On The Turntable

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    Seke Molenga & Kalo Kawongolo

    Seke Molenga & Kalo Kawongolo :: Lee Perry Presents... African Roots

    Recorded in 1977 at the hand of Lee “Scratch” Perry in the legendary Black Ark lies one of its most beguiling and misunderstood creations. While blending roots reggae with African rhythms seems like a natural recipe for success, Island Records wouldn’t touch it. The project was deemed a failure at the outset, and only years later did various iterations of the project come to light.

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    Charles Tolliver’s Music Inc.

    Charles Tolliver’s Music Inc. :: Live at Slugs’ Vol. 1 & 2

    The resurrection of Strata-East is nothing short of monumental, and that’s a fact. While each album on the legendary jazz label is a masterpiece in its own right, there is perhaps no clearer line to the heart of the Strata-East psyche than Charles Tolliver and Music Inc.’s Live at Slugs’ Vol. 1 & 2.

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    Burning Spear

    Burning Spear :: Marcus Garvey

    Of all the reggae cornerstones hitting their 50th anniversary this year, you’d be hard pressed to find another that hit with the same gale force of Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey. Part reggae master class, part history lesson, Marcus Garvey introduced Winston Rodney’s impassioned wail to the world, establishing Burning Spear as one of reggae’s foremost emissaries and educators. Simply put, this is one of the heaviest, deepest roots sets ever laid down.

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    Various Artists

    Various Artists :: A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes

    Habibi Funk’s latest compilation is a trip into the Libyan cassette scene of the 1990s. While the collected songs were crafted for clear commercial appeal, designed to soundtrack romantic singalongs during late-night ballads in pre-war Tripoli, the end result achieves something way more complex, accidentally or not, by folding African music back unto itself through a process of re-diasporization.

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    Richard Wright

    Richard Wright :: Wet Dream

    Amid Pink Floyd’s inevitable implosion initiated by Dark Side of the Moon’s monumental success, the groundwork was laid out for the eventual collapse of the prog-gone-hitmaker behemoth. Buffered in chaos, Richard Wright quietly put to tape what can credibly be argued the best Floyd-adjacent solo record, Wet Dream.

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    Various Artists

    Various Artists :: Maybe I’m Dreaming

    With twenty selections culled from private press relics only, Maybe I’m Dreaming is a grab bag that feels as congruous as it does eclectic. From the Anthology Recordings diggers who brought you essential previous compilations like Sad About The Times, this collection is a self-described conscious detour, pairing synth-driven gems and reggae rhythms with rootsy AOR folk rock. Like a mixtape from a reliable old friend, Maybe I’m Dreaming feels curated with purpose and delivered with a panoramic reach.

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    Hiroki Tamaki

    Hiroki Tamaki :: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

    Originally released in 1980, before the Bhagwan even ventured to America to begin the now infamous Oregon ashram and it’s ill-fated demise, his spiritual teachings reached Tamaki in Japan. Compelled to reach far outside his classical training for a full length tribute to the guru, Tamaki lays out a mind altering trip into some confounding musical spaces.

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     Ras Michael & The Sons Of Negus

    Ras Michael & The Sons Of Negus :: Love Thy Neighbour

    Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus’ Love Thy Neighbour is perhaps the last great masterwork produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry within the hallowed walls of his Black Ark studio. It is a testament to the uncompromising spiritual clarity of Ras Michael’s Nyabinghi mysticism, and to the dubwise delirium of the Upsetter’s sonic palette.

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People Are Like Radios :: Mike Miley on David Lynch’s American Dreamscape

With David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema, author Mike Miley, a literature teacher at Metairie Park Country Day School and former film studies professor at Loyola University New Orleans, unpacks just some of the ways Lynch’s ideas have reverberated across the cultural spectrum. Comparing and contrasting his oeuvre with art by Cormac McCarthy, Lana Del Rey, David Foster Wallace, Maurice Sendak, and others, Miley demonstrates the strange and powerful way Lynch tapped into the human experience and the broader American pop landscape. He joins us to discuss.

Water From Your Eyes :: It’s A Beautiful Place

This is the duo’s follow-up to the break-out Everybody’s Crushed, a cubist’s abstraction of rock music that you could dance to. It’s a Beautiful Place feels a bit more assured than its predecessor, a bit less confrontational, but still thrillingly volatile. Think Sonic Youth in a blender, Stereolab dodging shrapnel or Deerhoof with a chilly post-punk attitude, and you’re getting there, but no other band is doing exactly this right now.

