EPK – Aaron Holt – Set Free Your Sorrow (single) (2020)
Publicist – Jon Asher- asher[@]ashermediarelations[.]com
For fans of Dream Theater, Tremonti, Rush, Avenged Sevenfold, Porcupine Tree
Single Title: Set Free Your Sorrow (3:54)
Release Date: December 18, 2020
Label: Self-Release
Distribution: Distrokid
Facebook.com/aaronholtmusic | Instagram.com/aaronholtartist
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Single Title: Set Free Your Sorrow (3:54)
Release Date: December 18, 2020
Label: Self-Release
Distribution: Distrokid
Single Credits:
• All songs performed by: Aaron Holt, Sujit Kumar, TJ Maistros
• All songs written by: Aaron Holt, Sujit Kumar
• Produced by: Aaron Holt
• Mixed by: Aaron Holt
• Mastered by: Aaron Holt
• Album Artwork by: Sujit Kumar
Album Band Line Up:
Sujit Kumar, Vocals
Aaron Holt, Guitar/bass
TJ Maistros, Drums
Aaron Holt’s musical journey started on the George Mason University campus where he was asked to play bass guitar for a local church’s grand opening. It was there that he met drummer and percussionist TJ Maistros who would grow to become a lifelong friend and amazing collaborative partner.
The album My Burdened Mind was a very long and labored writing, recording, and mixing project that ended up taking way longer than originally estimated to create the finished product at 47:36 minutes. The long story short is that the album My Burdened Mind was another grand learning experience for Aaron as a producer especially in terms of recording source material that was worthy of being shared with the world.
After the album’s release, vocalist Eric confirmed he would no longer participate in the project and would not want to participate in any live shows. Short of a bassist and vocalist Aaron and TJ anxiously sat on the release and hoped that anyone would listen. Enter album 3, the endeavor where Aaron is truly making every effort to improve upon everything he didn’t quite get right before.
He signed on the incredible help of local vocalist Sujit Kumar who in his own right stands on pretty high shoulders in the local DC music scene as well as making a name for himself across the globe. Sujit agreed to meet and record a few demo tracks, one older song that Eric originally recorded and another new song that would eventually go on to be the single “Set Free Your Sorrow” for a full-length album.
Fast forward to 2020 and Aaron with the immense help of TJ and Sujit has completed a 3rd album clocking in at 58 minutes with 10 songs. The production is solid, all instruments hold their own, and everyone listening has great smiles on their faces with absolute relief that everything has come together so well and polished compared to older works. The new album “In The Palace” features a lot of emotional baggage associated with past relationships, differences in opinion among close friends, thoughts on dealing with incredibly stressful daily life, and also a bit of fantasy writing as well in the longest prog ballad written by the group to date. You can expect to hear a large mix of guitar-oriented music such as straight-ahead rock, classic metal riffs, and intricate progressive lines that flow through each section seamlessly.
Live Band Line Up:
Sujit Kumar, Vocals
Aaron Holt, Guitar
TJ Maistros, Drums
Discography:
2018 – My Burdened Mind
2017 – The Unknown
Fun Facts / Story Angles
1. Probably the most important fun fact involves the title of the album, for the 3 years or so we worked on this when I (Aaron Holt) lived out near Winchester, Virginia, which was a long drive away from anyone and anything. Our new vocalist Sujit hates driving, so I often drove the 1+ hour drive to his apartment. We quickly discovered our shared love of cooking and started to share lots of recipes. Sometimes I wondered if I was there to work on music, or just look through his kitchen and talk about cooking. On his Facebook page though, he has a location created for his home called “The Palace of Markujitsu”, which is a weird spelling of his name. I scratched my head for some time about the album title and didn’t really have any great ideas except a song title or lyric excerpt. I read a few articles online about naming albums and one great suggestion maybe I had overlooked, was to name it after where it was recorded. Like for instance Beatles and Abbey road, classic in a great sense. So, we went with it, “In The Palace” seemed like a great fit for the title since so much of it was in fact recorded at Sujit’s place.
2. Much the case with the first album I (Aaron Holt) recorded, all the gear I recorded the guitar with has since been sold and replaced with other gear. There is an element of knowing how certain pickups have been good for me in recordings past, but I swapped quite a few pickups through, guitar speaker choices, string gauges. Whatever I recorded with felt right at that moment but has since evolved further since then. I watch some youtube videos where they try to recreate the classic sound of an album, but ultimately I feel that pain after recording my own music and not even being able to play that same gear set up the same way. I went completely overboard on getting a whole midi rack system working with pedal switching and amp switching that was all perfectly coordinated, and you can hear it all on the album. Come time to play live, or jam everything is much simpler where I can step on pedals I need, and just switch between amp channels that give me all my tones. I determined I had some core parts to my sound, and others I really just didn’t need. In most cases, less is sometimes more.
3. I (Aaron Holt) suppose many bands do this, but many of the original vocal demos are recorded by me, which don’t really sound that great. I never thought my voice sounded that good for the style of music we’re trying to create. But Sujit is very kind of it all, and takes my demos and just does them total justice. I couldn’t ask for more, but somewhere buried deep in my hard drives I suppose there’s a file of me singing set free your sorrow with my horribly strained tenor vocal range.
4. Most of the lead vocals were recorded in Sujit’s entryway closet with tons of sound panels conveniently also stored in the closet for when we were done tracking. We used a full-on condenser mic which would pick up anything, but it was near studio levels of silence except for when an ambulance drove down the street but those were good excuses to check the food or get something else to drink.
5. Drummer TJ Maistros likes to spend most of his time practicing fills that are pretty unconventional, it’s been almost hilarious to watch him try to recreate some of the things Mike Mangini has started to incorporate like his true stereo drum kit. TJ is taking bits and pieces of this into account for new material that we’re writing.
6. All drums for “In The Palace” were recorded in 3 days at Aaron Holt’s brother-in-laws’ extra-large garage. We tracked everything on my mac mini with 22 microphones.
7. In my daily life I’ve started to not really even listen to a ton of metal music, mostly pop and blues rock type stuff which all have super catchy melody lines, which in some ways I think help keep me grounded on what the general American public so to speak enjoys hearing.
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