An absolute one-off of the purest grade. Erik Heller dropped in with Look Where I Am in 1967 and immediately vanished. The Vanguard LP came out of nowhere. A fleeting artifact that has outlived its creator, Heller can’t be found in another band, has no prior recordings, and nothing would surface down the road. There isn’t a clear picture of Heller’s background, how the record came about, or even a list of the studio musicians that prop up much of the LP.
Author: Justin Gage
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.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
Circuit des Yeux :: Halo On The Inside
Haley Fohr wrote Halo on the Inside at night, alone, gripped by an obsession with transformation, with Ovid-style metamorphosis from animal to human, from human to tree, from god to beast. The horns she wears on the album cover evoke Pan, the god of nature, fertility, music and spring, and the music inside, likewise, pushes relentlessly through the dirt, finding light and life and purpose in the struggle towards the light.
Takuro Okada :: The Near End, the Dark Night, the County Line
The stateside debut of a versatile Japanese guitarist focuses on mostly solo work, largely recorded at home over a period of years. Encompassing ambient ECM mellowness, electronic urgency and tangy noir, The Near End, the Dark Night, the County Line shows us an eclectic musician stubbornly chasing tranquility and always restlessly on the move.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy :: The Aquarium Drunkard Session
Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy offers a three-song set of exclusive recordings for Aquarium Drunkard. Tune in to hear “Boise, Idaho” and “Guns Are For Cowards” from his great new album The Purple Bird and “Behold, Be Held!” from 2023’s Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Adeline Hotel
Under the moniker Adeline Hotel, New York-based musician Dan Knishkowy has spent nearly the last decade releasing one fantastic album after another. A benchmark identity of the project is that no release ever repeats quite the same sonic foray, a deliberate approach taking creative inspiration from the likes of Jim O’Rourke and Arthur Russell, the musician revealed to AD last year. After hearing that sound mutate from fingerpicking guitar to the jazzy orchestral pop of Hot Fruit to last year’s personal concept album Whodunnit, Adeline Hotel’s inaugural Lagniappe Session reveals everything on full display.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Yves Jarvis
Reviewing Yves Jarvis’ All Cylinders, we wrote, “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.” Those are clearly classic touchstones, but Jarvis does more than tap into them: he taps into their spirits and synthesizes them into something brand new. Jarvis is a melodic polymath, which is made clear by his first ever Lagniappe Session, which finds him covering material from Porter Robinson, John Mayer, and a standard from Frank Sinatra.
Dub Syndicate :: Out Here On The Perimeter 1989-1996
Continuing the drive to get the On-U Sound catalogue back out there and following on from the ’80s Dub Syndicate box set Ambience In Dub, the label presents the Out Here On The Perimeter box set – with a title that makes no effort to hide the label’s otherness from usual dub fare – collating four Dub Syndicate records spanning 1989-1996. As a special bonus, a fifth recording is included entitled Obscured By Vision, on which Sherwood reworks rhythms from the period.
The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PST, Channel 35)
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
Midnite Jazz :: The Tommy Flanagan Trio (1960)
The Midnite Jazz column returns with The Tommy Flanagan Trio (1960): a purely laid-back rendezvous into classic jazz ballads and standards. With a sprightly runtime of just over a half-hour, it’s the perfect soundtrack for late-night strolls after last calls, when the streets are as hushed as the trio’s dynamics.
The Pretty Things :: Rock St. Trop
Sometimes a record’s peculiar milieu is so anomalously ingrained with the finished product that attempting to separate the two is a futile exercise. The “lost” 1969 album Rock St. Trop (sometimes simply titled Philippe DeBarge) is a glaring case study.
Will Stratton :: Points of Origin
Will Stratton ditches his usual delicacy and heads deep into fire country on his eighth album, delivering a quietly ambitious and wholly convincing set of songs about conflagrations, California and the steady erosions of time. Featuring an array of characters connected by circumstance, saloons and prisons of society’s making as well as their own, Points of Origin expands on (and pares back) Stratton’s careful fingerstyle guitar arrangements and folk melodies to incorporate the bizarro American visions of Steely Dan and Jimmy Buffett. It’s a vivid and exquisite update of rock’s bummer era to fit today’s more sinuous dystopias.
Geologist :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
We caught up with Brian Weitz (Geologist) late in February about his new collaborative record with Doug Shaw, A Shaw Deal, which transforms guitar sounds into an eclectic, sometimes unrecognizable shapes and patterns, as well as about his fascination with the renaissance instrument, the hurdy-gurdy, which he first heard at a Keiji Haino concert at Tonic in the aughts, and now employs to create hallucinatory improvised sets, about as far from the Ren Faire as a stringed instrument can wander. He’ll be releasing an album of hurdy-gurdy music later this year.
David Grubbs :: Whistle From Above
This is Grubbs’ first solo LP since 2017, though he has, in between, made records with a Ryley Walker, Taku Unami, Jan St. Werner and the Wingdale Community Singers. This one, too, is a collaborative effort, though Grubbs remains at its intellectual center, pushing the boundaries with precision, rigor and surgical cleanliness, but pushing them all the same.
Echolalia :: S/T
For a debut founded on the sensibilities of musical friendship, the coexistence of playfulness and brilliant musicianship makes Echolalia a refreshing marvel. Here’s hoping there’s plenty more to come.