Dresden Dolls frontwoman and solo artist Amanda Palmer has teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Jherek Bischoff on Strung Out In Heaven: A David Bowie String Quartet Tribute. The six-track covers EP also features British guitar player/vocalist Anna Calvi, writer/director John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Palmer's husband, author Neil Gaiman.
Strung Out In Heaven was crowdfunded by 7,000 of the cabaret punk singer's Patreon supporters, Flavorwire reports. The EP, which is officially being released Feb. 5, will be sold for $1 on Bandcamp.
Fifty-four cents of every dollar will go to Bowie's publishers for the use of the songs, while the remaining proceeds from the first month of sales will be donated to the Tufts Medical Center cancer research wing in memory of the Thin White Duke.
Each of the six tracks comes with an original work of art inspired by the song. The visual contributions from various artists including Cassandra Long, David Mack, Sarah Beetson, Felix Marques, HA-HA and Bill Sienkiewicz, come from three different continents.
The flash tribute EP comes less than a month after Bowie's death, and plans to record it came almost immediately after the news reached Palmer. It came together so quickly that it was recorded all over the place: Bischoff mixed and mastered the whole thing at home in Los Angeles; Calvi recorded in London; Mitchell recorded on his iPhone in his New York apartment; Palmer recorded while visiting family in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The singer/songwriter said in a statement to Pitchfork: "The next day I was on the phone to Jherek, discussing another project and I was feeling a bit trapped in the non-productive new-mother cave, so we joked that we should do a flash Bowie tribute. And suddenly, we weren't joking. I had funding from my 7,000 fans on Patreon to 'make stuff.' What better 'stuff'? We started that night, giving ourselves a deadline of two weeks to release it as a surprise. I emailed a bunch of visual artist friends that night."
Palmer added: "Bowie worked on music up to the end to give us a parting gift. So this is how we, as musicians, mourn: keeping Bowie constantly in our ears and brains," Pitchfork reports.
Stream the EP and check out the tracklist below:
01. Blackstar feat. Anna Calvi
02. Space Oddity feat. Neil Gaiman
03. Ashes to Ashes
04. Heroes feat. John Cameron Mitchell
05. Helden (Single Version) feat. John Cameron Mitchell
6. Jherek Bischoff: "Life on Mars?" [Instrumental]
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