Star Moles :: Snack Monster

On Snack Monster, Philadelphia-based artist Emily Moales sets out to explore a self-described “medieval via 1960s folk troubadour” ethos. A literary concept album pipeline inspired by the writings of twelfth century French author Andreas Capellanus, the record glimmers with the most charming benchmarks of Tascam-recorded, warbly bedroom pop. It’s a deliberately stripped down detour compared to previous Star Moles offerings, eschewing synthesizers for a romanticism in the paired down nylon string guitar and vocals.

Dog Days of Aquarium Drunkard

The heliacal rising of Sirius around late July traditionally marks the start of the dog days of summer. For the astrologically-minded, it begins an ill-omened period of drought and sickness. For the rest of us, it is simply hot and muggy. Either way, the antidote is probably about the same: shade, a cold beverage and some good music. We asked the AD crew, once again, to tell us what they were spinning in the high summer sun. What we got back has everything you need to beat the heat.

Dig in. The temperature is high. The air is muggy. The cicadas are deafening. And the stars are against us. All the more reason to make sure the vibes remain immaculate.

Director Ethan Silverman on AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex

AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex isn’t a typical music documentary. While it does do what a viewer might expect in terms of using talking heads, archival footage, and critical analysis to tell the story of glam pioneer Marc Bolan and T. Rex, it also presents behind the scenes footage of artists like Nick Cave, Joan Jett, U2, Macy Gray, and many more cutting Bolan’s songs in the studio for the late producer Hal Wilner’s T. Rex tribute album (also called AngelHeaded Hipster). The result is a film that puts his songs at the core. Director Ethan Silverman joins us to discuss.

Osees :: Abomination Revealed At Last

With Abomination Revealed At Last Osees careen on down in the headlong punk rock direction set out in 2022’s A Foul Form. John Dwyer’s double drumming, speed-and-volume addicted five-piece formation has never been sharper or more enraged. The opening cut, “ABOMINATION” requires not one but two full kits in furious motion to kick off, the one manned by Modey Lemon’s mighty Paul Quattrone, the other bashed to smithereens by Dan Rincon, an Osee through multiple spellings and iterations.

All One Song :: Rosali on “I Don’t Want To Talk About It”

This week is going to be slightly different. This week, we’re talking about a song that was not written by Neil Young. Nevertheless, it’s a song that is very much a part of the Shakey multiverse: Danny Whitten’s “I Don’t Want To Talk About It,” which appeared on Crazy Horse’s debut LP in 1970. Here to guide us through the impossibly lonesome landscapes of “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” is singer-songwriter Rosali Middleman — or just Rosali if you prefer. She’s been a longtime fixture over at Aquarium Drunkard. But even though we’ve loved pretty much everything she’s done, she somehow seems to get better with each new album. Her latest release, Bite Down on Merge Records, may well be her best effort yet.

Kenny Barron :: Lucifer

Word that pianist Kenny Barron’s 1973 debut as leader Sunset to Dawn was getting a welcome reissue this year sent us back to some of his other releases from that period. Most intriguing among them is his ultra-rare, never-reissued 1975 fusion experiment Lucifer, an album that mixes acid funk, sensitive balladeering, synthesizer experiments and queasy psychedelia. Practically impossible to acquire but eminently worth hearing, Barron never sounded as freaky as he does here.

Up In My Mind: An August Mixtape

One hundred and twenty-seven minutes of strange and mercurial music – slow burning, sprawling, smoggy, and ephemeral. 60s Kenyan folk and Thai garage rock; late 70s drum machine gospel from Inkster, Michigan, and private press psych from the Pacific Northwest; mid 80s Congolese electronic soul and Senegalese art-funk; Zambian highlife circa 1991 and experimental computer music made in a juvenile detention center in modern day Albuquerque. The same Hawa Daisy Moore mp3 files that were used in the inaugural Blue August Moon eleven years ago – the crackling tropical oasis showing signs of increased deterioration. These are just some of the sounds that Up In My Mind—the latest edition of our August mixtape—is steeped in. An irregular late summer tradition, but ever an occasion to look up, zoom in, and zone out.

Prairiewolf :: Upslope Brewing Company, Boulder, CO (7/5/25)

While Phish was playing a three-day run at Folsom Field at the University of Colorado this past Fourth of July weekend, the cats in Prairiewolf were playing an epic two-hour set at a brewery on the other side of Boulder. A pristine recording of the show catches them unspooling their already-potent album tracks into stretched-out improvisational odysseys.

Various Artists :: Maybe I’m Dreaming

With twenty selections culled from private press relics only, Maybe I’m Dreaming is a grab bag that feels as congruous as it does eclectic. From the Anthology Recordings diggers who brought you essential previous compilations like Sad About The Times, this collection is a self-described conscious detour, pairing synth-driven gems and reggae rhythms with rootsy AOR folk rock. Like a mixtape from a reliable old friend, Maybe I’m Dreaming feels curated with purpose and delivered with a panoramic reach.