#Lonnie Holley Just Before Music

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Audio: Lonnie Holley Teams Up with Michael Stipe on Atmospheric Meditation "Oh Me, Oh My"

New Audio: Lonnie Holley Teams Up with Michael Stipe on Atmospheric Meditation "Oh Me, Oh My" @lonnieholley @jagjaguwar @StipeMichael @remhq @pitchperfectpr @jacknifelee

  Lonnie Holley is an acclaimed, Birmingham, AL-born and-based multi-disciplinary artist, art educator and musician. Holley has had a profoundly difficult life, which has been well-documented: He was taken away from his family as a child by a burlesque dancer, who ultimately left him in the care of the proprietors of a whiskey house on the state fairgrounds. He then lived in several foster…

[possibilistfanfiction]

your latest rebloghad me snickering i never have understood the obsession with her. anything youve been listening to lately that you rec for someone looking for something new?

ok before anyone comes for me lmfao i do want to say that i generally find her music mostly fine, sometimes good, occasionally a song will make me absolutely feral for no discernible reason lol. i think she's an eco-terrorist basically but like... her music is fine & ppl being normal fans is... normal lol

what is BEYOND to me is when ppl will literally like... post abt her like she's their friend, or defend her music when like sometimes artists u like make mediocre shit! that's fine! lol like i have two lorde tattoos & i do think overall as a project solar power is beautiful & cool but was it earth-shattering like pure heroine or melodrama? no! which is fine! i don't need it to be! i also have no idea what lorde is doing day to day lol

also i will say i love pop. i love being a fan of pop. i think the world runs on pop music & it should! i named my dog after charli xcx! not everything i listen to (or consume in general) aligns with my personal politic of a free palestine & a free world! my ultimate weakness is drag race! so the level of insanity surrounding taylor swift (& beyonce tbh) by (at least in my community) gay white men (or gay men trying to perform whiteness / gain proximity to it) is just... bonkers! i could go on about this forever but i will not lol. [if u like podcasts tho, a bit fruity did an ep on the political power of taylor swift which is quite interesting. their episode becoming a woman with miss benny also talks abt gayness, femininity, & pop (in an illuminating way!!) -- check them out if u want!!]

ANYWAY SORRY. some stuff i'm currently loving:

tierra whack's new album whack world. super funky, smart, heartfelt, she's the weirdest in the game & we are all better for it

BRAT ERA BABEY aka charli xcx's new singles. my favorite is club classics atm but B2b & von dutch (& the remix w/ addison rae) are summer bops. can't wait to be drunk on the beach listening to them

constantly going back to ethel cain's preacher's daughter, especially when i'm in nature w/ char. it's one of my favorite albums of all time; so fucking beautiful. hymns.

as the world's no1 bangerz apologist, & bc of jojo siwa being absolutely delulu & kind of iconic lately, i've been returning to 2013 miley for a laugh, & bc that album is so good. feels rly sad now? idk. her cover of jolene ate so hard no one will ever come close, sry

random but a cover of breezeblocks by taylor rae

honestly also whatever i loved II MOST WANTED lmao. it's gay. the only reason ppl are saying it's not is bc beyonce is on the track. it's gay i will die on this hill

lastly listening to a lot of lonnie holley

[theam-cjsw]

The AM: February 6 and 20, 2023

Looks like I was so excited about taking Feb. 13 off that I completely neglected to post the Feb. 6 episode. Here’s streaming links for today and the 6th — double your listening for a holiday Monday.

Feb. 6: An 8:30 Throwback to a transitionary period for Sly Stone, in an episode that spans from Sly's subdued grooves to New Order ar the poppiest, classic shoegaze, dreamy omnichords from Lael Neale, Twilight Zone and Night of the Living Dead-sampling electronics, and other offbeat easy listening for the first Monday of February.

Listen on Soundcloud

Stream on CJSW

Feb. 20: A mid-episode throwback to Tony Allen inspires an extended jazz and afrobeat interlude in the show's second hour—consider it a warm-blooded antidote to the frozen landscape on this Family Day morning. Beyond that, it's your usual AM mix of ambient sounds, off-kilter pop, and occasionally explosive shoegaze, all calibrated to wake you up properly on a holiday Monday.

Listen on Soundcloud

Stream on CJSW

Other streaming links

Ongoing Spotify playlist

Playlists:

Feb 6:

Chrysalis Golden Brown • Weird Choices

Slowly Coming Together Jilk • Welcome Lies

Vibration Consensus Reality (for Spectral Multiband Resonator) Eluvium • (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality

Space Jam Eve Parker Finley • Chrysalia

Polaris Yutaka Hirasaka • Single

Free and Easy Wandering FOONYAP • Single

Slavar Fågelle • Den svenska vreden

A New Season Atari Umma • DiverseCity

Learn to Be Cool Conic Rose • Heller Tag

ghul wihtikow • ᒌ​ᐸ​+

I Remember Julee Cruise • Floating into the Night

I Am The River Lael Neale • Star Eaters Delight

You Do It Marlene Ribeiro • Toquei no Sol

Poke the Bear Stelar Door • Masquerade

Just Like a Baby Sly Stone • I’m Just Like You: Sly’s Stone Flower 1969-70

Stanga Little Sister • I’m Just Like You: Sly’s Stone Flower 1969-70

The Greatest Smile SAULT • Today & Tomorrow

The Sound Where My Head Was Badge Époque Ensemble • Self Help

Showking Mong Tong • Indies 印

Cloud Boat Masahiro Takahashi • Humid Sun

Katamaran Les Big Byrd • Eternal Light Brigade

Sooner Than You Think New Order • Low-Life

Hard Eyes Uncanny Valley • Fevering Stare

Hunted Pale Saints • In Ribbons

When It Comes Dana Gavanski • Single

Stopp, Seisku Aeg! Velly Joonas • Single

Failing Pozi • Smiling Pools

High Tide, Storm Rising Skinshape • Nostalgia

to you kkidss • apple sauce

Sapanta Blue Shirley & The Pyramids • Maid of Time

Feb 20:

