“I think for now, I feel a kinship with fuzzy tones,” says Abigail Macilquham, the Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington-based guitarist and songwriter better known as Horn.
Across her second album, Options, Macilquham delivers a taut set of post-punk and shoegaze tracks, submerging glistening guitar figures and her husky voice in heavy riffs and a driving rhythm section. There’s a thoroughly lived-in quality to tracks like “Coketown” and “Pwcca”. You can feel the denim and leather, and late nights spent in dilapidated bars. The music is all the better for it.
Inside a popular coffee shop in Newtown, a multicultural suburb anchored by the nearby Wellington hospital, Macilquham comes across as an introvert who communicates best through music. If she doesn’t have an answer for a question, she won’t force it. There’s still a lot she’s still thinking through. “I’m always going to be one of those musicians who never truly feels like they’re a musician,” she concedes. “I’m always ready to be surprised by the wisdom of other people.”
Growing up in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Macilquham started playing guitar in her teens while attending Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery high school. “Originally, I wanted to drum,” she says. Her introduction to punk, alternative rock, and other forms of heavy music came through friends, the internet, and Sony PlayStation game soundtracks like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.
Soon enough, she was attending gigs at an all-ages venue called Zebedees. “As soon as I could play, I was involved locally,” she continues. Thinking back, Macilquham remembers watching the rise of a generation of New Zealand punk and art-rock bands, including Die! Die! Die!, The Shocking Pinks, and The Mint Chicks.
After finishing high school, she joined The River Jones, a noisy, post-punk and emo slanted four-piece who drew comparisons to Sonic Youth and Slint. In the years following the Christchurch earthquakes, they were part of a scene that congregated around the Darkroom, a small music venue in the garden city’s industrial area. At times, things felt held together by gaffer tape and glue, but there was a vibe.
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Later on, Macilquham appeared in two other bands, Fran/Bar Group and Wurld Series. Fran/Bar Group’s experimental ’90s indie homages brought them to the attention of RNZ and VICE. Wurld Series, on the other hand, hit on a vein of noisy guitar pop in the tradition of Guided By Voices, The 3Ds, and Pavement, eventually winning over Pitchfork and becoming a Rolling Stone AU/NZ favourite.
During these years, she started working behind the bar and handling show bookings at Darkroom. “When I left home and started flatting with friends, we’d dedicate our lounges to playing music and just do it,” she says. “I got so used to just being around musicians.”
In 2019, Macilquham started thinking about leading her own project as Horn.
She even recorded an EP of songs before deciding not to release them. Seven years later, she wonders if that was a mistake. “I think that because it was so easy for me to record music in Christchurch, I ended up thinking it wasn’t good,” she admits. “It was like it was too easy.”
The following year, she moved to Wellington. “It’s hard to not sound resentful, but things weren’t working out for me in Christchurch,” she says. “It surprises me, but I still struggle to have my own opinions about these things. I think I feel like I owe good energy to places, but I don’t know if that’s really it either.”
After living in the grey, concrete landscape of Christchurch’s inner city, Macilquham was stunned by how green the capital was. In May 2020, she self-released her first single as Horn, “Greedy Bitch”, before going quiet again for three years. “I didn’t intend to stop making music when I moved to Wellington,” she explains. “I didn’t expect things to be the way they’ve been.”
While she was orienting herself, she played in a punk band with friends. After connecting with bassist Rebekah Leah and drummer and synthesiser player Rohan Hill, she released Horn’s self-titled debut album through the Christchurch label Melted Ice Cream in 2023.
Last year, Macilquham cut Options in a single day with Leah, Hill and a second guitarist, William Daymond at sound engineer Warwick Donald’s warehouse studio. Planned as a vinyl release with a cheeky photo of her late grandmother as cover art, the album ultimately arrived as a digital download on Bandcamp in November 2025.
In January and early February, she embarked on a national tour. Ideally, she’d be playing with a band, smashing audiences in the face with a wall of sound.
Lately, however, she’s been performing solo with her guitar and pedals. “I realised I couldn’t really deliver on what I would have liked to,” she admits. Regardless, she’s still finding her way forward with Horn, figuring it out as she goes. “I’m just embracing the chaos,” Macilquham laughs. It’s a fitting approach for a musician who has spent a lifetime enveloping herself in fuzzy noise.
Horn’s Options is out now.
