On The Turntable

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    Fugazi

    Fugazi :: Red Medicine

    In 1995 Fugazi released Red Medicine which to us here at AD was a radical shift in the band’s recorded trajectory. The arrangements grew more complex, the studio-as-instrument ethos becoming fully realized with more extreme textures. From lo-fi abstractions to widescreen feedback, to moments of tender beauty, the overall feel of the album felt more personal, even down to the packaging itself.

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    Styrofoam Winos

    Styrofoam Winos :: Real Time

    Styrofoam Winos—the Nashville-based trio of Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel—follow up their 2021 self-titled debut with Real Time, an endearing and invigorating collection of shaggy southern rock and dusty, woolen folk. With a lo-fi, ambling ease, they cruise through road-weary choogles; swampy, faded funkers; harmonica swept confessionals; and meditative, noodling jaunts through the passage of time.

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    Werther

    Werther :: 1970 S/T

    A fine fit for the coming turn of the season, Brazilian singer and guitarist Werther’s 1970 self-titled album is a warm and inviting document of gentle, airy bossa-nova, the music lively and eclectic with folk and Tropicália inflections and adorned with sumptuous orchestral arrangements and choral gatherings.

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    Yoshiko Sai

    Yoshiko Sai :: Mangekyou

    Before the explosion of city pop, before shibuya-key and Tokyo’s collectors mania, there was already Mangekyou itself, the 1975 debut record from Yoshiko Sai, then just a 22 year old dropout from the art school of Kyoto. Approaching the 50 year anniversary of Sai’s legendary debut, WEWANTSOUNDS has announced a reissue that will see the album available outside of Japan for the first time ever.

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    Chu Kosaka

    Chu Kosaka :: Arigato

    Chu Kosaka’s Arigato is wide-open pastoral bliss. The natural extension of Happy End with a bit more of a singer-songwriter orientation, Kosaka pieces together what could be the finest example of American country rock through the lens of a Japanese perfectionism. Don’t let that fool you. The tunes are loose.

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    Les Rallizes Dénudés

    Les Rallizes Dénudés :: 屋根裏 YaneUra Oct. ’80

    YaneUra Oct. ‘80 is their latest release, which bridges the gap between the classic Live ‘77 and the recently unearthed CITTA’ ‘93, which was released for the first time in 2023.

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    Nap Eyes

    Nap Eyes :: The Neon Gate

    Arriving after a four-year gap, the latest album from the acerbic Canadian indie rock band reveals a group in a state of graceful turmoil and artistic ferment. A work of stoned eschatology involving Yeats, Pushkin and a jet-ski-racing game for the N64, The Neon Gate finds Nap Eyes scattered but not disenchanted, committed to finding new ways to sound exactly like themselves.

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    Christopher Owens

    Christopher Owens :: I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair

    It’s been long enough. This is the album we’ve been waiting for Christopher Owens to make for over a decade… as bold and beautiful and great as any one of the immortal Girls records.

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Transmissions :: Real Estate

This week, a talk taped earlier this summer with Martin Courtney of Real Estate. Real Estate has been releasing great albums since the late 2000s. This year, they released their sixth LP, called Daniel. Produced in Nashville by Daniel Tashian, who produced Kacy Musgraves’ breakthrough Golden Hour, it’s a mellow, refined sound—deeply rooted in acoustic ‘90s rock textures and dappled with pedal steel. It’s a record about growing up, and accepting all that comes with accumulated time spent here on earth. 

Richard Swift :: 4 Hits & A Miss

“If the freedom doesn’t kill you/Well then man, I think the politics might.” Richard Swift cracks that line in “The Original Thought,” the opening number of 4 Hits & A Miss-The Essential Richard Swift, a 50-minute, 14-song collection that serves as a primer or introduction to the late songsmith. Lovely, charmed, oddball, and often ha ha funny, this playlist presents Swift as a pop wizard/joker/wisecracking oracle, tap dancing the line between sarcastic wit and transcendental wisdom.

