Lonnie Holley

Okay for one thing, I have put far, far, far too much new music onto my iTunes lately...neither my iPod touch nor my shuffle will update anymore because new stuff automatically goes onto them and there's more of it than will fit, even after taking a shitload of other stuff off the touch. I don't usually care about capacity because 2 GB is plenty in terms of what you can actually listen to, but this is a special case.

It happened mostly because I got a DL of three new releases from Dust to Digital, which I was, of course, pretty excited about and didn't even notice that, in total, I was adding about half a MG to the library in the process. So now I'm swimming through archival, oddball, field recorded music -- in particular a 53 track compilation of blues, gospel and sacred harp music from Florida -- and if I can catch up in two weeks, that'll be a good thing. There is also a lengthy Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Music recording, which I haven't even cracked yet. (Educed, apparently, means that the music has been represented in pictoral terms sometime in the past, and that the artists have turned it back into the sound...interesting idea, haven't really had time to listen yet.]

But meanwhile, I am fascinated by a shorter, more digestible album by the outsider artist Lonnie Holley, mostly famous for his sculptures, but also, on his own terms, a singer/composer, who improvises lyrics over weirdly apocalyptic, minimalist keyboard arrangements. His voice is, I think, untrained, but extremely soulful -- it's like freeform, hallucinogenic Marvin Gaye -- unbelievable stuff.

Here's a video with music and also some of his art.