album-cover

Justin Myles Holmes

VOWEL SOUNDS

Vowel Sounds is the debut album-length offering from Justin Myles Holmes.

Recorded in Nashville with a hand-picked ensemble of award-winning bluegrass session musicians, it packs a hard-driving acoustic feel along with the wind instruments and varied singing techniques that have made Holmes' live shows a draw at cryptography events around the world.

The album was released September 9 using Revealer, a tool made by Holmes and other bluegrass musicians and fans to release music using Threshold Network.

Now that the album is revealed, it is also available on legacy centralized platforms:

"Justin Holmes’ new record, Vowel Sounds, feels like a Trans-Atlantic space journey into its very own aural world. With a virtuosic Bluegrass sound bed, Holmes weaves lyrical subjects of planet respect, ancient vocal pedagogy, and freedom beautifully and still remains playful in all its complexity. The description of vocal overtone solos explained and then employed is nothing short of fascinating. "......" After listen-through, Vowel Sounds leaves you wanting to already hear a follow-up project from this creative and mystical human!"
-Vickie Vaughn, winner, IBMA bassist of the year 2023
"... "Finding a path for musicians to get paid directly by publishing on the net has been a dream of the Internet Archive and the vision of the Decentralized Web community, and now This is exciting; glad we could help in a small way." ..."
- Brewster Kahle, founder, archive.org
"... "Vowel Sounds is a masterful weaving of If you like bluegrass or folk music, then this album is great listening on that basis alone.. but it's also a great way to learn more about cryptography." ..."
-Kevin Owocki, co-founder, Gitcoin and host, Green Pill Podcast
What captivated me initially about Justin's work was his "... ..." As a longtime aficionado of Nashville country and Texas country music, I found his incorporation of bluegrass elements to be an enlightening experience. But it's the album's commitment to challenging industry norms and advocating for artistic freedom that has imbued my involvement with an even deeper sense of purpose.
Ashley Reynolds, Threshold Blog
"... "From chain gang to blockchain, by Justin Holmes' innovative new album, Vowel Sounds." ..."
- Plez Jay, Gypsy Farm Network

Ensemble

Justin Holmes

Guitar, Vocals, Overtone Singing,
Tin Whistle, Wood Flute, Melodica

Jake Stargel

Upright Bass

Cory Walker

5-string Banjo

Christian Ward

Fiddle

Harry Clark

Mandolin (dan)

Jakub Vysoky

Mandolin (kyū)

Allen Cooke

Dobro

Luna Lavender at Stargel Studios.
Thumbnail for IMG_9789.jp
Justin Holmes and Jake Stargel looking over a take of Barlow's Jig at the Stargel Studios console.

Track List

Music and by Justin Holmes.
A policeman and a fortune teller
both left their posts at `or(hell, high_water)`
cuz neither of them were who they'd set out to be
You can lie about the mail; you can lie about the money
but a little bit of math will always find the funny business
trust comes from the earth like the banyan tree
Hold on and be brave
I know you see that comin' wave
The water is dear if we want to live
and the fire in our hearts is ours to give
the earth makes nodes out of some of its stone
and they carry good news through the air back home
I push-to-talk with my right ring finger
and fly back home with my left wing lingering
never knowing who will walk through my front door
With a cup and a string, I can say anything
to a shadowban trap like a mouse with a spring
and that's how we arrive at our credit score
Hold on and be brave
I know you see that comin' wave
The water is dear if we want to live
and the fire in our hearts is ours to give
the earth makes nodes out of some of its stone
and they carry good news through the air back home
A policeman and a fortune teller
both left their posts at `or(hell, high_water)`
cuz neither of them were who they'd set out to be
You can lie about the mail; you can lie about the money
but a little bit of math will always find the funny business
trust comes from the earth like the banyan tree

Music by Justin Holmes.
Featuring a wooden double flute made by an indigenous artisan in Rapid City, in the Black Hills.
May this piece serve as a reminder that our indigenous neighbors are not a historical aside, but a living modern people with insights and practices which are vital to the future of humanity.

Music and by Justin Holmes.
The sands had to move; there was power underneath.
The sugar and the flour took away our teeth.
The bag was watered down because the ATM was leaking.
There's never enough oil when every wheel is squeaking.
And the missiles propagate the database's state;
the empire rolls on by keeping spreadsheets up to date
and the planet pays the fiat interest rate.
Accordions are useful when you're hunting in the fields.
Announce your presence loudly and save your swords and shields.
Wake up with a memory of a story you were told,
and watch the plot and storyline auspiciously unfold.
And the missiles propagate the database's state;
the empire rolls on by keeping spreadsheets up to date
and the planet pays the fiat interest rate.
We did not ask the governor to help us find a block,
but he blamed us for his hastening of battleships and clocks.
The next time that you hear that your node is pouring smoke,
find the banker's dagger in the royal assassin's cloak.
And the missiles propagate the database's state;
the empire rolls on by keeping spreadsheets up to date
and the planet pays the fiat interest rate.
The sands will have to move; there is power underneath.
The path already trodden is all we can bequeath.

Based on "The Place I'll Return to, Someday" from Final Fantasy IX, by Nobuo Uematsu.

Commentary by Justin Holmes. Music is a single-take improvisation from the entire ensemble.