Softly Brushed by Wind Early Fern, featuring Joseph Shabason • Perpetual Care

Butterfly Sneezes Aagtive • Butterfly Sneezes EP

Bicycle Ballet Gilroy Mere • Gilden Gate

Computer Break (Late Mix) Khotin • Release Spirit

Root Howiewonder • Movements

Before We Don’t Have Time Afternoon Bike Ride • Glossover

Walking in the Rain Romare • Fantasy

Loving on the Moon R McCarthy • Dick Arkive: Issue 1

Her Purse Falls and Everything Scatters Applesauce Tears • Artifacts

Fall Apart Ashi Shonen • Divergence

Remind U Flying Lotus • Flamagra

Heimatort L CON • The Isolator

Way We Are Ben Marc • Glass Effect

Seventh String Makaya McCraven • In These Times

Ursa Major Phil Ranelin, Wendell Harrison, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Adrian Younge • Phil Ranelin and Wendell Harrison JID016

Starry Nights Adrian Quesada • Jaguar Sound

To the Moon King Canyon • King Canyon

Elastic Band Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band • Banned

Secret Agent Tony Allen • Secret Agent

Alutere Tony Allen • Secret Agent

Spoons Afel Bocoum, Damon Albarn, Toumani Diabaté • Mali Music

Staggered Minotaurs • Higher Power

Oh Me, Oh My Lonnie Holley, featuring Michael Stipe • Oh Me Oh My

Koto (Glimpse) Laraaji • Segue to Infinity

Diamond Violence Marker Starling • Diamond Violence

Sound and Vision Helado Negro • Modern Love

Dor Fodida Sessa • Estrela Acesa

Sylvia Arthur Verocai • Arthur Verocai

Vancouver 3 Mac DeMarco • Five Easy Hot Dogs

Warmest One Beach Towels • Single

good - Water From Your Eyes Remix Winter, featuring SASAMI • Single

For What Sunglaciers • Foreign Bodies

Distance Dealer Fly Pan Am • C'est ça

Thieves Flywheel • You've Seen a Lot

Rice Young Fathers • Heavy Heavy

[gingerradiohour]

Ginger Radio Hour #056

Show Notes January 16, 2024

Listen to archived episode.

Theme: Improvisational creativity.

Musician and artist Lonnie Holley has devoted his life to improvisational creativity. And his newest album, "Oh Me Oh My," is testament to that vision. Our conversation focused on his art, music, teaching, and Mother Universe.

Lonnie Holley Playlist:

“Oh Me Oh My” Album: Oh Me Oh My 2023

“Sometimes I Wanna Dance” Album: MITH 2018

“Six Space Shuttles and 144,000 Elephants” Album: Keeping A Record Of It 2013

"Here I Stand Knocking at Your Door” Album: Just Before Music 2012

“I Can't Hush” Album: Oh Me Oh My 2023

“None Of Us Have But A Little While” Album: Oh Me Oh My 2023

“Future Children” Album: Oh Me Oh My 2023

[Image credit: Ethan Payne]

[mywifeleftme]

242: Lonnie Holley // Oh Me Oh My

Oh Me Oh My Lonnie Holley 2023, Jagjaguwar (Bandcamp)

I’ll open with the caveat that I’m only passingly familiar with Lonnie Holley’s biography and past sculptural and musical work (though friend of the blog Jack C. says Holley’s debut LP Just Before Music has moved him to tears), so I’m missing some context that might help make what is obviously a deeply-felt project stick with me more than it has to date. But I can’t escape the sensation that Oh Me Oh My will not age well.

The septuagenarian Holley alternates between an untrained but powerful gospel wail and talk-singing, which gives the music an outsider-tinged extemporaneous quality. His lyrics deal with heavy subject matter, from his destitute and abusive upbringing in Jim Crow-era Alabama to the loss of friends and family with age. Despite this, he evinces an intense commitment to living, and at its best Oh Me Oh My glimmers with the same strange joy I find in the work of a Howard Finster or an Alfred Wallis. Producer and principal instrumentalist Jackknife Lee has made his bones making the least interesting records by legacy bands (R.E.M., U2) and bands that sound like the least interesting records by those legacy bands (Snow Patrol, Editors). In what is clearly a passion project, here he turns in some perfectly cromulent beats in that chamber jazz/trip hop vein that has become the go-to mode for musical elder statesmen who want to try something a bit daring.

So, what’s the issue? I think where Oh Me Oh My loses me is that these productions ultimately feel a little bit too “tasteful” for the type of guttural sorrow and rawboned uplift Holley traffics in. Whatever your opinions of gospel, soul, or folk music, they have built-in melodic conventions and decades of emotional resonance that could provide Holley’s vocals with more than these dense but somehow anodyne exercises do. I can’t help but think Jamie xx’s album-length Gil Scott-Heron remix We’re New Here was a conceptual touchstone, but xx had the wit to see how the verve and swagger of Scott-Heron’s poetry could swing with his own colourful but introverted club music. Few of the big-name guests add much either: Moor Mother’s rote spoken word poetry on “Earth Will Be There” gave me acid flashbacks of sitting through collegiate slams (where grandma’s hands come in bouquets), and Justin Vernon’s voice might as well be Chris Martin’s to me at this point.

