#lonnie holley

[ortut]

Lonnie Holley - My Three Mothers (Mama, Mother Earth and Mother Universe), 2017 [Color woodblock]

[cristalconnors]

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR, 2023

Best Songs of 2023 can be found here.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical): Black Rainbows, Corinne Bailey Rae // Heaven is a Junkyard, Youth Lagoon // Love in Exile, Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily // New Blue Sun, André 3000 // Radical Romantics, Fever Ray // Rat Saw God, Wednesday // SAVED!!!, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter // Scaring the Hoes, JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown // This Stupid World, Yo La Tengo // trip9love…???, Tirzah // With a Hammer, Yaeji // WOW, Kate NV

20. *1, RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

19. GIRL WITH FISH, FEEBLE LITTLE HORSE

18. THE LAND IS INHOSPITABLE AND SO ARE WE, MITSKI

17. ATLAS, LAUREL HALO

16. BURNING DESIRE, MIKE

15. CENSUS DESIGNATED, JANE REMOVER

14. WHY DOES THE EARTH GIVE US PEOPLE TO LOVE?, KARA JACKSON

13. DESIRE, I WANT TO TURN INTO YOU, CAROLINE POLACHEK

12. OH ME OH MY, LONNIE HOLLEY

11. DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE’S A TUNNEL UNDER OCEAN BLVD, LANA DEL REY

10. SUNTUB, ML BUCH

9. PICTURE OF BUNNY RABBIT, ARTHUR RUSSELL

8. SPACE HEAVY, KING KRULE

7. RAVEN, KELELA

6. PRAISE A LORD WHO CHEWS BUT WHICH DOES NOT CONSUME; (OR SIMPLY, HOT BETWEEN WORLDS), YVES TUMOR

5. MY BACK WAS A BRIDGE FOR YOU TO CROSS, ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS

4. MAPS, BILLY WOODS & KENNY SEGAL

3. JAVELIN, SUFJAN STEVENS

2. FOUNTAIN BABY, AMAARAE

1. SOFTSCARS, YEULE

[munkamouse]

Copying the Rock, Lonnie Holley, 1995. Copier, rock, paint 33.5 x 46 x 24 inches

[libraryhours]

Lonnie Holley at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg

[garethschweitzer]

Lonnie Holley at Camden Art Centre

[kakaji]

Lonnie Holley, Him and Her Hold the Root, 1994. 45 1/2 x 73 x 30 1/2 in. Collection: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. © Lonnie Holley / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio.

[radiophd]

moor mother ft. lonnie holley & raia was -- guilty

[jacobwren]

Moor Mother - "GUILTY" (feat. Lonnie Holley & Raia Was)

[oldsardens]

Lonnie Holley - Abstraction

[dustedmagazine]

Moor Mother — The Great Bailout (ANTI-)

Photo by Ebru Yildiz

Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, has a genuine claim towards being one of the busiest artists working today. Over the past five years she has taken part in more than ten albums, with sounds spanning unpredictable hip-hop experimentation to free jazz odyssies. The Great Bailout represents yet another left turn, taking sonic inspiration from glitch and concrete poetry and working with noise veterans such as C. Spencer Yeh and Aaron Dilloway to put together something truly haunting. On this record, Moor Mother bears witness to centuries of violence, death and horror at the hands of European colonialism and white supremacy. She spits its debris back at the listener and forcing us to contend with our ability to remain nonchalant in its seemingly never-ending cycle.

The first thing heard on this record is not Ayewa, but rather the intonations of Raia Was and Lonnie Holley over the twinkling harp of Mary Lattimore. Was’ fluttering vocals could not contrast more with Holley’s powerful warble, but both convey the dread and weariness that come with continuing to survive in a society that offers nothing but death in return. Three minutes into the track, Ayewa sets the scene for the rest of the record: “Taxpayers of erasure, of relapse, of amnesia, paying the crimes off.” This is perhaps the condition of being an everyday citizen, living in a state that never shook off the ghosts of colonialism, if it ever even tried in the first place. On “ALL THE MONEY,” over an ominous dub-inflected beat, Ayewa lists off British national landmarks and the years they were established, building up to the British Museum, one of the world’s largest resources of stolen cultural landmarks. “They heard about the kingdoms of gold,” Ayewa states. “They heard about the books of mathematics, philosophy and rituals.” The title of the album could be interpreted a number of different ways, but in this context it is clear that Europe stole so much from Africa to bail out its own moral and spiritual failures.

One of the highlights of the album is “LIVERPOOL WINS,” which features Aaron Dilloway contributing a typically clattering, ugly backing track. “Payouts, bailouts, just enough to build the city, a country, an infrastructure, a financial revolution, a stronger christianity, a whiter God, a period of enlightenment,” lists Ayewa. “Who builds death like this?” This question resonates through the entire record. Towards the end of the record “SOUTH SEA,” featuring the contributions of Chicago jazz mainstay Angel Bat Dawid and her vocal group Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty, feels like a requiem for what’s been lost, both material and immaterial, in the fray of colonialism. “How many have to be slaughtered in front of you before you choke on your own tears?” Ayewa asks. “Before your brain convinces you that you are already dead and if you are still breathing, you shouldn’t be?” It’s difficult to listen to these questions without thinking of horrific images from Gaza, Sudan and the Congo, all of which are stark reminders that the same forces that bailed out Europe are continuing to fuck up the world to this day. There isn’t a singular, clear message of hope on The Great Bailout, but in documenting the rage and despair built into life under such a ugly and evil system, Moor Mother has provided something just as valuable — if not more so— in understanding the struggles of the present day.

