It’s hot. 91 degrees today as I type this listening to records in my office in northeast Los Angeles. Preemptive 4th of July explosions abound after dusk, echoing the cities ambient social temperature. Like every summer, it’s all lit up. So let’s get to it: I’ve been bouncing between various books, films and records, some good, some great and some, well, trashy.
Author: Justin Gage
Richard Wright :: Wet Dream
Amid Pink Floyd’s inevitable implosion initiated by Dark Side of the Moon’s monumental success, the groundwork was laid out for the eventual collapse of the prog-gone-hitmaker behemoth. Egos ran amuck, an aging band found familial responsibility eating away at creative time, and the specter of commercial viability lurked behind every brainstorming and recording session. Fury and slurry ensued; accusations of members not pulling their weight lobbed off; the active feuds and subdued passive aggression over the directions of their projects would become lore as the group eventually parted ways. Buffered in chaos, Richard Wright quietly put to tape what can credibly be argued the best Floyd-adjacent solo record, Wet Dream.
Lightheaded :: Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming!
Dedicated students of the pop underground, Lightheaded inhibits a wide-eyed coexistence with formative heroes from the Glasgow indie school, sixties sunshine pop and plenty of like minded stalwarts from their Slumberland label. Following the New Jersey group’s excellent debut Combustible Gems last year, Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! is a self-described more collaborative effort, including enlisting a handful of those formative heroes. Don’t call it naivety, but the band’s shambolic guitar pop dreams up their own hypothetical, optimistic world: lyrical themes of umbrellas, gardens and sunsets take center stage.
Atletas :: Reflexão Meteórica
Mario Cascardo’s first few records, under the moniker Mario Maria, already captured a charming kind of Brazilian ingeniousness: João Gilberto-like vocals and airy guitars were filtered and fused through an old, broken laptop. It was lo-fi in the truest sense: not as an arbitrary aesthetic choice, but as the creative result of a technical obliqueness at the frontiers of capitalistic development. Cascardo’s more recent releases as Atletas, like others from his label Municipal K7, provide even stronger evidence that lo-fi is now happening at the margins, where artists are using their own global displacement as blueprint for new musical imaginations.
The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)
Outré California. 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
R&D :: I’ll Send You A Sign
A new project from Adeline Hotel’s prolific Dan Knishkowky is always a welcome surprise, and here the guitarist/composer teams up with harpist and fellow Brooklynite Rebecca El-Saleh (Kitba) for a thrilling, improvisational affair. Finding a shared common ground over themes of “warm yet visceral” textures, the bridge between Knishkowky’s fingerpicking guitar and El-Saleh’s harp makes I’ll Send You A Sign register as a transcendent soundscape infused with a jolted yet serene Americana landscape.
Black Moth Super Rainbow :: Soft New Magic Dream
It was just about two decades ago that Black Moth Super Rainbow pulsed and vibrated and vocodered into view, with the freak-electronic classic Dandelion Gum, a synth-blaring magical garden of day-glo delights. BMSR’s main proprietor has released music sporadically ever since, both under the Black Moth Super Rainbow name and as TOBACCO. So while it’s been seven years since the last BMSR album, Panic Blooms, there have been a slew of solo, beat-driven TOBACCO albums in the interim.
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer :: Different Rooms
Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer follow their 2022 collaboration with Different Rooms, an ambient collage record that once again unites the worlds of cosmic jazz and modular synthesis. The result of their second encounter is another meditative electronic improvisation marked by a glossy timbre of bells throughout, as smooth and crystalline as a pool of soft pebbles.
Max Roach :: M’Boom
Max Roach’s deep vision of the drums as a communicator of limitless expression permeates every corner of his pathways. Starting in 1970, his M’Boom percussion ensemble was a collective that brought together an array of African, Latin and all sorts of global rhythms. On this 1979 record, the ensemble explores all sorts of polyrhythms with original compositions from all of the expanded octet, as well as abstractly paying tribute to the likes of Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk.
The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)
Outré California. 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
Sandro Perri :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Sandro Perri is a patient excavator of musical possibilities. For the last three decades, the Toronto based musician has put out meticulously crafted toy adventures marked by hypnotic loops and heartfelt deliveries, in songs that feel refreshingly un-derivative and that carve a distinctive space in the landscape of contemporary experimental pop. What unifies the cerebral techno of Polmo Polpo, the imaginative funk of Impossible Spaces, or the seemingly infinite mosaics of the more recent records, though, is the piecemeal lacing of cell fragments by the game of restraint and discovery of his artistic research.
Various Artists :: Save the Waves: People for Public Media
In June, the House of Representatives voted to eliminate all $1.1 billion in Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the next two years. Mike Horn, who records as the cosmic ambient Seawind of Battery, is fighting back, raising money to support public radio and TV through this 19-track compilation. It’s a worthy cause, and you could justify the purchase strictly on philanthropic grounds. However, Save the Waves is also an excellent compendium of the current state of ambient, (mostly) instrumental psychedelia, topped up with contributions by Takoma-style pickers, experimental droners, slowcore dreamers and improvising guitar heroes. Don’t buy it because you should. Buy it because you want to.
Bill Evans :: Waltz for Debby (1962)
Waltz For Debby captures the symbiosis of the Bill Evans Trio beautifully — a live documentation of three musicians whose relationship with each other eclipses being bandmates for something far more powerful and cosmic. It’s the kind of confluence that happens once in a lifetime for most musicians, and that’s if they’re lucky. It’s the sound of stars aligning; it’s the sound of capturing lightning in a bottle.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Cameron Knowler
Cameron Knowler is one of the latest young guns to distinguish himself in the ever evolving world of guitar soli, most readily apparent via his 2025 long-player, CRK, released earlier this year by the eveready Worried Songs. As we noted in our review, Knowler is indebted to his instrument’s history; his playing steadfast, concise, and open to the possibility of the unexpected. For this installment of the Lagniappe Sessions Knowler pays tribute to genre godhead John Fahey, Norman Blake, David Nape and Elizabeth Cotton.
Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: June 2025
Freeform transmissions from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab. 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 some languid summertime folk & woozy dream pop, and Tyler follows with some singer-songwriter-ish zones. Sunday, 4-6pm PT.