This first collaborative release between the Virginia songwriter, producer, and founder of Spacebomb Records and the Alabama sculptor is an experimental fusion of jazz, funk, electronica and exclamatory spoken-word observation. There’s something scrambling and also spectacular about this LP, comprising just five multi-dimensional, long, pace-changing tracks, but in which Holley’s exclamatory style covers social and political subject such as social media narcissism to all aspects of high tempo, and temperature, city life. For example, track This Here Jungle of Moderness/ Composition 14 is a sprawling picture of street life, filled with droning organs and restless percussion, and, as throughout the album, capture a society tripping over itself with technology and manic activity, while losing touch with themselves. Like the music, life moves in and out sequence with itself, sometimes with driving momentum, and at other times tripping over itself. “Computer technology management/To play our brains/You can’t program Her that way,” is one Holley’s many remarks, feeling off-the-cuff, and in sync with the crazed music that was originally recorded with an improvising septet of musicians before Holley added his parts. Holley is a fascinating character, from Birmingham Alabama, now 70 and the seventh of 27 children, his sculptor work is very much as this music sounds – a busy social commentary. The overall effect is like the electro period of Miles Davis in the early 1970s - challenging but stimulating, with elements of Gil Scott-Heron to frenzied krautrock backdrop. Out on Spacebomb and Jagjaguwar.
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