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
Author: Justin Gage
The Same Man: Bob Dylan’s “Shot of Love”
Even in its semi-bastardized state, Shot of Love stands as a major achievement. The songs harmonize into something spectacular, a perfect finished plan. Hard rockers, little love ditties, kaleidoscopic four-dimensional ballads, “Lenny Bruce”: it’s all here, everything you could ever want, bursting out the grooves like a blast of blue-orange Ben-Day dots. It is the album Bob Dylan wanted to make at the time, made the way Bob Dylan wanted to make it. His furnace of desire had not stopped burning. It never would.
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom :: Reset Mariachi EP
… the 2022 album Reset has been subject to many playful experimentations, including an expanded edition with remixes and instrumentals and an EP of dub versionings produced by Adrian Sherwood. For this year’s own toying with Reset, the goal was making mariachi versions of two of the record’s most compelling songs: “Danger” and “Livin in the After.”
Videodrome :: Obsession (1976)
Obsession is Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader at their most deliriously Hitchcockian, their fandom for the revered British director bursting forth from every frame. Obsession functions as a tale of memory and fixations as much as it works as a fanatical, meta-textual analysis of its creators: two young filmmakers obsessed with Vertigo, attempting to recreate their memory of it in their own image.
Niningashi :: Heavy Way
Branching off their Nippon Acid Folk 1970-1980 compilation, Time Capsule’s reissue of Niningashi’s 1974 LP Heavy Way is a gem of private press, outsider psych. Recorded and self-released while in pharmacy school, the young Tokyo-based musician and his six-piece band captured lightning in a bottle here, and sound like they had fun doing it.
Tidiane Thiam :: Africa Yontii
Tidiane Thiam’s last LP was a gorgeously stripped-down thing, featuring the Senegalese guitarist communing with nocturnal natural sounds. Africa Yontii, by contrast, is relatively lush and full, with beats, electric six-string and subtle electronics complementing Thiam’s intricate fingerpicking. It’s different, but the meditative space and spirit of the music remains.
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
Billy Talbot :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Way back in the 1990s, Neil Young started mentioning Early Daze, a collection of previously unreleased studio recordings he made with Crazy Horse in the late 1960s. As with most everything in Shakeyland, it was a long time coming … but this summer Early Daze finally emerged. Worth the wait? Oh yeah.
For further insight, we went to one of the guys who was there for it all — bassist Billy Talbot.
Luke Temple and The Cascading Moms :: Certain Limitations
While his nimble, soft guitar phrasings and textured harmonies often evoke experimentalists like Bill Frisell or Egberto Gismonti, in Certain Limitations, Temple has formed a trio with Kosta Galanopoulos and Doug Stuart (who they dub “the Cascading Moms”) to throw this recognizable aesthetic on top of contorting, broken rhythms—especially in the second half of the record, with the revolving-effervescent “It’s All About Timing” and the compressed-syncopated “Second Half.” The result is another gem of effortless pop perfection, that can be idle in form without ever giving up its frenzied steam.
Galaxie 500 :: Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90
Legendary dream pop and shoegaze pioneers Galaxie 500 just announced their first batch of new music in almost thirty years with the archival compilation Uncollected Noise New York 88-90. A double gatefold LP including a colored special edition inspired by TMOQ bootlegs, the release, scheduled for this September, includes b-sides, outtakes and rare versions of classics like “Blue Thunder” and “Fourth of July.”
Dog Days of Aquarium Drunkard
We were curious what people’s summers sounded like. So we asked a clutch of the regular contributors to tell us what they were listening to beat the heat and why. What we heard back made for a weird, wonderful soundtrack for this far stretch of the earth’s revolution around the sun. Here’s a slate of recommendations to power you through these dog days of summer.
West of Roan :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
West of Roan is a duo of Annie Schermer and Channing Showalter, two visual and performing artists, who share a love of old folk and myth, close harmonies, shifting drone and puppets. Though grounded in old, ancestral traditions—Celtic and Norse mythology, unadorned singing and the plangent tones of fiddle—the pair have resolutely avoided folk purism. “We’re pretty careful about performing traditional music,” Showalter explains.“ We think it through and we think about what we want to say about the song that we’re singing that’s not ours, and if we don’t feel like we really have much to say about it, we don’t always choose to sing it.”
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
The Glass Bead Band
It’s just guitar, drums and vocals for the duration of the Glass Bead Band’s self-titled debut LP, but that’s more than enough — this is killer stuff, perhaps not unlike something you might’ve heard on Touch & Go back in the mid-90s. Matt Stadelmann’s declamatory vocals and elemental (but still highly melodic) guitar, Marshall Yarbrough’s rock-solid rhythms, hypnotic song forms that occasionally build into explosive moments.
Drew Gardner :: Cygnus A
Drew Gardner steps out on his own with Cygnus A, leaving behind, at least for the moment, his longstanding partnership with Jesse Shepherd in Elkhorn, his free jazz-y improvisations with Flowers in Space (a trio with Andy Cush and Ryan Jewel) and his regular hippie psych collaborations with Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders. No, he’s all by himself here, contemplating the vastness of space, one man in the cosmos staring upwards in wonder.