I’m not upset to have given Holley (or his very chill label Jagjaguwar) money by buying a copy of the record, but it remains to be seen if this one grows on me at all. I think once the initial enthusiasm for this one has dissipated, it will be seen as a respectable but dated entry in his woolly artistic oeuvre.

242/365

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Leverage Models

Leverage Models started as the latest project from Shannon Fields (late of the much-missed New York collective Stars Like Fleas, and who’s also worked with everyone from Helado Negro to Rhys Chatham, JOBS to The Silent League). After 2013’s highly-praised self-titled debut on Hometapes, Fields wound up assembling a touring band that would wind up making Leverage Models’ newly-released sophomore record Whites(which, for reasons both personal and political, was made in 2015 but is being released now, partly as a fundraiser for the Southern Poverty Law Center). Joined by singer Alena Spanger (of Tiny Hazard) and all three members of the very powerful trio JOBS, among others, in their own words "Leverage Models makes pop songs about transubstantiation, ritual abuse, political apathy, divorce, white collar criminals, poverty, white liberal guilt, anxiety, & self-harm. With roto-toms." In his review, Dusted’s Ian Mathers says about Whites, "Musically, this album would be just as impressive if it had come out in early 2016, but back then maybe more people would assume the high-stakes intensity of the songs here were worrying too much. Sadly, the subsequent time has only shown again and again how appropriate that aspect of Leverage Models’ work really is." For Listed, Fields and Spanger provided a list of current inspirations and overlooked art pop.

Alena’s Current Inspirations

Life Without Buildings—"The Leanover"

The way that this singer, Sue Tompkins, approaches melody and lyric is hypnotizing to me. I love how she continues to repeat words—almost slogans—and alter their pronunciation until they seem to lose their original meanings and become more about the sound of the words. I typically wouldn't love the 90's alt rock aesthetic, but the steady, unobtrusive accompaniment provides the space needed for her vocals to live in.

Francis Bebey—"Pygmy Love Song"

I've been incessantly listening to Francis Bebey for months now. He seems to lean into the rawness and outer edges of what the voice can do. I love the way he mimics the bamboo flute with his voice on this song.

Lizzy Mercier Decloux—"No Golden Throat"

I sometimes feel like I need to shake off everything I learned from years of studying music and get to back to a more fundamental, raw approach. Lizzy is one of those untrained inspirations for me. She barely knew how to play the guitar and started singing not long before this album came out. This resulted in such adventurous, unselfconscious music. She is at once playful, unbridled, and searingly direct. She wasn't really respected in the NY scene when this record came out, and was by some seen as an imposter, reliant on her male collaborators to hoist her up. After digging deeper into her music, it's obvious that she possessed great artistic autonomy and vision and her lack of recognition was a result of unfortunate industry circumstances and sexism. The lyrics in this song are her response to the pressures that's she experienced to sing more conventionally.

Lonnie Holley—"Here I Stand Knocking at Your Door"

I saw Lonnie Holley play in NY recently and was so moved by the freedom with which he sings and the purity and untouched quality of his music. Every aspect of his performance- down to the smallest movements of his body were connected to the sound and channeling into one cohesive and beautiful statement. He is one of those rare, singular artists, who seems to make art out of everything he touches.

Brigitte Fontaine—"Moi Aussi"

She is such a badass. I love the simplicity of using just a drum as accompaniment. In this song, she's singing with her partner at the time, a French/Algerian musician, Areski Belkacem who brought some traditional folkloric sensibilities to their music. The effortless blending of theater and music is something I really strive for in my own work.

Shannon

I needed to give myself a theme so I decided to select some of what I think are overlooked vintage art-pop coming out of the post-punk 80s into the and slick new-agey, ‘world music’ appropriating 90s. I’m completely taken in by that era of experimentation and production right now, though I can’t say why. I find myself drawn most to the songs that effortlessly stumble into choices I don’t always understand. They don’t seem like they’re out to destroy any genre conventions so much as they seem blissfully ignorant of them. Certain moments shock me as to how much more relevant and contemporary the MIDI/electronic, experimental and arty music is as compared to the 60s & 70s guitar-based music that’s ruled for so long (and which has nothing at all to offer a lot of younger musicians I talk to these days). I could have easily made this list 20. This was hard.

Che—I ‎(Narcotic, 1987)

What a confusing record. Half of it is very eccentric, slightly woozy funk. With the subtlety-obliterating rhythm section of Art of Noise or later New Jack rhythms, cock-rock guitars, and these drunken almost a-melodic passages. The ending of Scream Like A Swiftcould be a codeine-fuelled pass at Jensen Sportag’s contemporary hyper-MIDI, vapor-wave smooth-jazz. Moving The Silencesounds like The Blue Nile but with the kind of ironic detachment (think Arto Lindsay & Ambitious Lovers) that leaves you creeped out and confused rather than crying in your drink. And while I’m a bit black-hearted and prefercrying in my drink, I’m also completely transfixed by this. This song, Jerusalem,just kind of takes my breath away with something entirely unfamiliar: built from slabs of goth and pure Peter-Gabriel world-cheese, it somehow alchemizes into something I have never heard. A whole album of this and I’d have it on repeat with Scott Walker’s Climate of Hunter(which also belongs on this list and is one of the best ‘confuse-core’ records ever made).

Akira Inoue—サファリ・オスティナート (Splash, 1983)

I’ve seen this song title translated as "Safari Ostinato". I know very little about this person or this album. Somebody help me. It’s the kind of album that repels and compels alternately. It gives you whiplash in the gentlest, most covert way. It’s a sort of adult contemporary, New Wave, jazz fusion MIDI album and this song is both beautiful and bonkers. The whole album is. I wonder if Dutch Uncles have heard this album. I could draw a line from here to there.

