Jon Mckiel – Gold Horatio

PLEASE NOTE: this is a pre-order offer. Any orders containing Gold Horatio will ship on or before September 11, 2026

May I deliver, upon the witness of these reverent words, this marvel to you?

Let me speak to the yet unknowing, of how the music of New Brunswick’s Jon Mckiel has been shining unique truths and grounding musical portents for the better part of two decades. With Gold Horatio, you are bound to hear things wondrous strange. Across ten tracks, folk and pop forms are skewed with warm reel-to-reel recordings, vintage electronics, dub logic and revisionist grooves. Flights of angels, time out of joint— when the language of the mind is free to sing with great lucidity.

Gold Horatio is Mckiel’s third album produced in close collaboration with avant composer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist Jay Crocker (JOYFULTALK). The pair’s two previous efforts opened Mckiel’s songworld to a much broader audience: 2020’s Bobby Joe Hope was dubbed “an unlikely masterpiece” by Aquarium Drunkard and 2024’s Hex was praised as “unexpectedly beautiful” by Pitchfork. In these dark times, there will also be singing. Listen closely and you might/should hear the true and bruised poetry of Gold Horatio finding its way amidst the digital wilding.

Part of what makes Gold Horatio evidence of an artist realizing all of his gifts is the untouchable wordsense. His ability to combine ideas and incise existentially is at a career high. Over the course of the album an iconography reveals itself–specific words are revisited and, ultimately, reimagined in a kind of dream logic, allowing the songs to hold multiple, simultaneous realities. For instance, on the stealthy album opener ‘For Shadow’, he sings: “Hard look owner / keeper of the clover / puts a pinch of pure medicine / deep in the salt of us.” Then later, over another lilting bass groove on ‘Wrong Heaven’, a slight return: “Me in my own way / stay alive in the old way / my four leaf clover / the heartbeat does know its owner.” If these words feel slippery here, divorced from their musical context, that’s by design. The tones and melodies of Gold Horatio hang together with the words, creating meaning, allowing its fable to unfold.

The musical elements of Gold Horatio are supremely dialed-in, due in part to a change in circumstance. For the first time in their working relationship, McKiel and Crocker were able to collaborate in close proximity. In the fall of 2025, Crocker relocated from Nova Scotia to the marshland of Sackville, New Brunswick, about 30km from Mckiel’s home in Baie-Verte, just up the coast. Over the course of the following winter, the two were able to spend extended time in each other’s home studios, refining their process. Leaving behind the self-sampling and long distance edits of their previous albums, Gold Horatio is exquisitely alive and dynamic. Mckiel’s searing guitar lines on ‘Rosemary’ are unforgettable. His crisp drum breaks on the blissful ‘Pass Life’ sound timeless. The pressurized drum programming of album closer ‘Conduit’ seems to writhe with energy. The two have a sympathetic response, tapped in as a rhythm section (sometimes simply drums and bass) or creating new pockets to dwell in comfortably. Throughout the album, the two conjure uncanny production while seamlessly weaving subtle backing melodies, opening new dimensions within the songs. One can’t help but think that, in Crocker, Mckiel has found his Joe Boyd, his Eno, his Timbaland.

Gold Horatio is the sound of a friendship and musical connection. It’s slowly perfecting and celebrating a shared vocabulary in music and life, while letting things mellow. Living the song, against the new bizarre horizon.