Music and lyrics by Justin Holmes.
A morning song sung to Fibonacci since he was a week old.
Featuring Fibonacci Emery Holmes in his vocal debut.

Music and lyrics by Justin Holmes.

Music and lyrics by Justin Holmes.

Music by Justin Holmes.

Excerpts from "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", by John Perry Barlow, read by Luna Lavender.

Melody inspired by an improvisation with Marty Reisinger in New Paltz, NY. Reisinger was offered writing credit and declined.
Justin and the boys on-stage at EthDenver.
Skyler Golden gets Justin's pedal boards dialed in for the recording session.
Fibonacci looks over a take at the console.

Questions of Varying Frequency

What's the difference between a duck?

One leg is both the same.

Why release this record using blockchain tech instead of the orthodox industry method?

Making music un-free hasn't made musicians un-poor. So we're carving out a way to release free, IP-unencumbered music - which is after all the core of traditional music - and reward fans who choose to pay for it.

So how did it work?

After mastering, the record and cover art were encrypted and made available for download via IPFS and bittorrent - you know, those tools that deal economic ruin to musicians.

The Revealer contract was then configured to facilitate decyrption of the record after 10ETH had been contributed (more on that below).

Now released, the record is in the public domain, free to download and use under a creative commons license.

What is Revealer exactly?

Revealer is a decentralized application that allows you to reveal a secret to the world via a commit-and-reveal scheme.

It is built on top of Threshold Network., and a few of the contributors to Revealer are also long-time contributors to Threshold.

At the cryptological layer, there's nothing about Revealer that is specific to the arts. However, when it became obvious that conditionally revealing a committed-to secret was possible because of advances at Threshold, it seemed that Creative Commons-licensed art was the first obvious use case.

It's fairly simple: using Threshold Access Control, a symmetric key is encrypted. A smart contract is deployed such that a boolean flag is flipped to true once a 'threshold' of contributions are made. The nodes on the Threshold Network watch for the flipping of this flag, and only then participate in their typical multi-party computation to reveal the symmetric key.

At that moment, whatever the artist has encrypted with that key (in this case, a bluegrass record) becomes public.

What is an Artifact?

Revealer Artifacts are ERC-721 tokens that are minted after contributions are closed, and awarded to everyone who contributed. They are serialized, with lower numbers going to higher contributors (ie, top contributor gets #1, then #2, etc). We plan to mint them on Gnosis chain for Revealer 1, within a few weeks of the reveal.

Everyone who contributed above the 0.1eth minimum will receive an Artifact, sent to the address from which they contributed.

The top 10 contributors will have their Artifact bound to one of the paintings by Nashville artist Sophie Clark.

Part of the medium-term vision of Threshold Network is to use NFTs to unlock access to content, and these Artifacts are intended to be used for that purpose.

So does that mean there are no royalties for Revealer projects?

Certainly we hope for the concept of royalties to evolve beyond what it has become.

We want the moment of listening to music to be free, permissionless, and unencumbered by industry interests.

On the other hand, for Revealer 1 (this project - the Vowel Sounds record), we imagine Artifact royalties as follows:

This way, Artifacts can still be backed up on hardware wallets, bought and sold in open markets, etc., but the artist will still receive some of the market value of any transaction of the Artifact (the long-term value of which will presumably be driven in part by the artist's commitment to Artifact hodlers).

That's all fine, but what if I release my record on Revealer, and then once Revealed, I (or anyone) puts it on a streaming platform - can I get paid?

The short answer is "yes", but the long answer is that we need to do some research to understand how to license this. Hopefully our friends at archive.org or the EFF can help.

Artifact Leaderboard

Everyone who contributed above the 0.1eth minimum will receive an Artifact, sent to the address from which they contributed.

The top 10 contributors will have their Artifact bound to one of the paintings by Nashville artist Sophie Clark.

#ArtBidAddress
11.3 ETHrjpartingtoniii.eth
21.11 ETH0x7dae08563b85de04FB48Ac211184718F259458A1
31 ETH0x6b1231134930FCe469f019ea23907eBa289f8eED
41 ETHkvbik.eth
51 ETHmaclane.eth
60.69 ETHpurplegrass.eth
70.61 ETHlunarbytes.eth
80.43 ETHkubic71.eth
90.4 ETHcryptograss.eth
100.39 ETHmrsnu.eth
110.35 ETHcurvefi.eth
120.3 ETH0x7480efC6Bcb92bB0fc902c93111A030D0A8949eE
130.2 ETHsem-the-bee.eth
140.1242069 ETHbordel.eth
150.11 ETHkarmaticacid.eth
160.10101 ETHbeemeeupnow.eth
170.1 ETHktlxv.eth
180.1 ETH12x35.eth
190.1 ETH0x8FBCa7800D1B820176b0696A22bce5E50C5c9A71
200.1 ETHtheperegrine.eth
210.1 ETHskylar.eth
220.1 ETHcryptograss.eth
230.1 ETHchrishobcroft.eth
240.1 ETH0x0001288c0eAeD7E9Cd3D727ABD3a1b95a91eA9AD
250.1 ETH0x7dae08563b85de04FB48Ac211184718F259458A1
260.1 ETH0x68FDe8FFd34966b8AefA61fF14d7a5685253C7D2
270.1 ETHcryptograss.eth
280.1 ETHrjpartingtoniii.eth
290.1 ETHcryptograss.eth