This album has been in and out of my headphones since it got released back at the end of June. It was particularly helpful as I spent the month of July away from $work as I was wrote up the last chunk of my dissertation. Maybe there was something about listening to music that was created with a research question in mind :)

Built with the aim of offering a sonic resource for comfort and calming, composer Danny Clay and The Living Earth Show (percussionist Andy Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews) created Music for Hard Times: an eight movement work crafted using a series of composed “calming exercises,” recorded independently in their homes using instruments, voices, field recordings, and found objects. The work is built to be listened to on a continuous loop if desired–that is, the eighth movement segues back into the first so that the listener has agency over the length of their own listening experience. Music for Hard Times is a work of experimental music in the truest sense, in that it was created to answer a fundamental research question: “is it possible for us to use the tools of classical art music to make people feel better?”