Two Centuries Later at Alabama School of Fine Arts thru February! Gallery hours: M-F 8am-4:30pm
Closing reception Thurs, Feb 27th, 5-7pm. Vernal Scuzz performance at 6pm!
Two Centuries Later is a survey of Lee’s work made over the last several years across a range of media
including video installation, sound sculpture, collage, experimental film and painting. A theme throughout
is the opening of portals with sound, circular forms and projection. A series of large painted wooden discs
use a circular format to reference hex signs, wheels of fortune, shields, clocks, containers of ingredients
and cauldrons. Iron hoops hung on the wall also appear as thresholds through which arms reach out hold-
ing garlands of objects strung together such as broken jewelry, can lids, small radios, keys and a crude doll
made of yarn which hovers like an angel. Off in a corner, a video illuminating a birdbath creates a scrying
pool. An egg spins in the water amidst a swirling feedback loop, turning the projection into a magic illusion.
Nearby, a gang of scarecrows stand on guard in front of an Antique Sadness Hex. Their cobbled together
figures made of wooden limbs, buckets, cloth, car parts and disassembled speakers which project wailing
and hissing sounds that echo through the space. In another area, a fifteen foot high radio tower assembled
with bamboo is crowned with a makeshift antenna and bright red ribbons radiating down as if ‘round a maypole.
Inside is a listening station transmitting recordings from Sweet Wreath Speaks!, an ecologically themed radio
art festival organized by Lee and collaborators in spring of 2024.
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Worst Spills
CD / Order
Worst Spills' second album "Hum Death" delves into a noirish blend of spoken word,
skronk grooves and witchy soundscapes that expand on the "southern nightmare jazz"
of their debut (featured in Bandcamp Daily's Best of Experimental, March 2022). The
new record arrives hot on the heels of their collaborative album with Johnny Coley titled
"Mister Sweet Whisper," released by Mississippi Records & Sweet Wreath to favorable
reviews from Pitchfork and others in November. Whereas "Mister Sweet Whisper" fore-
grounds Coley's poetic narratives within nimble lounge themes, "Hum Death" focuses
on tone and textural grit to evoke mundane terrors tempered by wry humor. Read more...
CD / Order
Worst Spills' second album "Hum Death" delves into a noirish blend of spoken word,
skronk grooves and witchy soundscapes that expand on the "southern nightmare jazz"
of their debut (featured in Bandcamp Daily's Best of Experimental, March 2022). The
new record arrives hot on the heels of their collaborative album with Johnny Coley titled
"Mister Sweet Whisper," released by Mississippi Records & Sweet Wreath to favorable
reviews from Pitchfork and others in November. Whereas "Mister Sweet Whisper" fore-
grounds Coley's poetic narratives within nimble lounge themes, "Hum Death" focuses
on tone and textural grit to evoke mundane terrors tempered by wry humor. Read more...
Vernal Scuzz
Tape / Order
Vernal Scuzz emerge like a wet hot electric creature hissing in the night on their first release.
Somewhere between proto-punk and primeval ceremony, the music is a highly charged
rhythmic vehicle for navigating the murk of media litter. Crackles of noise meld with zither
and brass tones....sounds that build an atmosphere and then burst suddenly into song.
Jasper and Mika's voices coo and screech in equal doses. A recurring theme is the
transmission of ideas through technological & linguistic means. Lyrics are made from
cut-up sources like football game transcripts, tracts, lawnmower manuals, and somehow
come out beautifully. Vernal Scuzz's first recording presents the group’s idiosyncratic
concepts through a visceral playing style that is unpredictable and raw. Read more...
Tape / Order
Vernal Scuzz emerge like a wet hot electric creature hissing in the night on their first release.
Somewhere between proto-punk and primeval ceremony, the music is a highly charged
rhythmic vehicle for navigating the murk of media litter. Crackles of noise meld with zither
and brass tones....sounds that build an atmosphere and then burst suddenly into song.
Jasper and Mika's voices coo and screech in equal doses. A recurring theme is the
transmission of ideas through technological & linguistic means. Lyrics are made from
cut-up sources like football game transcripts, tracts, lawnmower manuals, and somehow
come out beautifully. Vernal Scuzz's first recording presents the group’s idiosyncratic
concepts through a visceral playing style that is unpredictable and raw. Read more...
Johnny Coley - Mister Sweet Whisper
LP / Order
Transcendental poetry meets Southern Nightmare Jazz on the third album by
Alabama-based poet-artist Johnny Coley. Mister Sweet Whisper is the meeting of
Johnny Coley and the band Worst Spills, led by guitarist & arranger Joel Nelson.
Tapping into French surrealism and transgressive American poets such as John Ashbery,
the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper evolve, cinema-like, with Coley as an uninhibited, almost
mystical, narrator. Textural, noirish playing complements Coley’s decadent landscapes, which
glide by like cigarette smoke invocations. Echoing, and at times, dissonant notes of saxophone,
crystalline tones of vibraphone, and jagged guitar arrangements punctuate Coley’s dreamlike
visions, populated by ballet dancers, haunting nightclubs, and ghostly car drivers.
Wistful and expansive, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper speak of Coley’s talent and natural
ability to channel his poetic world into songs. A remarkable follow-up to Coley’s first two albums—
Antique Sadness, from 2021, and Landscape Man, from 2022—which were praised as “exquisitely
haunting, sublime, hilarious” and falling “somewhere between Robert Ashley, David Wojnarowicz,
and Intersystems,” Mister Sweet Whisper arrives in full form: unpredictable and brilliant. Read more...
