Stepping out of the shadow of his legendary father, Aaron Horn has charted a unique journey across the music industry. From collaborating with Doja Cat on the Grammy-nominated Woman, to being part of colourful pop trio Sam and the Womp, Aaron is also a keen explorer of the effects of music in a healing context…
Being the son of a music production titan like Trevor Horn you might think that Aaron Horn’s upbringing was one of early indoctrination into the art of fader-riding. As we discovered in our chat with the multifaceted artist and producer, that was not the case. Despite being banned from his father’s studio for wanting to “push all the buttons”, the beat-obsessed Aaron has gone on to have a varied career. With his band Sam and the Womp, he achieved sudden success, most notably with the head-bopping Bom Bom which topped the charts in 2012. Following his departure from that outfit, Horn co-wrote the globally successful Woman with Doja Cat, and has recently been exploring sound meditation. Music as a functional part of the therapeutic process is a massive part of Aaron’s current creative mindset, juggled with his role in jungle duo Crate Classics and his sonically diverse solo work.
1 Can you talk us through how you first got into music-making? Aaron Horn: “Well it was mainly through hip-hop. I got really into hip-hop and [its] instrumental scene in my teens. I wanted to get some turntables, but my dad didn’t think they were a ‘real’ instrument, so he forced me to learn the drums. Which was cool. When I was old enough to buy my own turntables I bought a set of Technics. That was it, I got deep into scratching and sampling and that turned into making beats. I managed to steal one of Dad’s old MPCs and I was sampling into that for a while. That was like the beginning really. I got into trip-hop and loved that sampling sound.
“Obviously, I was around music production from a super young age, with my dad being who he is. But I saw it as a bit of a nightmare. When Pro Tools came in I was around 10 and was on family holidays with Dad when he was having trouble with the early version of it. It looked like hell. I was disallowed from the studio at a young age and, yeah – I wasn’t interested in the studio at all. It looked complicated. But then once I got the turntables and I got the DJ mixer, I started to realise that the massive desks were basically DJ mixers with more detailed EQ and sends. I got a bit more into it at that point.
“I started moonlighting at Sarm Studios a bit, I’d get in there late at night to listen to some of the beats I was making. I’d try to record things in my downtime. When I first started making beats, Trevor didn’t want anything to do with them; he thought they were terrible! They probably were quite bad, to be fair. I guess thin