Levi Dayan

[burlveneer-music]

Lonnie Holley - Oh Me Oh My - part secular gospel, part spoken-word memoir, with musical backing that sounds like a collaboration between Daniel Lanois and Bill Laswell (but is actually produced by Jacknife Lee)

Some years ago, there was a magazine piece wherein the writer meditated on the concept of the “Cosmic Southerner”: the late Pharoah Sanders, André 3000 and Col. Bruce Hampton (on whom the piece was ultimately focused) were all mentioned. Somehow, Alabama-born, Atlanta-based self-taught artist Lonnie Holley was left out of the piece. But Holley, 72, has improvised — nay, conjured! — ecstatic, baffling and heavy moments that can often only be described as “cosmic.” In a mere two lines of a song, Holley can zoom in on the pores of one’s skin and pull back to encompass the whole of the Milky Way. All that said, Holley’s music and visual art (for which he has shown at The Met, The Smithsonian and is represented by the illustrious Blum & Poe) is much more about our place in the cosmos than the cosmos itself. It’s about how we overcome adversity and tremendous pain; about how we develop and maintain an affection for our fellow travelers; about how we stop wishing for some “beyond” and start caring for the one rock we have. Holley has never delivered this message as clear, as concise and as exhilaratingly as he does on his new album ‘Oh Me Oh My.’ ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is both elegant and ferocious, sharpening the work contained on his 2018 Jagjaguwar debut ‘MITH’. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. Holley’s harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point — his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But, as mentioned, Holley’s music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope, of Thumbs Up For Mother Universe. Intricately and lovingly produced by LA’s Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), ‘Oh Me Oh My’ features both kinetic, shortwave funk that calls to mind Brian Eno’s ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ and the deep space satellite sounds of Eno’s ambient works. There are also elements of Laurie Anderson’s meditations, elements of Gil Scott-Heron’s profound longform soul, elements of John Lurie’s grabbag jazz, and yes, elements of Sun Ra’s bold afrofuturism. But ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is a triumphant sonic achievement of its own. Acclaimed collaborators like Michael Stipe (“Oh Me, Oh My”), Sharon Van Etten (“None of Us Will Have But a Little While��), Moor Mother (“I Am Part of the Wonder,” “Earth Will Be There”), Justin Vernon of Bon Iver (“Kindness Will Follow Your Tears”) and Rokia Koné (“If We Get Lost They Will Find Us”) serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, giving Lonnie’s message flight, and reaffirming him as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force across the music community. Holley reflects, “My art and my music are always closely tied to what is happening around me, and the last few years have given me a lot to thoughtsmith about. When I listen back to these songs I can feel the times we were living through. I’m deeply appreciative of the collaborators, especially Jacknife, who helped the songs take shape and really inspired me to dig deeper within myself.” ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is also an achievement in the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each session, Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the songs and distill Holley’s words to their most immediate center. On the title track, which deals with mutual human understanding, Holley is as profound as ever in far fewer phrases: “The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me’s and understand the oh-my’s.”  Produced and mixed by Jacknife Lee

[cristalconnors]

SONGS OF THE YEAR, 2023

The best albums of 2023 can be found here. Click through the links below to listen to the songs. :)

20. "MAKING THE BAND (DANITY KANE)", EARL SWEATSHIRT

19. "GOOD LIES", OVERMONO

18. "RUSH", TROYE SIVAN

17. "I SWEAR, I REALLY WANTED TO MAKE A 'RAP' ALBUM BUT THIS IS LITERALLY THE WAY THE WIND BLEW ME THIS TIME", ANDRÉ 3000

16. "HEAVEN", MITSKI

15. "POUND TOWN", SEXYY RED & TAY KEITH

14. "OVULE (feat. SHYGIRL) [SEGA BODEGA REMIX]", BJÖRK

13. "STRONG [I. JORDAN REMIX]", ROMY & I. JORDAN

12. "RAPPER WEED", BILLY WOODS & KENNY SEGAL

11. "MOUNT MEIGS", LONNIE HOLLEY

10. "IT'S MY FAULT", ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS

9. "A&W", LANA DEL REY

8. "SEAFORTH", KING KRULE

7. "EVEN IT OUT", FEVER RAY

6. "DAZIES", YEULE

5. "BOY'S A LIAR, PT. 2", PINKPANTHERESS & ICE SPICE

4. "CONTACT", KELELA

3. "PRETTY IN POSSIBLE", CAROLINE POLACHEK

2. "SO YOU ARE TIRED", SUFJAN STEVENS

1. "CO-STAR", AMAARAE

[rabbitechoes]

heyyy here’s what i’ve been listening to this month!! feel free to follow me on rate your music and twitter!

[jazznoisehere]

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

[liesandbrokenhearts]