Hataaliinez Wheeler grew up in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo Nation. And though he’s just recently released his Dangerbird Records debut, Singing Into Darkness, he’s spent the last few years creating as much art as he can—recording music, making lo-fi videos, and writing poetry. Today, he joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss his run-in with and shout-out from Mac Demarco, discuss the influence of his father’s record collection, and discuss what its felt like for his personal art project to find a life outside of his own head.
Author: Justin Gage
Banana And The Bunch :: Mid-Mountain Ranch
So steadfast was their faith in Jesse Colin Young, Warner Brothers ended up giving the frontman and his Youngblood cohorts the keys to a subsidiary label as the 1960s faded out. A greasy affair overall, the selections and the general atmosphere of camaraderie is cut from the same cloth as The Band’s early output, though with far less emphasis on the tightness of arrangements and harmonies.
Catching Up With Taper’s Choice
We last checked in with Taper’s Choice days before their first annual “Choice Fest” here in Los Angeles. Now, on the eve of the eagerly anticipated second annual event [Choice Fest, August 5th at Spoke Bicycle Cafe in Los Angeles], we reached out to the band to chart how things have grown and expanded, both in terms of fans and for themselves.
The Free Design :: Sing for Very Important People
There’s something enticing about a record that mysteriously strides the line between full-scale “children’s album” and, well, just another addition to the discography. Released the same year as their classic fourth record Stars/Time/Bubble/Love, legendary sunshine pop outfit The Free Design seemingly conquered both of these creative aesthetics with …Sing for Very Important People.
Far Caspian :: The Last Remaining Light
When people talk about the rise of the underground punk and grunge of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, they often talk about bands like Pixies and Nirvana harnessing the quiet/loud effect—the swing between chaotic moments of aggression and more mellow, melodic control—and how that can heighten the effect of each. Far Caspian’s Joel Johnston takes a similar approach in his music but with a different set of tools. Rather than the loud and quiet, Johnston deploys the busy and the bare, the dense and the deserted, building his songs piece by piece before leveling them entirely. Johnston never lets his latest record, The Last Remaining Light, remain static for long.
Sessão de Verão 4 :: Ana Frango Elétrico – No Promises Or Predictions
It has been almost 4 years since the release of Little Electric Chicken Heart but Ana Frango Elétrico has remained busy in the meantime, appearing on over 20 albums as a vocalist or instrumentalist.
PAINT :: Loss For Words
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.
Promises to the Holy Spirit :: Sinéad O’Connor (1966-2023)
What does it mean to really listen to the Holy Spirit? To take up your cross and faithfully follow? What does it take to pass through the eye of the needle? Sinéad O’Connor knew. When she was growing up, a young abused girl in Dublin, she made a promise to follow the call of the Holy Spirit that dwelled within her, a force she would later come to say was music itself. In this space, she took refuge, and in return she found her voice, a one of a kind sound capable of soaring or cracking, of great power and holy sensitivity.
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 Lagniappe Sessions :: Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection | Second Session
Backed by a murderer’s row of local Nashville talent (Erin Rae, Rich Ruth, Sean Thompson, Adam Bednarik and Dominic Billett), Spencer Cullum returns to AD fold with the following encore Lagniappe Session. Not unlike his 2021 entry, the set of covers riffs on various portions of Cullum’s musical diet, from the ’70s avant pop of Slapp Happy to the ineffable magic that was Soft Machine’s second full-length.
Mike Cooper :: Life And Death In Paradise
A world-weary would-be swansong by a maverick songwriter with nothing left to lose, Life and Death in Paradise is a portrait of Mike Cooper’s iconoclastic brilliance shining like the strange and glorious diamond it is, forever ahead of its time.
Transmissions :: Andy Zax
Producer Andy Zax joins us this week on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Zax was exploring Rod McKuen’s vaults one day when he uncovered something remarkable: lost music by electronic pioneer Mort Garson. Ahead of of Sacred Bones’ release of Journey To the Moon and Beyond, Zax joins Jason P. Woodbury to discuss his archival adventures in pop music, the moon landing, Woodstock, Leonard Nimoy’s late ’60s discography, his forthcoming Extinctophonics.
Videodrome :: David Lynch’s Georgia Coffee Commercials (1993)
Unlike Lynch’s other commercial work, which highlights his aesthetic trademarks while showcasing the brand’s merchandise, the Georgia Coffee campaign is as much an advertisement for the product as it is for Twin Peaks, simultaneously exhibiting the series’ seismic impact on pop culture as well as Lynch’s uncanny ability to straddle the line between the mainstream and the avant-garde.
Blake Mills :: There Is No Now
Produced and co-composed with experimental-indie-jazz legend Chris Weisman, Blake Mills’ new record feels like a slow-moving explosion — a heated fog. Mills, who by now has already won a Grammy and played with Joni Mitchell for a while, inverts the very folk he aims for here, unwinding and disintegrating it into lush, counterintuitive arrangements.
Ente :: Eternamente Sua
Ente is the main project of Arthur Bittencourt, one of the most promising names of contemporary Brazilian music. “eternamente sua”, the band’s second ever single (and the first from a debut record scheduled for this year), sounds like Clube da Esquina if they had been heavily into shoegaze. Bittencourt says he was influenced by Popol Vuh and Shostakovich as well as by the landscapes of Minas Gerais.