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1.
What Is Freedom? 00:36
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2.
Heart-Shaped Box 05:36
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3.
Bullet With Butterfly Wings 04:50
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4.
The Needle And The Damage Done 04:58
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5.
Killing In The Name 05:07
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6.
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free 04:05
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about

HOW IT FEELS is a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist Rhea Fowler (Canasta), singer/sound artist Micaela Tobin (White Boy Scream), and drummer Adam Starkopf. The album of five song covers was originally presented as a limited edition tape for their September 2022 European tour, and the trio is excited to now share the project with a broader audience. Combining their operatic, classical, and improvisatory musical backgrounds with their love for rock, noise and metal, the group creates a sound all their own. How It Feels offers reconstructed classics by Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Neil Young, Rage Against the Machine, and Nina Simone.

“What is freedom, and how does it feel?” asks the album of its listeners, weaving together songs that address ensnaring forces like love, addiction, and police brutality. Tobin and Fowler’s previous collaboration, the 2020 White Boy Scream album BAKUNAWA, was named the #9 album of the year by The Wire magazine, and praised for the way they “wield their voice and instruments as both tools and weapons.” Tristan Bath of The Quietus described BAKUNAWA as “a dense web of mish-mashed traditions; it’s a reclamation of a western classical practice, an interleaving of Filipino mythology, a post-industrial blast of noise, and a heartfelt burst of energy.” Steve Smith of The New Yorker suggested that “opera would do well to pay attention.”

Fowler and Tobin also had the honor of contributing a piece for solo violin and electronics, titled “A City Upon a Hill?” to Johnny Gandelsman’s album This is America: an Anthology 2020-2021, as commissioned by The Philharmonic Society of Orange County. Inspired by the events at the US capitol on January 6, 2021, “A City Upon a Hill?” is an “experimental operetta” (Pitchfork); a “bitter annihilation of an American hymn” (The Strad), full of “chaos [that] leaves a sadness difficult to swallow.” (Gramophone)

credits

released October 13, 2023

Micaela Tobin: Vocals, Electronics
Rhea Fowler: Violin, Viola, Bass
Adam Starkopf: Drums

String & MIDI arrangements by Rhea Fowler

The spoken excerpts are from an interview with Nina Simone, and a conversation between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni.

Produced by Samur Khouja
Engineered & Mixed by Cameron Acosta
Mastered by Dory Bavarsky
Recorded at Seahorse Sound in Los Angeles, CA

Album art by Micaela Tobin and Garek Druss

license

all rights reserved

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about

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Rhea Fowler Los Angeles, California

Rhea Fowler is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and teacher based in Los Angeles.

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