Cameron Knowler with Adeline Hotel

Cameron Knowler hadn’t stepped foot on Yuma, AZ dirt since the incarceration of his father when he was eleven years old. CRK, a self-titled affair, finds the artist confronting darkness with an open mind, sculpting the diorama of his youth into a record brimming with medicinal soundscapes. In line with the regional ethos of composer Frantz Casseus, the minimalism of Bruce Langhorne and the genre-blurring lens of David Rawlings, this instrumental record draws on the history and geography of Knowler’s perplexing birthplace—a border town known for its eternal sunshine, lettuce production, affordable dental work and defunct territorial Pr*son that once served as a high school. Knowler carries forward the grand pictorial canon made famous by Dorothea Lange and western films such as “3:10 to Yuma” while soberly reporting on day-to-day life in the Sonoran with “Christmas in Yuma,” a zany poem recited by Jack Kilmer. Exploring various ensemble formats, the project features collaborations with a diverse cast of session aces who support Knowler’s signature guitar work: Jay Bellerose, Dylan Day, Rayna Gellert, Rich Hinman, Jordan Tice and Harrison Whitford.

In the tender, surrealist world that Dan Knishkowy has developed under the name Adeline Hotel, stories have been told through sprawling psych-rock epics, stark solo guitar performances, piano-led orchestral song cycles, and lush, jazzy compositions that felt like a genre unto themselves. Inspired by indie lifers and fellow world-builders like Jim O’Rourke and Phil Elverum, the Ruination Records co-founder has rewritten the rule book with each new project, inviting listeners to join as he discovers new channels for his singular voice. By now the sound of Adeline Hotel is equally identifiable through Knishkowy’s dextrous fingerpicking—the aural equivalent of tracing your fingers through cool sand at sunrise—as his low, whispered vocals and autumnal melodies.
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