Andréa Daltro—Kiuá (Kiuá, 1988)

Released by the amazing Dutch reissue label Music From Memory. Originally released on Estudio De Invencoes in 1988. Andre Daltro was a singer and the song was, I believe, originally recorded with the band Brazilian "spiritual jazz band" Sexteto do Beco in 1980. But this version trades organicism and chops for drum machine, keys, MIDI sounds, and rattling ambient chatter, both acoustic and synthetic, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard…it rivals Arca’s new s/t album for this kind of strange, winsome cyber bel canto transmission from an alien jungle, though far less brooding, no less arresting.

Jane Siberry—Lena is a White Table (The Walking, 1987)

I knew Jane Siberry later hits and didn’t much care for them. I knew she worked with both Hector Zazou and Barney the Purple Dinosaur. I was not prepared when I first heard this album, The Walking. I believe when she was first signed the industry thought of her as the "new Kate Bush" and wanted to cash in on the mass tolerance for ‘art-rock’ a-la Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. But The Walkingis to Hounds of Loveas The Blue Nile’s Walk Across The Rooftops is to Laughing Stock’s Spirit of Eden. I love all of the above, but what Siberry and The Blue Nile share in this example is the same kind of epic freedom and reach but a sort of fragility and limitation and ramshackle, almost amateurish quality that make them really humane and relatable to me. The first time I heard this song I confess that my first thought was how much it reminded me of Alena’s old band, Tiny Hazard, who were one of my favorite bands in Brooklyn. I know it seems silly to say it, but somehow this track feels so much less ‘theatrical’ then the same era of Kate Bush…more interior. It feels like a very intimate experience to listen, to the point that I find myself feeling embarrassed for listening in.

Gary Numan—Cry, The Clock Said (Dance, 1981)

I hesitated to use one of my choices on an artist I feel like everybody knows. But I almost never meet anyone who really knows THIS album (and I know because I push it on everyone). If you only know the playful, cold cyber-punk of the first couple of Gary Numan/Tubeway Army records (which are, to be clear, brilliant, and a big influence on me) you really need to hear this album. At its most extreme corners (of which this song is one) I don’t know anything like it. Gary Numan’s great magic trick, the one I endlessly faun over, is how his disaffected, conventionally ugly, robot voice transforms into something heartbreaking and relatable by the time it reaches my heart (especially on Telekon’s piano-based tracks). I know that’s a cheesy thing to say but fuck you, I need sentiment these days. Anyway, nowhere is it more the case than in this songs arrangement. Musically, it feels entirely alien and also entirely familiar, with Japan’s Mick Karn barely there alongside what sound like Casiotone boss nova beats and the most heartbreaking little chiming synth arpeggio that come and go like a kitten that wakes up momentarily from its drug-induced nap. It’s 10 minutes long. I’ve had it on loop for hours without getting tired of it. I’ve wanted to make something like this for a long time now. Some day I’ll have this kind of restraint.

#11 Bonus Track!

Né Ladeiras—Cruz (Corsária, 1988)

I also know next to nothing about this Brazilian album, dedicated to Greta Garbo. I read that it was produced and arranged by Luís Cília ,who wrote a song that became a sort of second anthem for the Portuguese Communist Party. The MIDI harps sitting matter-of-factly on top of those plate-reverbed guiro, clave, bells…I want to live inside the room they build. And it’s a lovely, airy progression that never grows tiresome as it modulates in a drifting-down-the-stream sort of way. The ending lifts so high with barely a shrug’s worth of effort. Gorgeous.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

December 22, 2018: a new episode of The Anatomy Lesson at 11pm EST on CFRC 101.9 FM. Music by Tatiana Heuman, Pete Swanson, Okay Vivian, Marie Davidson, Jaclyn Kendall, paleeyesmusic​, Uaxyacac, Cienfuegos + more. Tune in at 101.9 on your FM dial, stream at http://audio.cfrc.ca:8000/listen.pls or listen to the finished show on cfrc.ca or a special archive here: https://www.mixcloud.com/cameronwillis1232/the-anatomy-lesson-december-22-2018/

Tatiana Heuman - "Anesthesia" QEEI (2018) SOPHIE - "Is It Cold In The Water?" Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Inside (2018) Marie Davidson - "The Psychologist" Working Class Woman (2018) Uaxyacac - "Give Yourself" Homemade Myth (2015) Ben McCarthy - "skull like drum" Little Music (2018) IXVLF - "Golden Horde" Language Of (2016) Cienfuegos - "El Ultimo Circulo" Fallen Angel Back Tattoo (2018) Jaclyn Kendall - "Light Taps Heard Through Air" Pressure Pulses (2017) Okay Vivian - "u and ur unknown words" u and ur unknown words (2018) former_airline - "New Morality" Touched By An Angle Vol. 2 (2018) Last Days of Sex - "Disrupt" Eating from the Orchard of the Heart comp. (2018) Pete Swanson - "Do You Like Students?" Pro Style (2012) Lonnie Holley - "Here I Stand Knocking At Your Door" Just Before Music (2014)

[sinceileftyoublog]

Live Picks: 7/27

My Bloody Valentine; Image courtesy of High Road Touring

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Tonight’s for oldies but goodies. Check out our four recommendations for this beautiful Friday.

My Bloody Valentine, Riviera

The great thing about a My Bloody Valentine show is you know there won’t be any bad songs. A band that’s released 3 albums in 30 years, they have no late-career drudgery. That said, since lots of m b v (their long awaited and great Loveless followup released in 2013) had been sitting around since the mid-90s, who knows what Kevin Shields has cooked up now? In addition to playing pretty much everything you could want from their classic LPs and EPs, My Bloody Valentine have debuted a couple new tracks on this tour. The extent to which we’ll be able to decipher their quality is limited because their albums are just as much for headphones as for hearing live, plus it’s likely that most people who don’t want to puke from being rattled by distortion will be wearing earplugs.