Limbo District :: Carnival

Limbo District made its own rules. The Athens, Georgia post-punk outfit spliced hammering Afro-centric rhythms to Weimar cabaret decadence in theatrical performances that pushed late 1970s gender norms to the breaking point. They were out and gay before almost anyone, creative in a variety of artistic disciplines and an inspiration to a whole generation of wild, weird Athenians: Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Keith Strickland of the B-52s and members of Pylon.

Helen Merrill :: S/T (1955)

For the latest entry into our ‘Midnite Jazz’ series, we take a trip back to Manhattan circa 1954 and find a twenty-one-year-old Quincy Jones embarking on his first studio gig as an arranger for Helen Merrill’s eponymous debut album.

Aquarium Drunkard Book Club :: Chapter 31

Welcome back to the stacks. It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our monthly gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading. In this month’s stack: a guide to Krautrock, Lucy Sante’s sermons for Bob Dylan, plot twist poetry, and tomes devotes to Alan Vega of Suicide and The MC5.

Rogê :: Curyman II

Rogê is steeped in bossa nova tradition, building lush, rhythmically restless compositions that are light as air but resonant with feeling. Here in his second U.S. released solo album, the Brazilian native now living in LA, pays tribute to the genre’s masters, covering João Donato’s “A Rã,” “A Força,” from his collaborative album with Seu Jorge and “Lendo Do Abaeté” a song made famous by Dorival Caymmi, while also taking the form in new directions with original material.

Mount Eerie :: Night Palace

Phil Elverum emerges from unimaginable loss in Night Palace, returning from relentless (and understandable) exploration of his own wrenching experiences to consider again the largeness of the natural world, the purpose of art and human transience. This larger scope extends not just through the lyrics, but into the sound of this double album, which throws off the limitations of poetic, minimalist, lyric-focused indie folk and dallies with rock, drone, free improv, country and black metal.

Tomin :: A Willed And Conscious Balance

As the electric keys of the “Untitled Dirge” minisuite kicks off A Willed and Conscious Balance, it’s evident that Tomin Perea-Chamblee’s shapeshifting palette expands upon his own woodwind arrangements, transmuting an orchestral symmetry with the record’s ensemble. It’s a record with an ever-evolving framework, conveying the essence of canonical free jazz entities with a set of signifiers that sounds ambivalently modern.

Bondo :: Harmonica

LA based post-rock quartet Bondo returns with their sophomore LP, Harmonica. Recorded live to tape by engineer and producer JooJoo Ashworth, Harmonica conveys an organic sensibility that only a live band can communicate. There is a tightness, a musical understanding through technique and dynamics with an added dimension of nuance – some improv, and the happy accidents that can only come from four people playing together live.

Barry Archie Johnson :: Fortune’s Mirror

Though he’s been playing for years, Fortune’s Mirror, released by the esteemed VDSQ imprint, is Barry Johnson’s proper instrumental debut, and has the distinction of possibly being the most “California” sounding solo guitar record to come out since Will Ackerman’s first few albums for Windham Hill.

SW Hedrick :: Devotional Drift: Vol 1

Though he’s best known for his work in thrash metal band Skeletonwitch, guitarist SW Hedrick sets his sights on more pastorale zones with Devotional Drift: Vol. 1. A collection of meditative guitarscapes and consciousness-expanding grooves, the album was recorded at Scott Hirsch’s Ojai studio Echo Magic (Hirsch mixed the album, too). Devotional Drift finds Hedrick evoking Fripp, Fricke, Göttsching, Rother et al, but it’s no mere pastiche; nor is it overly monastic.

Lee Baggett :: Waves For A Begull

Existing in a dusty space between shambolic whimsy and rock solid songwriting, the experience of a Baggett record is one in which the stalwart musician crafts his own classic rock fantasy. Like an afternoon drive through a seaside beach town, Waves of a Begull delivers the washed out guitar rompers you need this year.