The winter storm in Texas has been absolutely devastating in a way that I nor anyone in my family has ever seen. Now through February 21st, all sales from my Bandcamp catalogue will go to Austin Street Center’s inclement weather fund, which is working to provide food and shelter for Dallas’ homeless population at an incomparably dangerous time for the city’s most vulnerable people.
www.austinstreet.org/about/our-story/
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Adam Holmes reflects on our collective transformation toward involuntary stasis in Music for a Small Shelter. Where the composer-performer’s 2019 ambient and experimental Compartments explored the compactness of small instruments bundled into a gig-friendly backpack, Music for a Small Shelter follows up from a zoomed-out – and very 2020 – perspective: our small apartments and studio rooms are the compartments, where we wait with a unique sense of isolation and patience until our next chance to unpack.
Recorded by the upstart New York City string ensemble Desdemona (with the composer joining on dulcimer and percussion) at a masked and distanced session at producer Mike Tierney’s Shiny Things Studio, the spaciously ebbing and flowing sounds within Music for a Small Shelter is optimistic in spite of involuntary stasis, drawing out a sense of calmness and beauty in the face of so much anxiety.
credits
released February 5, 2021
Performed by Adam Holmes and Desdemona: Adam Holmes, dulcimer [1], percussion [3]; Adrianne Munden-Dixon, violin [1,3]; Carrie Frey, viola [2,3]; Julia Henderson [2,3], cello
Composed by Adam Holmes
Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Mike Tierney
Album photography by Pat Swoboda
Adam Cuthbert & Daniel Rhode, slashsound executive producers
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