On The Turntable

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    Pharoah Sanders

    Pharoah Sanders :: Pharoah (Box Set)

    Reissued in 2023, everything about Pharoah Sanders’ eponymous 1977 album is a gift. It’s a masterpiece of quiet mystique and joy that almost never was. Available for the first time since its original release, Pharaoh has been rejuvenated with the splendor of a monumental box set from Luaka Bop. It’s a tremendous archival achievement that casts new light on a crucial point of transition for Sanders…

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    Numün

    Numün :: Opening

    New York’s numün never quite fit into the ambient country mold associated with founder Bob Holmes’s other group SUSS. The team-up with Joel Mellin and Christopher Romero of Balinese music ensemble Gamelan Dharma Swara meant numün was always going to be about finding the common ground between big sky drift and eastern drone. Their third album Opening positions them somewhere between Bruce Langhorne and Popul Vuh. But it also shows them capable of whipping up a slow-motion psychedelic boogie whenever the mood hits.

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    Miles Davis

    Miles Davis :: Agharta

    We just did a monster roundup covering the 50th anniversary of the release of the Davis live documents Agharta and Pangea — a pair of double live LPs recorded at the Osaka Festival Hall, February 1, 1975. You can read that, here, but for the uninitiated looking for a taste, go ahead and dig into Agharta en totale.

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    Bonnie “Prince” Billy

    Bonnie “Prince” Billy :: The Purple Bird

    The Purple Bird is more overtly country than the last few Bonnie “Prince” Billy albums, certainly more so than the droning, mesmeric Lungfish homage in Hear the Children Sing the Evidence from 2024 or even the campfire folk communal Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You from 2023. Of course, threads of rural traditions in country, bluegrass and shape not singing have always woven through Oldham’s work, so it’s not a dramatic departure. Still, this is an album made in Nashville with Nashville musicians and a celebrated Nashville producer, and the twang factor is high.

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    Jantar

    Jantar :: Background Moods

    This latest album from the ambient ensemble Jantar evokes Jon Hassell’s fourth world sound, Laraaji’s ecstatic meditations, and, of course, the motherlode, the ambient soundscapes of Brian Eno.

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    Big Bend

    Big Bend :: Last Circle In A Slowdown

    The third album from pianist/singer Nathan Phillips’ Big Bend project blends experimental methods with time-tested tradition. Working with avant-jazz master Shahzad Ismaily and a varied ensemble including Jen Powers of Rolin/Powers Duo and violinist Zosha Warpeha, Phillips transforms delicate folk songs into strange collages and elliptical ballads.

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     Total Blue

    Total Blue :: S/T

    The Los Angeles-based trio of Nicky Benedek, Alex Talan, and Anthony Calonico have been making music together in various configurations for well over a decade. Their newest project, the outstanding Total Blue, takes the ingredients of smooth jazz and world fusion–fretless bass, muted horns, piles of synthesizers, global rhythms–and vaporizes them into a shimmering mist. The result is one of the most alluring things to come out of LA’s adventurous post-jazz scene.

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    Sam Amidon

    Sam Amidon :: Salt River

    The big news about Salt River is the collaboration with Sam Gendel, a celebrated jazz saxophonist who has worked with Amidon in various roles since 2017. However, aside from an extended reedy flight of fancy in “Tavern,” Gendel’s role as producer is primarily to get out of the way, and let Amidon be Amidon, his folky experiments haloed by an aura of extraordinary clarity.

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Fela Kuti :: First European Tour (1981)

Check out a fantastic documentary that follows Fela Anikulapo Kuti and his huge band/entourage (70+ people!) on their first trip across the European continent in 1981. Things look gray and grimy outside, but once Africa 80 is onstage the world snaps into full, vibrant color, a radical sight/sound the likes of which most of the world had never seen nor heard before.

Yves Jarvis :: All Cylinders

For All Cylinders, Montreal-based Yves Jarvis (fka Un Blonde) placed bedroom auteurism behind him and went for simpler tunes. The result is a multi-genre odyssey. Where once was a loose attempt at art gospel or chopped-up soul, now there is a conscious, sincere engagement with the classics Jarvis clearly adores—Paul McCartney, Love, Stevie Wonder, and Prince.

