeth, Mastodon, Twelve Foot Ninja, Protest the Hero, and The Dillinger Escape Plan.
To celebrate, they’re currently on a tour of the east coast before heading over to Europe for the end of summer festival season. If you think Caligula’s Horse ever do anything by halves – think again. For their final Australian show of the year, Vallen and their hand-picked guest, James Norbert Ivanyi, have something special planned. “Myself and Ivanyi will be doing some guitar master classes.”
Classes will run for 70 minutes and offer a rare insight into their respective creative processes, ending with a no-holds-barred Q&A session. “It ties in with the different show we’ve planned,” he says.
“As part of the tour we’ll be playing our latest album In Contact in its entirety as well as a most-requested setlist from fans. We thought, ‘Why not make it into something as novel as we possibly can?’ We wanted to make these shows a little more special.
“We’ve never really explored the idea of doing a setlist that catered to an experience like this prior to the release of this album,” Vallen says. “But the idea behind In Contact was about creating an overriding narrative that you can sit down and listen to from start to finish, and take yourself on a little bit of a journey with us.
“Also the fact that we’ve been touring non-stop for the last five years, I think we’ve built enough goodwill to get away with doing something like this. It’s an incredibly physically demanding album to play through. It’s 65 minutes long and has some highly-involved and complicated tracks. We are super pumped to have this experience because the setlist is crazy,” he laughs.
As well as having multi-instrumentalist James Norbert Ivanyi along for the ride, good mates OPUS OF A MACHINE will make an appearance. “We’re forever linked to this band,” Vallen says. “Their guitarist, Zac Greensill was our second guitarist for the first three-quarters of our career. He joined us earlier on and most of the band are friends with him as well.
“They’re about to release an incredible album [Stray Fire, out now] which I had the pleasure of being the mixing engineer on,” Vallen says. “It’s a fantastic release and it’s a step-up from their last record which was pretty damn good in its own right,” he says. “It made perfect sense for us to say, ‘Hey, if you guys want the platform we’d love to take you on the road.’ They make great music and of course while on tour you’re in very close quarters so with them it’ll be a lot more cordial and relaxed. It’s an absolute pleasure to have them with us.”
Finally, to coincide with their last Australian show for 2018, Caligula’s Horse will release 2011’s Moments from Ephemeral City and The Tide, the Thief & River’s End (2013) on vinyl. “I have to admit, being an audio engineer I’m not hugely sentimental of the vinyl format except to say that there’s something very special about holding a record in your hand with the full-scale artwork and taking the time to put a piece of music on a turntable. It creates a very special connection to the music and that’s what we love. It doesn’t feel like we’ve come full circle but I like the thought that we’ve gone back to where it all started for us.”
