From the rare and obscure to the unknown, producer Tee Cardaci mines eleven genre-spanning gems produced during the waning days of Brazil’s military dictatorship, recorded by a new emerging class of artists operating outside of the major label system.
Like its predecessor, this 16-song collection was compiled by garage rocker and record-maker Mikey Young and Keith Abrahamsson. Dusty crates and piles of singles.
Incredibly potent era of the JGB recorded live at the Keystone in Berkeley, California, on November 17 and 18, 1975. Nicky Hopkins on acoustic piano takes it over the top. CD only. Released in 2009.
From the beginning Paint has been less sweatily engaged in real-world, rock-band aesthetics than the Allah-Las. Spiritual Vegas, from 2020, draped a surreal glaze and shimmer over its drawling boogies and vamps. But Loss for Words goes much further, dissolving radio pop like a tablet of Alka-Seltzer in water, leaving nothing but bubbles.
Philly’s Spacin’ coasted into 2016 with their long delinquent second album Total Freedom. Recorded deep in the depths of the Chillinger Community Center, the fuzzed out choogle they hang their no shirt, no shoes, no problem mantra on is transmitted blaringly loud on the opening cut “Over Uneasy”.
A wide cast, including avant-R&B singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, trumpeter Josef Leimberg, punk jazzers Irreversible Entanglements, cosmic reedist and vocalist Angel Bat Dawid, vocalist Malcolm Jiyane Tree-o, Grandmaster CAP, and remixers Dennis Bovell, Rich Medina, Moon Medicin, Sanford Biggers, Joel Tarman, and the Kronos Quartet unite to explore, expand, and reinterpret Sun Ra on Red Hot & Ra: Nuclear War and Red Hot & Ra: Nuclear War (Remixes).
Originally released in 1981, crucial second dub effort from Scientist. Produced by Roy Cousins at Channel One and featuring Sly & Robbie along with members of The Revolutionaries, The Aggrovators and The Soul Syndicate.
With Light in the Attic’s release of The Night and Like Swimming, the story of Morphine unfolds deeper thanks so new liner notes by Ryan H. Walsh. He joins us to discuss the Boston trio’s singular sound.
Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions; this week on the show, we’re joined by arvis Taveniere of Woods. You know his long running Woods band with Jeremy Earl of course—and Woodsist, their record label and Woodsist Festival, which returns September 23-24 upstate with Kevin Morby, Avey Tare, Cochemea, Tapers Choice, Ana Saint Louis, Natural Information Society, Kurt Vile, Scientist, DJ Aquarium Drunkard—that’s our own Justin Gage—plus many more. The band also just released a glowing new album, Perennial, which finds the band in a gentle, rambling mode.
Thief has been hailed as a Marxist neo-noir classic, a cinematic bridge between the gritty realism of the crime-dramas of the 1970s and the hyper-stylized action films of the 1980s. But besides being a genre bedrock, Thief is a nuanced character study that serves as an allegory for the trappings of capitalism.
Peter Case might have made his name with the speedy rock trio The Nerves and the chiming Plimsouls, but he’s spent much of the last handful of decades following his muse into unexpected territory. His latest albums, Doctor Moan and The Midnight Broadcast, speak to his breadth, drawing deeply from blues and jazz—harkening back to classic works like his 1986 solo debut, which was crafted with T-Bone Burnett and Mitchell Froom. All along, Case has been interested in chasing songs in a very classic and rooted sense, and he’s keen to see where they might lead him—no matter how shadowy the terrain. Aquarium Drunkard rang Case earlier this year to discuss.
There’s a Paul McCartney record from 2005 called Chaos and Creation In The Backyard that came out just as I was beginning my senior year of high school. I’ve never listened to it, but I think about its title all the time…
This week, we shift from the band’s chronological narrative to consider the many factors that bind this chaotic mass of people together in this creative yet uncommercial experience. We open with our focus on the role that music has played in the band members’ individual lives and how a shared love of music brought them all together. This morphs into a consideration of the band’s many artistic influences, with a close look at the impact of the Wu-Tang Clan on Sunburned. We hear about the complicated and often difficult backgrounds of many of the Sunburned musicians and how jamming with the band can often serve as a type of group therapy.
Everything about Pharoah Sanders’ eponymous 1977 album is a gift. It’s a masterpiece of quiet mystique and joy that almost never was. Despite the fact that the maestro himself was never satisfied with the album and rarely spoke about it, Pharaoh took on a life of its own over the next four decades to become one of Sanders’ most hallowed and revered recordings. Now available for the first time since its original release, Pharaoh has been rejuvenated with the splendor 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, going above and beyond with a veritable trove of liner notes, photos and ephemera, and two previously unheard versions of Pharoah’s meditative opus, “Harvest Time.”
Frequencies in flux, it’s Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab. This month, Chad DePasquale drops in with New Happy Gathering, featuring a blend of rustic sounds, lo-fi gospel, and electronic psych-pop. Then Jason P. Woodbury’s Range and Basin, featuring slo-mo rock & roll, surf-tinged pop, and spaced out psych. Then Tyler Wilcox arrives with Doom & Gloom from the Tomb, indulging the “tune in/zone out” region with about an hour’s worth of one of Wilcox’s favorite songs: “By This River” by Eno/Moebius/Roedelius. Hypnotic! To close, The Vacant Lots share a mix of songs that influenced the chrome plated retro-futurism of their album Interiors.
If you played bass on both Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, your legacy is going to be pretty much set. But if you’re Richard Davis, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 93, those are just two high points in a career full of lofty peaks. Davis could go as far out as necessary (he teamed up with fellow upright master Reggie Workman on Pharoah Sanders’ spiritual jazz epic “The Creator Has A Master Plan”) or add a little magic as an ace session player (did you know that he’s on Born To Run and There Goes Rhymin’ Simon?). To celebrate the bassist’s life and work, here are a handful of brilliant moments to check out.
Helmed by songwriter Karly Hartzman, Wednesday has evolved from an Asheville, NC solo project to a full-fledged band with five albums to their name. On them, Hartzman’s voice careens from a near yodel to a clear scream, sometimes within the span of a single song, melodic riffs periodically punching through. And lyrically, their latest Rat Saw God continues to embody that Southern smaller-town spirit, weaving in hometown references and encapsulating the teenage sweet spot of horror-meets-ennui specific to the band’s origin point. It’s music full of haunted spaces: Gothic, but not in the sense of black lace and The Cramps; warmer, more like a red hoodie and some Drive By Truckers.
“Words can mean different things, from day to day they change their meaning,” MC Taylor sings at the start of Jump For Joy, his latest under the reliable and stalwart Hiss Golden Messenger banner. Adopting a new character—named “Michael Crow,” with a subtle nod—allows Taylor a little space to move around. And tellingly, he uses much of that wiggle room to indulge in layers of funk (“I Saw the New Day in the World”), lithe soft-rock (“Shinbone”), and Dead-indebted shuffles (“California King”). Hiss Golden Messenger’s best records always balance honeyed charm with existential weight, but here the ratio feels exactly right: words change their meaning, after all, and though Taylor concludes the album confessing he “speaks a dead language,” it’s clear he’s got plenty of new things to say. Taylor joins us to discuss.
Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