Mavis Staples, Canal Shores

We previewed Mavis Staples’ headlining show at the Vic Theatre back in February:

“Since 2010′s stunning You Are Not Alone, Chicago legend Mavis Staples has fostered a fruitful musical relationship with another beloved Chicagoan: Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. Three out of the past four albums feature production and/or songwriting from Tweedy, and his minimalism is the perfect complement to Staples’ deep soul. Her most recent offering is If All I Was Was Black, an outward and explicit political statement. Live, Staples tends to cherry pick from her recent discography but also play Staples Singers classics and covers of The Band and Buffalo Springfield.”

This time, she headlines yet another solid Out of Space show, celebrating the Evanston venue’s 10th anniversary.

R&B/rock/soul artist Marc Broussard opens.

Animal Collective, Vic Theater

Animal Collective’s recent output has been less than stellar, so it’s welcome that they’re now touring by playing in full their beloved 2004 classic Sung Tongs, just an acoustic collaboration between members Panda Bear and Avey Tare. During the encore, they’ve also been playing tracks written and released around the same time from their Vashti Bunyan-featuring Prospect Hummer EP. This is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime live opportunity before the band releases their upcoming visual album Tangerine Reef and continues to concentrate on largely underwhelming post-Centipede Hz tracks.

Experimental visual performance artist Lonnie Holley opens.

Against Me!, Wicker Park Fest

We last caught Against Me! play Riot Fest in 2015 while still touring their mammoth 2014 record Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Since then, they’ve released Shape Shift with Me and are planning on releasing a follow-up this year. When you can hear lead singer Laura Jane Grace, the band is a live monster, ripping through her tales of coming out as a transgender woman with anger, passion, and sensitivity, as well as giving new life to older tracks. They headline Wicker Park Fest tonight.

[criminalrecordsatl]

Out today: @lonnieholleysuniverse - National Freedom (@jagjaguwar). MORE INFO: This 5-song collaboration between artist Lonnie Holley and the latevisionary producer Richard Swift is a tribute to urgent, raw, Americanart - from Howlin' Wolf to Captain Beefheart, from Cecil Taylor to BoDiddley. The songs pulse with anger, hope, energy and a bit of swagger.You can hear sweat and tears through the speaker. Swift left us two yearsago today, but his spirit buzzes through these songs.During a West Coast tour with Deerhunter in late summer 2013, Holleywas put in touch with Swift by a friend who suggested using a day offon tour to record at Swift's National Freedom Studio in Cottage Grove,Oregon. Now rather legendary, Swift was in a breakout moment as aproducer having recently worked with artists like The Shins, Foxygenand Damien Jurado. Holley's essential debut album, Just Before Music,had come out the year prior. The cosmic connection between Holleyand Swift was immediate. They put down five songs in their daytogether: all conjured in the studio and one-of-a-kind.At the end of that day in 2013, Swift - always up until the wee hours -made a late night call to the friend who had set up the session. He waseffusive about the experience - thrilled to have found a kindred spiritin Lonnie Holley and thankful to spend a day crafting unclassifiable,extemporaneous and soulful music. #lonnieholley #nationalfreedom #newmusic #vinyl (at Criminal Records Atlanta) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIqrTU6hhUR/?igshid=161zfyn5j3m2e

[supremearticle]

FAFF 2020 Celebrates Global Creativity

Hollywood, CA, Jun 4, 2020 -- In an incredibly challenging time in the history of our world, and while most of the worlds museums and galleries are closed, Venice Institute of Contemporary Art (ViCA) is proud to announced the 7th Annual Fine Arts Film Festival (FAFF), to be held June 8-14, 2020. FAFF - the world’s largest art film festival – will present 92 films from 27 countries online using the Vimeo platform. FAFF will feature profiles of renowned artists including Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, or assemblage artists Jesse Lott and Lonnie Holley and most importantly, artists forgotten and newly discovered. Whether it's Myriah Marquez, adapting to life in a van in Venice Beach, the last elderly worshipper at a 1,000 year old mosque in Saudi Arabia, or a DJ named Mekon who fled Nigeria to Lybia, and then fled to Malta to survive, these films tells stories of comedy, tragedy, famous and infamous art, music, dance, and performance world figures will be presented in this not-to-be-missed seven-day online event. Live Q&A’s with filmmakers and artists will begin soon and be broadcast during the festival. Ticketing information is available on the ViCA website. Eight curated series of films (running an average of 6 hours each) are being offered at $10 per series. A festival pass for all films will be available for just $20. The festival is dedicated to presenting the finest new films about art in the western capital of the art world – and now globally – to highlight the world art community. The films — narratives, documentaries, experimental, and hybrid genres — tell stories about how art is made, how artists survive, how they think and work, and what makes creativity our most important skill, and our best hope for mankind. “Considering the world situation, the fact that we received so many more submissions this year, and are able to select so many more films is very gratifying,” says Juri Koll, Founder and Director of ViCA, which produces the festival as part of its ongoing exhibition programs. Koll adds, “We’ve had to pivot quickly to get this online with permission from all the filmmakers. We are very proud to be screening many great and never-before-seen films from fine filmmakers from around the world - and half of them are women. We didn't set out to achieve this, it's just a wonderful new reality these past 2 Festivals. Films about art and creativity are a labor of love, and the film and art worlds have always intertwined. It's easily forgotten how much blood, sweat, and tears go into the work we do. We expect this festival will amaze audiences with intelligent, cutting edge, eloquent, passionate, and incredibly engaging films.” The FAFF 2020 Awards Ceremony will be presented online on Saturday, June 13. at 8pm PT. The Official Selections of the VR section of FAFF 2020 will be announced shortly. The VR 360 films will go online on Vimeo June 22, with awards being announced on June 27. All Official Selections of FAFF past and present will be offered a distribution deal through the ViCAFilms/Big Pieces Company partnership. “We’re excited about the opportunity to work with FAFF, ViCA Films and the filmmakers to help share their films worldwide," said Jim Quan, Head of Sales and Marketing, The Big Pieces Company. "Over the course of its seven-year run, FAFF has done a fantastic job of assembling a wonderful collection of creative art films, all compelling works of art in their own right." The first Q&A with filmmakers will be held June 4 at 11am. Details here. Sponsors past and present include Blick Art Materials, Beyond Baroque, 4 Brothers Wine Co., Flake, the Estonian American Business Alliance, and many others. About ViCA: The Venice Institute of Contemporary Art (ViCA) is an arts organization devoted to identifying, protecting and sustaining the unique stories, history and culture of one of the most important centers of American independent artistic expression. Through its exhibitions, events, research facilities, and education curriculum, ViCA celebrates the world of art internationally, and most importantly the art and culture of Venice Beach/Southern California. Our founding in 2011 marks an ongoing commitment to our community - to present the art world from the perspective of it's artists, writers, curators, collectors, and the art viewing public. Website: https://www.veniceica.org/fineartsfilmfestival SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: #FAFF2020 Twitter: @veniceica Facebook: @fineartsfilmfestival Instagram: @veniceica @fineartsfilmfestival Media Contact: Venice Institute of Contemporary Art 310-957-7037 juri@veniceica.org Read the full article

