Hunter as a Horse speaks about automatic writing, Jungian individuation and the loss of innocence

Transmission 358: Interview with Hunter as a Horse

Hunter As a Horse is the project of Mia van Wyk, a South African musician and vocalist based in the Western Cape. Working across alternative, indie, electronic and dream-pop with incursions into nu-goth and alternative dance, her production is darkly cinematic and her lyrical territory covers death, addiction, astral visions, CPTSD and magical thinking, drawn from a life shaped by synchronicity, dissociative trauma and a process of Jungian shadow integration she underwent in recent years.

Title: Paradise Lost
Artist: Hunter As a Horse
Release Date: 2026-04-10
Genres: Darkwave, Dream Pop, Electronica, Industrial Music
Label: Metropolis Records
Description: Hunter As a Horse's Mia van Wyk on Paradise Lost, Metropolis Records, Jungian shadow work, CPTSD and dark pop.

She grew up on a farm in South Africa, spending formative time with her Sesotho nanny’s family and their folk traditions, encounters that have remained a persistent undercurrent in her writing. Signed to Metropolis Records in early 2026, HAAH has released three singles on the label; the latest, Paradise Lost,was released on 10 April 2026. Van Wyk describes it as a song about accepting the loss of innocence and surrendering to fearless self-expression, directed entirely by the shadow self.

What were some of your earliest musical influences before making music yourself?

Nirvana, Seal, Counting Crows and Radiohead were probably my earliest musical influences before I started making music myself.

You grew up in South Africa and are still based in the Western Cape. How much does that place feed into the sound and mood of Hunter As a Horse?

It feeds quite a bit into my earlier music, especially the more spiritual side of it. I grew up on a farm and spent a lot of time with my African Sesotho nanny and her family. Sometimes I’d even stay over at her shack. We’d sit around the fire with her children and grandchildren, and learned a lot of Sesotho folk tales and beliefs. In my song Visions, which later became The Drums, I sing about sound travelling further under a full moon, which is something I learned from them. I also met a sangoma when I was very young, and I still remember being inside the hut while she threw the feathers and bones, and being told not to look her in the eyes because it was disrespectful. That world felt very magical to me, so those beliefs, experiences and the physical environment definitely found their way into my music.

Where does the name Hunter As a Horse come from?

Just like a lot of my earlier lyrics, which feels like automatic writing, the name was the same. It just came to me instinctively and I never really questioned it.

The song argues that being broken gives you a particular authority. Is that something you arrived at through experience, or through writing the song itself?

I wouldn’t say I feel like I have any kind of authority, although I do think there’s a kind of power that can come from surviving trauma. I think the extent of the trauma you overcome is often proportional to the strength you gain from surviving it. People who’ve gone through severe trauma can end up seeing the world very differently. It’s a psychological process that can either destroy you or make you very strong. So in a way, it really is that old saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Your lyrics draw on death, addiction, astral visions, CPTSD and magical thinking. How do you know when an experience is ready to become a song?

The way I write is very on the spot and fully expressive. I don’t really plan songs or decide beforehand what I’m going to put into them. Whatever comes out in that moment is what the song becomes. I hardly ever spend more than five or ten minutes on the initial idea, and even that initial idea doesn’t feel devised by me. It feels automatic, like it arrives on its own.

The Hunter As a Horse sound moves across alternative, electronic, dream-pop and nu-goth. Do you think in terms of genre when you write, or does the emotion decide the sound?

No, I never planned the genre. Obviously, I have a certain taste and I love darker music and those kinds of genres, so it naturally falls into that world quite often, but it’s never intentional. Like with the previous question, it’s all very much self-expression in the moment. I don’t plan it, and I think that’s why I have so many different kinds of songs. I don’t really like to pigeonhole myself.

Does the broader political and social reality of South Africa enter your work consciously, or does it operate more as background pressure?

Definitely more operating in the background. I don’t really write about politics directly.

You describe your life as strange and synchronicitous. Can you give an example of a synchronicity that directly became a song?

I don’t know if I’ve directly put synchronicities into my songs, but the energy of those experiences definitely influences what I write. I’ve had a lot of very strange coincidences and connections in my life. When I was around six years old, I was shown two dead children separately at a funeral parlour. The first time, the woman who adopted me took me to see the body of a little boy we knew who had died in an accident. I still remember them rolling the fridge drawer open and seeing him there. The old lady who worked at the funeral parlour was the one who took us through. The second time, for reasons I still don’t understand, that same old lady took me to see another dead child. Then years later, when I was 17, my brother died trying to save a man who had been badly beaten and left lying in the street. People around him told my brother to leave him there, but he refused and tried to drive him to the hospital. On the way there, my brother crashed and died, but the man survived. When I went to see my brother’s body, the same old lady from the funeral parlour took me through again. And later I found out that the man my brother had tried to save was actually her grandson. So I’ve experienced a lot of strange synchronicities like that in my life.

