Collaboration in isolation. The idea doesn't necessarily make sense at first but their shared sense of isolation brought Brooklyn's The Adventures of The Silver Spaceman (TAOTSS) and Pittsburgh's Nic Lawless together for a unique split single.
Both artists chose to cover songs named "Isolation" (naturally) but their "Isolation" of choice are unique. On one side you get Nic Lawless covering John Lennon together with TAOTSS' Zach Ellis on drums, guitar, piano and Lazer Kid Kotowitch on bass. On the other side it's TAOTSS covering Joy Division with Lawless on drums and backing vocals and Kotowitch on trumpet.
The band's bio reads: "The three met in a yurt on the property of a collective art house in a tiny town in the southwest of Colorado called Paonia. Nic and Lazer were there starting what became a project called Crush while Zach was doing a temporary work trade nearby. The concept for the Isolation single was thought up by Nic and Josh Barnes last summer when coping with the solitude of living in a yurt in the middle of nowhere finding solace only in the depths of Lennon's Plastic Ono Band."
Nic Lawless' cover of Lennon's "Isolation" is calming and serene, a beautiful lo-fi song that captures the dust of wide open land as reverberating vocals pick up to a howl and the band plunk forward into a garage surge of classic rock jangle. On the flip side, TAOTSS' version of Joy Division's "Isolation" is ragged and propulsive from the start with a tight progression accented with skronky trumpet and Ellis' jittery yelps. The trio are locked into the madness and they sell it with perfection.