LP / Order
Transcendental poetry meets Southern Nightmare Jazz on the third album by
Alabama-based poet-artist Johnny Coley. Mister Sweet Whisper is the meeting of
Johnny Coley and the band Worst Spills, led by guitarist & arranger Joel Nelson.
Tapping into French surrealism and transgressive American poets such as John Ashbery,
the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper evolve, cinema-like, with Coley as an uninhibited, almost
mystical, narrator. Textural, noirish playing complements Coley’s decadent landscapes, which
glide by like cigarette smoke invocations. Echoing, and at times, dissonant notes of saxophone,
crystalline tones of vibraphone, and jagged guitar arrangements punctuate Coley’s dreamlike
visions, populated by ballet dancers, haunting nightclubs, and ghostly car drivers.
Wistful and expansive, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper speak of Coley’s talent and natural
ability to channel his poetic world into songs. A remarkable follow-up to Coley’s first two albums—
Antique Sadness, from 2021, and Landscape Man, from 2022—which were praised as “exquisitely
haunting, sublime, hilarious” and falling “somewhere between Robert Ashley, David Wojnarowicz,
and Intersystems,” Mister Sweet Whisper arrives in full form: unpredictable and brilliant. Read more...
Johnny Coley - Huron
First Edition / Order
203 pages
Written entirely on his phone, Coley's novel is composed of short improvisational
chapters which move in a stream-of-consciousness, refracting prismatically outward
from elements of his lived experience. The text reflects his rich conversational abilities
and sense of humor as he deploys marathon run-on sentences that exquisitely trace
the paths of thoughts coming into being. Zigzagging like a switchback road through
the French Alps, these passages play with common speech and syntax while invoking
a wide swath of literary references and philosophical ideas. Coley skillfully weaves
many strands of contemporary thought and lyrical asides into a metaphysical prose
wholly his own. He is deeply interested in each character's idiosyncratic form of
language, in colloquialisms and misunderstandings, and in the magic of words as
agents of potential. Huron's world opens up fabulous possibilities. Those familiar
with Coley's work in poetry and spoken word will find an entirely different and
compelling dimension of his literary practice in this book. Read more...
First Edition / Order
203 pages
Written entirely on his phone, Coley's novel is composed of short improvisational
chapters which move in a stream-of-consciousness, refracting prismatically outward
from elements of his lived experience. The text reflects his rich conversational abilities
and sense of humor as he deploys marathon run-on sentences that exquisitely trace
the paths of thoughts coming into being. Zigzagging like a switchback road through
the French Alps, these passages play with common speech and syntax while invoking
a wide swath of literary references and philosophical ideas. Coley skillfully weaves
many strands of contemporary thought and lyrical asides into a metaphysical prose
wholly his own. He is deeply interested in each character's idiosyncratic form of
language, in colloquialisms and misunderstandings, and in the magic of words as
agents of potential. Huron's world opens up fabulous possibilities. Those familiar
with Coley's work in poetry and spoken word will find an entirely different and
compelling dimension of his literary practice in this book. Read more...
Green Plum Ensemble - The Heavenly Music
Cassette / Order
Green Plum Ensemble is a six-piece+- freestyle drone and lamentation band
from Philadelphia. We make ritual and conversational music composed collectively
in performance. Our members bridge worlds of experience – in singing groups,
temples, communes and noise bands – and trans-continental musical continua
including free jazz, Jewish liturgical music and Georgian polyphony. Our special
focus is on traditions of collective grief and ecstasy. Above all, we are a group of
friends brought together by an interest in music’s oldest powers.
Read more...
Cassette / Order
Green Plum Ensemble is a six-piece+- freestyle drone and lamentation band
from Philadelphia. We make ritual and conversational music composed collectively
in performance. Our members bridge worlds of experience – in singing groups,
temples, communes and noise bands – and trans-continental musical continua
including free jazz, Jewish liturgical music and Georgian polyphony. Our special
focus is on traditions of collective grief and ecstasy. Above all, we are a group of
friends brought together by an interest in music’s oldest powers.
Read more...
Sweet Wreath presents
Sun Ra’s Magic City : A Cosmo-Mythic Map of Birmingham
This map project visualizes the world of Sun Ra at the very beginning of his earthly journey
in the town of his youth, Birmingham, Alabama. The map’s illustrations depict sites relevant
to his early musical career, and a recently unearthed image of Sonny as a member of the
Rhythm Four vocal quartet. The project includes images sourced from the Birmingham Public
Library Archives, as well as items in the collection of the Southern Music Research Center,
including show advertisements and early images of Sonny’s public appearances.
The project draws on the research and writing of Burgin Matthews, especially from
his book Magic City: How the Birmingham Jazz Tradition Shaped the Sound of America.
The map features a full text on the reverse side with detailed information about
each location connected to Sun Ra’s Magic City history. Read more...
Sun Ra’s Magic City : A Cosmo-Mythic Map of Birmingham
This map project visualizes the world of Sun Ra at the very beginning of his earthly journey
in the town of his youth, Birmingham, Alabama. The map’s illustrations depict sites relevant
to his early musical career, and a recently unearthed image of Sonny as a member of the
Rhythm Four vocal quartet. The project includes images sourced from the Birmingham Public
Library Archives, as well as items in the collection of the Southern Music Research Center,
including show advertisements and early images of Sonny’s public appearances.
The project draws on the research and writing of Burgin Matthews, especially from
his book Magic City: How the Birmingham Jazz Tradition Shaped the Sound of America.
The map features a full text on the reverse side with detailed information about
each location connected to Sun Ra’s Magic City history. Read more...