[inframince-inc]

Lonnie Holley: Dust to Digital

これまでに世界各地の貴重な発掘音源を独自の視点で紹介してきたDust to Digitalが現在進行形で活躍するアーティストをリリースしたことで話題となったLonnie Holley(ロニー・ホリー)の諸作。

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ロニー・ホリーは1950年生まれ。幼少の頃より様々な職を転々とした末に アメリカ・アラバマ州バーミングハム国際空港近郊を拠点(不法占拠?)に廃材を用いた造形作品を制作してきました。 1996年には空港から$14,000で拠点とするアトリエ兼自宅からの撤去を命じられましたが、その時に彼は自身の作品の価値はそれ以上で$250,000はある！と主張。

その後、裁判を経て空港からロニー・ホリーへ$165,700の和解金が支払われロニー・ホリーとその家族は大量の作品とともにバーミングハムのハイパービルズへ引っ越すことになりますが......田舎町であるハイパービルズで彼の作品の価値が認められるはずもなく......彼らの引越しは地元民から歓迎されませんでした。

しかし、2003年のバーミングハム美術館での作品展示以降、状況が変化します。 スミソニアン・アメリカ美術館やハイ美術館、アメリカン・フォーク・アート博物館に作品が展示・収蔵され、何とホワイト・ハウスにも作品が展示されることになります。

このような経歴を持つ彼が2013年に初の音楽作品をDust to Digitalよりリリース。 彼の造形作品と同様に安易なカテゴライズを許さないユニークな作品で様々なメディアは絶賛すると同時に作品のジャンル分けに苦労することになります。

ブルースの要素を微かに感じさせるミニマルな曲は主にヤマハ・ポータトーンより奏でられていますが、チープやジャンクという印象から程遠く、Tikiman(Paul St. Hilaire)とBasic ChannelによるRhythm & Sound周辺の作品との共振をも感じさせるものとなっています。

space_inframinceではDust to DigitalよりリリースされたJust Before Music(CD)、Keeping A Record Of Itと併せてThe Sandman's Garden - A Film By Arthur Sloss Crenshaw(ドキュメンタリー・DVD)が好評販売中です!

[freemoneylife]

Lonnie Holley - Just Before Music

I learned about this Lonnie Holley album after listening to an interview with “Transcendental Black Metal” group Liturgy. I was immediately enthralled.

Lonnie Holley comes from a family of 27 children, and is kind of this American folk figure, a sculptor ‘outsitder artist’ who is totally a piece of art as a person.

Holley’s music is right up my alley… Very loose and in a class of it’s own. Just Before Music is not quite Soul, not quite Jazz, not quite melodic even… It’s definitely music, but the songs don’t even feel like songs so much as free form stream of consciousness set to meditative noodling. Put this on and get lost in Holley’s poetic explorations of society, life, death, technology, love and art.

[eliedavidlandesberg]

Lonnie Holley - Just Before Music

I learned about this Lonnie Holley album after listening to an interview with "Transcendental Black Metal” group Liturgy. I was immediately enthralled. 

Lonnie Holley comes from a family of 27 children, and is kind of this American folk artist sculptor ‘outsitder artist’ who himself is totally a piece of art.

Holley’s music is right up my alley... Very loose and in a class of it’s own. Just Before Music is not quite Soul, not quite Jazz, not quite melodic even... It’s definitely music, but the songs don’t even feel like songs so much as free form stream of consciousness set to meditative noodling. Put this on and get lost in Holley’s poetic explorations of society, life, death, technology, love and art.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Meandering Through MASS MoCA’s Vast Expansion

Aerial view of Building 6 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) (image courtesy MASS MoCA)

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — If you’ve been meaning to take a trip to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), now’s a better time than ever. On May 28, Building 6, a three-story, claw-shaped structure that was renovated and designed by American architecture firm Bruner/Cott, opened on its industrial campus and doubled the museum’s gallery footprint — rounding out at 250,000 square feet — and adding a significant chunk for outdoor installation. With the new building come long-term installations and collaborations with Laurie Anderson, Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Mary Lum, Gunnar Schonbeck, James Turrell, and more, as well as rotating exhibitions with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation collection and Artist-in-Residence program. Since it opened in 1999, MASS MoCA has focused on putting the work of well-known and emerging international artists from different disciplines in conversation, and Building 6 continues this trend.

