The Leeds, UK group The Sorcerers have long excelled at making an irresistible brand of action exotica, cooked up from Sun Ra records, Ethio-jazz, Moondog minimalism and funky library grooves. The return of original keyboardist Johnny Richards, bringing with him a battery of vintage synths, gives their fourth album Other Worlds and Habitats an eerie, sci-fi glow and sprinkles everything in moondust. The result is an album of thick spacey global jams made up of vibes, horns, flutes, synths and one of the most rock solid rhythm sections out there.
Author: Justin Gage
Augustus Pablo :: East of the River Nile
East of the River Nile is a masterpiece of haunting and hazy ambience from Augustus Pablo (aka Horace Swaby), whose plaintive melodica leads waft through these dubbed-out instrumentals like fragrant and heady strains of ganja mist. Recorded at some of the most hallowed studios in Jamaica—Harry J’s, King Tubby’s, Channel One, and Black Ark—East of the River Nile boasts some serious dub royalty with master engineers like Errol Thompson, Sylvan Morris, Prince Jammy, and Lee Perry manning the console while the Barrett brothers, Robbie Shakespeare, Earl “Chinna” Smith, and The Upsetters are among the heavies throwing down the riddims.
The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)
Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. No static at all.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
Yesternow: Editor’s Note Volume Four
In this installment: The fading artistry of the billboards of the Sunset Strip. Late summer sounds spanning sunshine psych-pop to Mexican no wave. Crosstown car jams of late. The great Terence Stamp. The American analog to Oasis. Stevie Wonder in 1974 and more. The comments are open.
Smoke on the Skyline: Bohren & der Club of Gore’s Sunset Mission and the Art of Doom Jazz
Some albums don’t so much arrive as materialise – like a wisp of cigarette smoke caught in a streetlamp’s beam after rain. Bohren & der Club of Gore’s Sunset Mission (2000) is one of them, unfolding at a pace that leaves room for the scent of petrichor to linger in the air. There’s a European lineage here, from the melancholy of Tomasz Stańko’s Polish jazz to the urban fog of Miles Davis’ Ascenseur pour l’échafaud soundtrack. But the pacing belongs to Bohren alone – glacial, immersive, and attentive to the silence between notes. Like David Lynch’s best work, the music makes beauty and menace share the same room; a brushed cymbal could be a velvet curtain’s hush or rain on a car roof while you wait for someone who might never come.
Happy End :: S/T (1973)
When Japanese four-piece Happy End wanted to follow up their folk rock masterpiece Kazemachi Roman with their own slice of the “California sound” in 1972, they went about it the natural way. Show up at Hollywood’s mythical Sunset Sound studio, equipped with a suitcase full of cash and a pearl (a special gift for the producer Van Dyke Parks). Though the language and cultural barrier proved challenging, Haruomi Hosono looks back on the sessions fondly. With a decisively mellow tone throughout, the final eponymous Happy End record recalls formative west coast influences such as Buffalo Springfield, while foreshadowing the innovative solo ventures of Hosono, Eiichi Ohtaki and Shigeru Suzuki.
Hand Habits :: Blue Reminder
From the opening moments of “More Today,” it’s clear that Blue Reminder will be lush and lucid, its massive drum-and-guitar onset giving way to smoke-y, smoldering, blues-nodding torch song. “And if this ends tomorrow…/no actually I just don’t want it to,” Duffy muses, getting at the central paradox that our happiest moments contain the seed of later sadness. Because really, this is an album written in contentment but aware of its impermanence. It’s the chill through the weighted blanket, the prickle of unease in a shared laugh with loved ones. We’re always dying, always failing, always breaking up, even when it seems like we’re on top.
Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: August 2025
Freeform transmissions 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 Thai rock & roll, lo-fi drum machine gospel, private press psych, Congolese electronic soul, Senegalese funk, and more. Tyler follows it up with a bunch of Neil Young-ian bonus tracks as a complement to the All One Song podcast that he’s hosting this summer. Sunday, 4-6pm PT.
Negro Leo :: Água Batizada
Rio de Janeiro-based label QTV has just reissued one of the most influential Brazilian records of the last 10 years, and certainly the best of the scene of “canção torta” (“twisted song-form”) that the label themselves initiated in the 2000s. Água Batizada is the most pop-sounding Negro Leo ever was, uncategorizable and leftfield as his work tends to be, as it focuses on the extreme potential for indie experimentation and soft surrealist poetics within the musicosmovision of MPB.
Johnny Hartman :: I Just Dropped by to Say Hello (1964)
It’s near impossible to discuss midcentury crooners without mentioning Johnny Hartman. His tender approach to balladeer vocals epitomizes the post-war era of American jazz singers; his rich baritone is the sonic wallpaper to smoky lounges and amber-hued clubs, where night owls relax on the axis of the wheel of life, “to get the feel of life from jazz and cocktails.”
Jessica Risker :: Calendar Year
Jessica Risker lets the sunshine into her delicately folky, faintly psychedelic songs, but that sunshine casts a shadow. The Chicago-based songwriter bubbles and charms amid droning kraut propulsion while the cover of her second album depicts the artist in an upper floor of a weathered city building, holding helium balloons, and that about sums it up. Risker floats weightless fantasies from urban grit and realism.
Jagged Jaw :: On The Ice
On The Ice is the latest EP from Jagged Jaw, the nom de plume of Chicago-based musician, Bobby Lord. At times evoking the meditative atmosphere of Harold Budd and the haunting nostalgia of Air’s The Virgin Suicides OST, On The Ice highlights Lord’s many talents as a musical Swiss Army knife: composer, producer, engineer, and an artist with a cohesive vision.
The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)
Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. No static at all.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
More From The Vault :: The Grateful Dead in 1975
Just about 50 years ago, the Grateful Dead took the stage at the Great American Musical Hall, a newly opened 500-capacity club in downtown San Francisco. The ensuing show, captured on a sparkling 16-track recording, was eventually released in 1991 as One From The Vault. As its title suggests, the double-disc set was the Dead’s first dip back into their live archives, kicking off a cavalcade of concert tapes that continues to this day.
Nineteen-seventy-five is one of the stranger years in the Grateful Dead’s long, strange trip. The band played only three other shows in addition to the GAMH gig, all hometown affairs, all fairly different from one another, all very much worth your time. Now at Aquarium Drunkard, a brief listening guide follows …
Cass McCombs :: Interior Live Oak
Interior Live Oak is a striking change of pace for Cass McCombs. His last album Heartmind was all set pieces: eight distinct tracks with eight distinct vibes. Interior Live Oak works in fewer hues but more shades. Every song here has its own little signpost, an indelible sonic signature to situate and settle you on your trek across the record’s four exquisite sides. By the time it wraps on the barn-burning title track, you’re ready to hit play on “Priestess” and do it all over again. It’s a fully-realized ecosystem, a California of the stereo.