Holmes, Tyler

***“Nightmare In Paradise” by Tyler Holmes was written in the wake of a violent trauma that Holmes and tour mates experienced on their last night in Puerto Rico at the end of an otherwise blissful tour. Holmes stayed behind with longtime collaborator and friend San Cha to care for their injured bandmate, taking shifts sleeping on a hospital floor and staying with friends in downtown San Juan. Upon returning stateside, Holmes experienced intense PTSD, bouts of agoraphobia, and extreme ongoing stomach pain. The symptoms drove them to composition as a survival tool and means to process extreme dark thoughts, anxieties and emotions. Initially the project began as acoustic guitar demos sounding like Hole’s MTV Unplugged performance remixed by Tricky, the songs eventually morphed into the electro-acoustic aquarium that the album contains now. Despite the album’s violent and chaotic conceptual underpinnings, “Nightmare In Paradise” is the culmination of many years of toil, struggle, scrapping and re-editing, crying and singing, ultimately rebirthing the most complex and nuanced musical offering yet from Bay Area artist Tyler Holmes. “Nightmare In Paradise” is Holmes’ most refined and deliberate distillation of concept and composition working in a complicated and refined harmony. Through even more delicate and nuanced vocal presentation across the twelve songs, beds of layered acoustic guitar, minimal electronics, cello and woodwinds, Holmes has refined their hybridization of Electronic / Folk / R&B and Modern Black Classical music to a feverish crescendo on “Nightmare In Paradise”.