Entrance to Building 6 from Building 5, where Nick Cave’s “Until” is currently on view (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)

While MASS MoCA is now even larger — among the largest contemporary art museums in the country, no less — it’s not “big” like the Metropolitan Museum of Art is big, where the encyclopedic timeline and clustered gallery spaces can feel overwhelming. It’s also fairly different from the sacred, silence-inducing Dia:Beacon that it’s often compared to. This is not at all to criticize those museums — they provide equally important yet different contexts for viewing art. But MASS MoCA’s Building 6 has only enhanced the museum’s generally open and non-constricting design, and feels conducive to its mission to realize new, collaborative, and often experimental projects with visual and performing artists.

View of columns along the outer perimeter of the interior of Building 6

The art is given space to breathe in large rooms of exposed brick, punctuated by original wooden columns, and with hundreds of windows that let natural light stream in. An energy emanates off the pieces, as if they were just finished and completed by the artist in the studio. You want to look into the next gallery — even if you get lost, it’s okay; it’s part of the fun, perhaps.

Louise Bourgeois, “Untitled” (1991-2000), 15 tons, US debut at MASS MoCA

Announced in November 2014, the opening of Building 6 marks the second time MASS MoCA has expanded into the buildings of the former factory campus, the first being when the museum opened its expansive Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective in the 27,000-square-foot Building 7 in 2008. This most recent phase of MASS MoCA’s development totaled $65 million, and will include a bike path that transects the museum’s campus and connects the art to the surrounding town and area’s nature.

Sol LeWitt, “Negative Pyramid” (1997)

View from Building 6 prow of Jenny Holzer benches in garden, where the two branches of the Hoosic River meet

The inaugural exhibition of Rauschenberg Residency artists, Thumbs Up for the Mothership, features work by Dawn DeDeaux and Lonnie Holley. Holley’s sculptures piece together rebar, broken-down instruments, old lamps, typewriters, and other detritus, showing objects decayed and stripped down to their textures. “The rebar is the truth exposed,” said Holley who was wandering the galleries on opening day. “There is something in something until we don’t want it any longer. I want to leave enough in objects to make sure there’s some sort of time perceived.” Holley’s work might seem to consist of what people see as garbage or junk, but he thinks of it all as material. It’s the same ideology Rauschenberg had — examples of which can be seen the next gallery over.

Installation view of Thumbs Up for the Mothership: Dawn DeDeaux & Lonnie Holley

Shadow cast by work in Lonnie Holley’s exhibition

Robert Rauschenberg, “A Quake in Paradise (Labyrinth)” (1994)

At MASS MoCA there are also moments to slow down, engage with the sublime, so to speak. Turrell’s “Pink Mist” disorients by leading viewers through a pitch-black corridor, before they meet a sheet of pink light that appears fuzzy and out of focus. The rectangle of light appears to float some 30 feet away, as static scurries through it. As your eyes adjust, space collapses, and the pink mist is right in front of you.

The art in Building 6 seems to collect around a theme of not seeing details immediately, and having them materialize with an epiphany. Mary Lum’s painted wall installation “Assembly (Lorem Ipsum)” does this subtly, and to great effect. Inspired by the filler text used in publication design, “Assembly” presents words and letters chopped up, shifted a few inches and jumbled. It might be what one of Williams Burroughs’s cut-up poems looked like in his mind. It’s a work that invites viewers to take their time, but not in an overly demanding way. As we make out the words, mirrors placed every couple of feet apart reflect our bodies as we look, but also the street and green mountains surrounding the museum.

Mary Lum, “Assembly (Lorem Ipsum)” (2017)

Outside, every day from dusk to 11:00pm, as part of MASS MoCA’s biennial music festival Solid Sound, is Jenny Holzer’s “For North Adams” projections across the length of Building 6. Formally, they’re beautiful: big block letters shimmer and shine through building’s windows, floating in the air. Projections break on power lines and fences, words move slowly as viewers read them, and what strikes the viewer is how difficult, graphic, and unrelenting the words are:

DURING THE DAY I BRING THEM BEDPANS, WASH THEM CLEAN OF FECES.

THE CHILD IS TWO MONTHS OLD. THE DOCTOR SAYS: WITHOUT MILK, THE CHILD WILL DIE.

Holzer selected poems by Anna Świrszczyńska (translated by Piotr Florczyk) and other poets, as well as accounts of refugees during wartime given to Save the Children and Human Rights Watch. The words shine brightly and are gorgeous, but move us to awe, then fear, and at times disgust.

Jenny Holzer, “For North Adams” (2017)

These are just some highlights from the sprawling installations at MASS MoCA’s Building 6, which range from big-name artists and recognizable works to more unexpected ones, like the exhibition Gunnar Schonbeck: No Experience Required, which houses the former Bennington College professor’s collection of handmade instruments, which anyone is invited to use. It seems that MASS MoCA’s Building 6, which happens to be the shape and size of a very large freighter, will only help the museum to surge forward with its goals of play and experimentation.

Installation view of Gunnar Schonbeck: No Experience Required

Nick Cave’s “Soundsuit” performance, choreographed by Sandra Burton

Nick Cave’s “Soundsuit” performance, choreographed by Sandra Burton

Visitors engaging with Laurie Anderson’s “The Handphone Table” (1978), which uses bone conduction to have sound and songs travel through visitors’ arms and into their cupped ears.

