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. ~ Paul Simpson