(2021) Matthew E. White & Lonnie Holley – Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection


Review:
Singer/songwriter, producer, and Spacebomb founder Matthew E. White first worked with found-object sculptor, improvising songwriter, and American national treasure Lonnie Holley in 2019, when White and his band backed Holley during a concert in Richmond, Virginia. As with all of Holley’s performances, he spontaneously delivered his worldly insight with no prior rehearsal, and all involved agreed that it was a particularly electrifying event. The two played another concert in Durham, North Carolina a few months later, and after it happened, White played Holley several instrumental recordings that he and his band had made the year before, which didn’t quite fit the direction of the solo album he was working on at the time. Holley listened to the beginnings of the tracks and rejected some of them, but inspiration struck with many of the others, and consulting his notebook for lyrical themes, he delivered complete verses on the spot, without hearing the music beforehand. Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection consists of five of these unplanned compositions, and it’s one of the most unique entries in both artists’ discographies. The instrumentals are free and unbound, moving far away from the studied AM radio pop of White’s earlier work and inhabiting spaces that seem to directly funnel energy from ’70s galactic jazz and Krautrock. It’s by far the funkiest music Holley has sung over, and it’s a sound he feels right at home with, as his thoughts comfortably flow over the heavy, sprawling rhythms. Several of the tracks channel the far-out innovation of electric Miles, with bugged-out keyboards and sporadic guitars dancing over the gargantuan rhythm section. Holley’s lyrics mainly address the frustrations of living in a society that’s constantly distracted by technology and social media. Instead of buying the latest gadgets or selfishly trying to raise his online profile through endless narcissistic posting, he’s concerned with keeping in tune with the energies of the universe and making the best of his time on Earth. He wrestles with his worldly emotions over the fuzz-heavy bass, multi-tracked African drums, and Sun Ra keyboards of “I Cried Space Dust,” and sings about keeping his mind and body healthy atop percolating electronics during the Cluster-like “I’m Not Tripping.” Holley’s observations are as powerful and poetic as ever, and White and his band simply sound out of this world, making Broken Mirror a spirited, magnificent collaboration.





Tracklist:
01 - This Here Jungle of Moderness/Composition 14
02 - Broken Mirror (A Selfie Reflection)/Composition 9
03 - I Cried Space Dust/Composition 12
04 - I’m Not Tripping/Composition 8
05 - Get Up! Come Walk with Me/Composition 7


Media Report:
Genre: art rock, indie-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits