We were Captain Horizon, an alternative rock band from Birmingham, and in ten years we never settled what kind of band we were. When the second album came out we gave it a go: “We’re not a metal band, or an indie band, or a rock band. I don’t think we’re a punk band either.” Harry Paterson at Nottingham Live heard “alt, prog, classic rock, indie and unashamedly glorious pop”, which is about as close as anyone got.
Josh and Alex started the band in 2008, after the intricacy of Incubus, Tool and Porcupine Tree and the swagger of AC/DC, Pearl Jam and U2. Whitty came in on vocals and Mez on drums (left-handed, to the dismay of sound engineers everywhere). We began as ursaDomine and changed the name to captainHorizon, all one word, at Christmas 2008.
Reviewers mostly wrote about Whitty, who climbed whatever was nearest. That meant the bar, the PA stacks at Kilburn that turned out not to be strapped down, and by the end of “Climbing the Waterfall” anything he could get up in four and a half minutes. At the Kerrang! Radio Vintage Arts Fair in Dale End somebody handed him a radio mic, and he did much of the set running round the square, part of it on a stranger’s skateboard. “I’ve never signed so many shoes and bellies in my life,” he said afterwards.
He was no different in the studio. Recording our first EP at Vale Studios in Evesham, the engineer told him the vocal on “Poker” needed more bollocks, so he took his trousers off for the next take. By the New Disorder Festival in 2011 the trouser problem had passed to Alex, who turned up in a union jack pair. Whitty ruled that they only worked without a shirt, so Alex raised his Guinness to a crowd that mostly didn’t know us. In his words: “Luckily, they went mental.”
After that we recorded ourselves, in our own lockup. We hung two duvets from the roof to stop the drums bouncing around and went for pub lunches between takes. Josh mixed for days in a windowless room with carpet on the walls, among piles of Coke cans and Tesco sandwich packets, on a computer that thought every start-up was midnight on 1 January 2007. We couldn’t afford a van either, so every gig began with loading the cars.
Some songs wouldn’t behave. “Ex Deus” was left off the first album because it ends with our attempt to show the death of God and the collapse of the universe through a drum solo and maniacal laughter, and nothing could follow it. It turned up on the bonus edition in 2014. The Imitation Sun B-sides have a hidden cat purr, if you want to listen for it.
The Lights of Distorted Science came out in December 2012 and Powerplay gave it 9/10. On Remembrance Day 2013 we released “Patch”, our song for Harry Patch, the last British soldier to have fought in the trenches, with the money going to the Royal British Legion. Our manager Alan Savill got us in front of Rocksector Records, who signed us that December and put out Imitation Sun in 2015.
In the end we played 278 shows: pub back rooms all over the Midlands, Glastonbudget three years running, Sonic Rock Solstice, Cambridge Rock Festival, a night supporting Electric Six at the O2 Academy and two summers in the villages of the Italian Apennines. The last one was at the MFN in Nottingham on 25 July 2018.
You can hear the records on Spotify and Apple Music. The gigs, videos and reviews are all on this site.
The band
- Steve “Whitty” Whittington, lead vocals
- Joshua Watson, guitars and backing vocals
- James “Mez” Merrix, drums and percussion
- Alex Thomson, bass and backing vocals
For enquiries, email management@captainhorizon.co.uk.
Peace, love and bananas.