CPTSD is still a difficult subject to put into public work. What made you willing to go there so directly?

I’m an artist, so I can’t keep things out of my art if I feel they need to be expressed. It’s not really a conscious decision. A true artist makes art from what happened to them. If you asked someone like Frida Kahlo the same question, she’d probably find it strange, because her art was deeply connected to her trauma too. I think real artists are almost forced from the inside to express these things. For me, it feels involuntary. I don’t really have a choice. I have to express what happened to me.

“Lighthouse” draws on Carl Jung and shadow work. What drew you to those ideas?

I come from a very disturbing childhood, and for a long time I wasn’t fully aware of the extent of what had happened to me. Some of the trauma I remembered, but a lot of it I dissociated from because I was so young and helpless at the time. Over the past few years, dissociative memories started coming back, and I began a personal investigation into my past. A lot of very disturbing truths came out. Then last year, the most disturbing truth of all surfaced, and something shifted psychologically. I felt healed afterwards. I felt lighter, almost like my trauma filter had fallen away. At the time I didn’t understand what had happened to me, so afterwards I started researching individuation and shadow work, and I realised I had gone through something very similar to what Carl Jung describes.

Your work often feels suspended between beauty and decay, romance and death. Do you see your music as escape, confrontation, or transformation?

I’d say it falls more into confrontation and transformation than escape.

Your music and imagery often carry a very cinematic quality. Are there particular films, writers or visual artists that shaped your imagination?

My work is very linked to Stephen King and the worlds in his books and films, and also horror movies from the ’80s and ’90s. I feel very inspired by the atmosphere of those films, especially the settings and the overall mood they create. Those are definitely big influence points for me creatively and aesthetically.

A lot of your work feels deeply personal, but also mythic and symbolic at the same time. Do you consciously build symbolism into your songs, or does it emerge naturally while writing?

A lot of the symbolism comes from real spiritual experiences I’ve had in my own life, so naturally I write about those things. But I also do a lot of automatic writing, and sometimes the symbolism that comes through doesn’t even feel like it’s coming from my conscious mind. Some of it also comes from dreams and lucid dreams. I would sometimes fall asleep and then wake up in what felt like a different state entirely. Those dreams felt very different from ordinary dreams, and I received a lot of symbols, messages and signs in them. I also nearly drowned in the sea when I was five and had an out-of-body experience where I saw myself from above, so I’ve had a lot of strange experiences throughout my life. All of that naturally weaves itself into the music when I write.

Your music can feel both intensely vulnerable and strangely powerful at the same time. Do you think vulnerability itself can become a form of strength?

On my latest album, after I individuated, I realised there’s a lot of strength in vulnerability. I’ve accepted the structure of my mind and my own inner architecture, which is a result of what happened to me and how I was raised. What I went through was dark, severe and disturbing, but the final form of who I became is something I’m content with. I feel enriched by it in a strange way. I think a lot of people would find the way I think disturbing simply because they don’t understand it, and there’s no real way to understand it unless you’ve experienced something similar yourself. But there is definitely power inside that vulnerability, even if it’s difficult to explain.

Astral visions appear in your lyrics as genuine source material. What are they for you exactly, and how do you translate something that non-verbal into language and sound?

As I said before, everything comes out on its own as pure self-expression, so I never really have to think about how to translate those experiences into music. They just naturally make their way into the songs. I call them astral visions because I don’t really have another way of describing them. I can’t call them lucid dreams because I can’t control them the way you can in a lucid dream. It’s more that I would fall asleep and instead of having a normal dream, I would kind of wake up in the astral and things would happen there and symbols would be shown to me. Different dreams carried different symbols and experiences. I don’t fully have the language to explain exactly what these experiences are because I don’t really have a reference point for them. I’ve never heard anybody describe them in exactly the same way. But I do know people who’ve experienced the astral, and those people will know exactly what I’m talking about because it feels like an actual place.

Your production has been described as darkly cinematic. Are there specific films or directors whose visual language you consciously translate into sound?

We’ve been heavily influenced by films and film scores for years; films by David Lynch, Blade Runner, Drive, The Crow, Beyond the Black Rainbow to name a few. Also heavily influenced by scores by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Clint Mansell and Cliff Martinez.

Melancholia is a word with a long history, from Aristotle through to Walter Benjamin. Is that tradition something you consciously draw on, or is it simply the most accurate word for something personal?

I don’t draw on it consciously. It’s just something that naturally came through because I’ve experienced so much sadness.

What is coming next for Hunter As a Horse, and is there something you have not yet found a way to bring into the music?

I have no idea what’s coming next for Hunter As a Horse. I’ll just continue expressing myself.

Photos courtesy of Hunter As a Horse

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others