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Amanda Palmer and Jherek Bischoff have teamed up to release Strung Out in Heaven - a beautiful orchestral tribute album to David Bowie, featuring the likes of Anna Calvi, Neil Gaiman and more. Check it out below.
The EP features Calvi singing and playing guitar on on a cover of the title track from Bowie's incredible final album Blackstar), as well as writer/director John Cameron Mitchell on 'Heroes'), and Palmer's husband, the author Neil Gaiman on the classic 'Space Oddity'.
The album is available for pre-order and donations on Bandcamp, with $1 of each going to Bowie's publishers while the rest goes to cancer charities.
Listen to the EP below
"We found out he'd died - by text from Neil's daughter - at 3 a.m. in Santa Fe. We were visiting family, to introduce them to the newborn lying in bed beside us," says Palmer in a statemtn. "A tiny fleshy reminder that Bowie, like our other friends, mentors and heroes who've been consumed by cancer in the past few months, was just...passing through. The baby is Ash. Dust to dust. Funk to Funky.
"Music is the binding agent of our mundane lives. It cements the moments in which we wash the dishes, type the resumes, go to the funerals, have the babies. The stronger the agent, the tougher the memory, and Bowie was NASA-grade epoxy to a sprawling span of freaked-out kids over three generations. He bonded us to our weird selves. We can be us. He said. Just for one day.
"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."
Anna Calvi added:
AAmanda Palmer and I have recorded a duet of David Bowie's song 'Blackstar'. David Bowie's music meant so much to me, as...
Posted by Anna Calvi on Friday, 5 February 2016
Meanwhile, this week also saw details of Bowie's will, fortune and funeral revealed - amid reports that he planned more music to be released before his death.
