12” LP
Holy Dirt
12” LP by Santino “Tino” GonzalesJacket design by Sam Soon
Holy Dirt is an album about remembering and preservation. Through loop-based guitars, fractured synthesizers, & handmade field recordings, Tino soundtracks a subterranean road trip where memories and melodies blur with the sounds of home.
Launch date: May 7, 2026 at Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair
Pre-orders ship week of May 11, 2026
12" custom Coke bottle clear vinyl record, edition of 100.
Includes a code for high-quality digital download of Holy Dirt via the artists’ bandcamp page. Codes will be emailed to each customer individually upon album purchase.
Pre-Order 12” LP + Digital Download
Edition of 100
Pre-Order Limited Edition
Includes a signed, numbered original print by the artist.
12”LP + Print + Digital Download
Edition of 10
Recording began in the desert heat of June, arms outstretched in the backyard with a microphone in hand and the bugs singing at full volume. Gusts of wind blessed us with cool air, and we’d hold our breath as the earth’s sounds unfolded.
Day turned to night, summer to fall, and the smell of tall grass, purple skies, and bug spray returned from evenings forgotten. Infinity loops like desire lines marked my mind as I coaxed sounds from worn guitars and creaky pianos. In the background, songs from jukeboxes and FM stations made their way onto long-drive CDs, then playlists of MP3s, and all of a sudden, our parents’ songs became our songs. Except when we heard them, they sounded different. They had been warped by time.
Back then, the crowds seemed bigger when they’d collect and pilgrimage to the spot—all to gather ‘round the holy dirt. Everyone’s older now, and the days seem shorter. The places we used to play have given way to data centers and freeway exits. Requests for songs on the radio are met with busy signals, and I worry that the sandhill cranes seem fewer when they visit the house.
Though they say pollution is making the skies dim, the stars still feel bright when we sit under them, grasping for planets and spaceships beside the family fire.
I visit often and we play with the little ones. With my hands in the mud, I can feel time slowing down again. On this ground, we live and we remember. In the static of half-buried melodies, misremembered love songs, and sunbaked voicemails from family, we find that the dirt is holy. It is holy because we deem it so.
—Santino Gonzales
Limited Edition Print
Santino Gonzales is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Lunas, New Mexico. His video and installation works draw on motifs found in ufology, adobe, and radio to explore feelings of connection across space and time. Gonzales’ art practice reveals throughlines between technology, land, and the unknown. His work positions these modes of cultural analysis within their broader legacies of resilience, resurgence, and wonder.
Gonzales received his BFA from the University of New Mexico and his MFA from California College of the Arts. He is a recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship, and currently works with the Interpretive Media team at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Tino also composes and performs original ambient music, while floating between the Bay Area and the high desert of New Mexico.
santinogonzales.com
Gonzales received his BFA from the University of New Mexico and his MFA from California College of the Arts. He is a recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship, and currently works with the Interpretive Media team at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Tino also composes and performs original ambient music, while floating between the Bay Area and the high desert of New Mexico.
santinogonzales.com
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