Building 6 at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) (1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, Massachusetts) opened May 28. Visit the museum’s website for more info. 

The post Meandering Through MASS MoCA’s Vast Expansion appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[thejoyofviolentmovement]

Born in Birmingham, AL as the seventh of 27 children, Lonnie Holley has had the sort of life that should inspire a biopic -- from an early age, Holley worked all kinds off odd jobs: picking up trash at a drive-in movie theatre, washing dishes, and cooking. He lived in a whiskey house, on the state fairgrounds, and in a number of foster homes. And as you can imagine, his life was often chaotic and uncertain, and he was never afforded anything that resembled a "normal" childhood. 

Since 1979, Holley has dedicated his life to improvised art and in a number of disciplines -- sculpture, painting, photography, performance art, and music. As a musician,  his music and lyrics are improvised on the spot and morph and evolve with every event, concert, and recording creating the sense that what you're hearing at that particular time is a once in a lifetime moment. 

Back in November 2006, Holley had joined a recording project in Gee's Bend, AL (a town that I hadn't heard of until I got some of the press notes for this single). A recording studio was set up inside Friendship Baptist Church as the recording team of Matt Arnett, Amos Harvey and Brando Marius set out to record the region's rapidly disappearing acappella hymns and spirituals. After they were done with the day sessions, they would work with Holley recording material way into the night. Holly managed to record three complete songs and parts of two others during this time, and it was the first time he was recording material using state of the art recording equipment. 

During the recording sessions Holley played a number of instruments including keyboard and synthesizers, and even the pastor's chair. The experimentation that came about during these sessions would set the groundwork for the material on his official full-length debut, Just Before Music as well as his follow-up Keeping a Record of It.

  The latest single from Holley's sophomore effort "Six Space Shuttles and 144,000 Elephants" and it's a gorgeous song that feels much like a half-remembered dream with it's own surreal yet plausible logic. And although the song is ethereal to the point of floating away, there's a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity to the song that's both playful and charming. 

  Throughout September and October, you can catch Holley in concert at some of the following cities: Portland, OR; Raleigh, NC; Philadelphia, PA; Webster Hall on October 6th; Ithaca, NY; Pittsburgh, PA; Cleveland, OH; Detroit, MI; and more. 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Tinariwen Live Preview: 10/1, Thalia Hall, Chicago

Photo by Marie Planeille

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Tinariwen, Thalia Hall

The story is all too familiar for Tuareg band Tinariwen. After they finished touring their excellent 2017 album Elwan late last year, they were again unable to return to their home of Mali due to violence and threats from Islamist militants. They decamped in Morocco and trekked for months through the Western Sahara and Mauritania, writing and collaborating with local musicians along the way, finding residence in Nouakchott with griot singer Noura Mint Seymali and her guitarist husband Jeiche Ould Chighaly, both of whom appear on the album they recorded there in a makeshift studio before completing overdubs in France and Morocco. If that’s tiring to read, imagine what the band had to go through; Amadjar directly translates to “the foreign traveler”, and it’s an appropriately somber affair for a band tired of oppression and violence.

Despite the ever impressive list of guests, from Warren Ellis to Cass McCombs to Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley, it’s the dichotomy of love and death, of fight and flight within Tinariwen that exemplifies Amadjar. On opener “Tenere Maloultat”, vocalist Ibrahim Ag Alhabib sings, “I have no hate left for anyone; my soul is confused,” as if considering what he has been through, he should feel hatred. Ellis’ hazy strings and the band’s limber, circular guitars work to temper his emotions. “Amalouna” hopes for an armed return to the band’s homeland, but one with ultimate mercy; the interplay between Alhabib’s solo lines and group harmonies mirror this back-and-forth. On “Iklam Dglour”, Alhabib sings, “My soul is burning, and I no longer know what I want,” reflecting on the pure rage brought upon by intolerance and violence illustrated on “Amalouna”.

You can’t blame Tinariwen for being ideologically inconsistent in the face of tiresome battle, especially on a broad level. It explains a song like “Takount”, which emphasizes the importance of minority ethnic groups speaking as one voice, existing beside “Itous Ohar”, a sort of “keep to yourself” message. When you’ve witnessed victims of violence looking like does running from hunters, as on “Zawal”, or men turning on each other, like Alhabib sings about on “Taqkal Tarha”, it’s likely virtually impossible to believe in anything. As such, Amadjar is rife with songs that exist in a sort of existential void, loss weighing heavy on Alhabib and vocalist Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni on “Mhadjar Yassouf Idjan” and “Wartilla”, respectively. The album appropriately ends with a song featuring the most frantic-sounding guitar on a Tinariwen song to date, the almost a capella “Lalla”.

All this said, the songs where Tinariwen successfully find power within themselves, to call out the weak, threaten the oppressors, or simply exist, are life affirming. Many of the tracks on the album end with recordings of dialogue, as if to emphasize communication as a key to survival. On the handclap-laden “Madjam Mahilkamen”, Alhassane Ag Touhami questions, “Brave ones, where are you?” And on “Kel Tinawen”, Alhabib makes a stunning declaration: Tinariwen doesn’t just fight for themselves, but the generations before them who have been victims of the same intolerance they’re fighting now. 

Considering the circumstances, it’s a miracle Tinariwen continue to make music and tour. They recently dealt with racist threats in advance of a concert in North Carolina. Their music is circular, in rhythm and in its global travels. We owe it to them to pack the house.

Album score: 7.9/10

Amadjar by Tinariwen

Artist and musician Lonnie Holley, who we profiled after Big Ears Festival earlier this year, opens.