Transmissions :: Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Welcome back to Transmissions from Aquarium Drunkard, we’re kicking off our 10th season with host Jason Woodbury in conversation with Will Oldham, the man behind Bonnie “Prince” Billy, who appeared on the very first Transmissions interview back in 2016. He returns to Transmissions to unpack and discuss his new country album, The Purple Bird, uploading souls to the Metaverse, guns, and why he’d work with Phil Spector.

The Lagniappe Sessions :: Ezra Feinberg

Since Ezra Feinberg’s return to making and releasing music at the close of the last decade, he’s been on an unbelievable run. Feinberg’s contributions to our ongoing series of Lagniappe Sessions square the circle of his sound, offering up covers of the shimmering folk-pop vocal group The Roches, on the one hand, and minimalist composer and Philip Glass Ensemble stalwart Jon Gibson, on the other. Feinberg’s gift has always been to endow minimalist process and ambient expansion with a real emotional weight, so the balance here between lovelorn romanticism and new music abstraction seems particularly on point. Feinberg’s covers are alternately heartbreaking and harrowing.

Sam Moss :: Swimming

Sam Moss’s new LP boasts an exceptional backing band — Joe Westerlund on earthy percussion; Isa Burke on deeply felt lead guitar, violin and banjo; Sinclair Palmer on rich double bass; and Molly Sarlé on haunting harmonies. Jake Xerxes Fussell also pops up to lend a hand on a few tracks. Together, this group creates an extraordinarily intimate sound to surround Moss’s voice and acoustic fingerpicking, whether it’s the steady thump of the title track, the slow way of “Dance” or the somewhat sinister groove of “Lost.” You could slot Swimming into the so-called Americana genre, but it really rises above that easy categorization.

Eric Dolphy :: Last Date (Documentary, 1991)

The documentary’s title Last Date is lifted from an album of posthumous live recordings from a Netherlands radio session in the summer of 1964 (the Dutch trio from the session feature prominently in the film). Just a few weeks later, Eric Dolphy tragically passed after slipping into a diabetic coma during a performance in Berlin.

Harold Budd :: Abandoned Cities

Composer Harold Budd always resented the term “ambient,” with which his music had been saddled since his pioneering collaborations in late 70s and early 80s with Brian Eno. One can imagine the thoughtful, genial Budd being positively exasperated with the even more niche tag “dark ambient.” And yet, Budd’s haunting and uncharacteristically bleak 1984 album Abandoned Cities was dark ambient before the term existed. One of the lesser-known works in Budd’s discography, its synthesizer drones and blighted landscapes seem to speak prophetically to the crisis of our present moment.

Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: February 2025

Freeform transmissions from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab. Airing every third Sunday of the month, RFAD on dublab features the pairing of Tyler Wilcox’s Doom and Gloom from the Tomb and Chad DePasquale’s New Happy Gathering. This month, Chad kicks it off with an hour of broken valentines, with Tyler following it up with some melancholy psych-folk situations. Sunday, 4-6pm PT.

Ted Lucas :: Nobody Loves Me Like My Baby Does

On February 21, psychedelic folkie Ted Lucas’ self-titled 1975 cult classic rides again, this time thanks to the folks at Third Man Records. This go-round, an expanded vision of Lucas’ visions is offered, with the digital release including four previously-unreleased songs, including the swooning, flute-heavy “Nobody Loves Me Like My Baby Does.”

Roedelius :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Featuring 50 tracks from his vast recorded archives, 90 presents kosmische pioneer Roedelius at his most intimate. The result is a collection that feels as meditative as it does personal. “Everything came to me as a gift of the moment,” he explains, opening up about the genesis of his creative practice and how his songs function like prayers.

Ron Geesin :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

In the creative act, is the interaction with others or solitude in a private space more important? While in the past, genius was often described as a solitary artist, distant from society, today more importance is placed on the “creative ecosystem” from which they emerge. The story of Ron Geesin might help to rebalance the issue, highlighting both the collaborative phase and the more secluded one. But could his choice to follow his own path, away from the well-trodden routes, have worked against him in terms of critical reception?