Silmica - Jeff's bio.

jeff horton - guitar

Jeff has studied guitar and music in general for 20 years. His varied stage and studio experiences with both original and cover bands (as well as being both leader and sideman of various projects) have left him with a disdain for the bar scene and its beer raising prerequisite- the cover song. Jeff’s free spirit for improvisatory music and original musical concepts has held Silmica dear to his heart since its formation in 1987.

Ideally, he sees the world of Silmica’s music as a free territory for exploration, improvisation and Avant-Garde. His style as a guitarist only exemplifies this. His use of effects, either as textural enhancers or as pure electronic music generators, combined with standard and mechanically assisted approaches to the guitar creates otherworldly and atypical sounds which are not common ground. He shuns the normal guitarist’s bag of tricks, pulling them out only to ground the free space of a solo or to counter what the other members of Silmica may be doing that is “out there.” He has truly devoted himself to the art of making constructive and destructive music.

As previously mentioned, electronics play a big part in the sound that Jeff creates in Silmica. His love of vintage and new technologies combined with elaborately constructed electronic modifications help to mold not only Jeff’s, but Silmica's sound as a whole. Jeff’s use of multiple amplifiers (sometimes as many as four at once!) helps to define his sound. Not that he’s running them all at once (he could) or playing at mind numbing volumes (he has) - indeed, the tonal palette available must be as wide as Jeff’s mind to allow the sounds within to be born.

Seeing and hearing Jeff in action both on stage and on record leaves many listeners wondering where the true boundaries between player and soloist really are. While Jeff is NOT a shred-style player (he actually eschews that style), he may pull out a blistering solo or an ultra fast metal type riff once in a while. One might ask, “Why are so many guitarists NOT playing like this?” A question that Jeff chooses to answer with this simple reply, “I play what’s in my head and try to create textures and concepts, rather than solos. There is a lot of space in Silmica, so we all have a lot of room to create.”

Whether it’s the sound of angry chickens or evil space robots, Jeff will continue to stretch the boundaries of electric guitar for the 21^st century…