Rosali :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Rosali joins us for a discussion about her fourth full-length, Bite Down. It’s her best record yet and it embodies the healing power of art: “Music and songwriting have always been a spiritual healing practices for me. I think it’s trying to help people feel something, to have a connectedness in our humanity.”

Bill Orcutt :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Guitarist Bill Orcutt has expanded past genre, throwing blues or jazz or noise into the experimental blender that is his distinct guitar playing. Whether the jagged notes jutting out of his Telecaster, the algorithmic waves made in his open-source synth program, or his layered compositions with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, he continues to subvert expectations time and time again. Ahead of his live release, Four Guitars Live with the aforementioned group, we sat down with Orcutt, talking about Steve Reich and Phill Niblock, improvisation, and using algorithms to find songs to cover.

Patrick Sansone :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Though he’s known for his work with Wilco and The Autumn Defense, Pat Sansone embraces wordless vistas and inner/outer cosmic tones on Infinity Mirrors, evoking the work of Steve Roach, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine Dream. Sansone corresponded with us about his teenage synth fixations, and how photography and mindfulness tie into the expansive spaces of his new album.

Linda Smith :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Linda Smith started recording cassettes at home in the late 1980s, painstakingly writing out simple parts for voice, guitar, bass and percussion, laying them down on a four-track, dubbing them onto cassettes and selling them by mail order to a handful of admirers—many of them also DIY musicians. ow, following its 2021 compilation Till Another Time: 1988-1996, Captured Tracks has reissued Smith’s two exquisite mid-1990s cassette recordings, Nothing Else Matters and I So Liked Spring.

Nora Brown :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Nora Brown has been playing old time music since she was six years old. She came up in the folk scene surrounding the Jalopy Theatre, the headquarters of traditional music in New York City. Gearing up for a European tour this spring, she spoke with AD about the banjo, the vibes of old time music, listening to your elders.

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

During his 2020 live album Axiom, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly known as Christian Scott aTunde) states that he and his band are “reevaluating what we’re playing and why.” The result of that process can be heard on 2023’s Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning. Dedicated to his grandfather Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. of the Guardians of the Flame and his uncle, renowned saxophonist Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. of the Congo Square Nation, the songs on are a change of direction for Chief Adjuah in terms of both sound and subject matter.

Omni :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

On their fourth album, Souvenir, Atlanta’s Omni continue to find variations within a spartan approach to Southern U.S. post-punk. Recruiting drummer Chris Yonker (Hello Ocho), guest vocalist Izzy Glaudini (Automatic), and first-time producer Kristofer Sampson (The B-52s, Nashville Pussy), the trio’s hooky, minimalist songs are sharper than ever.

Itasca :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Kayla Cohen’s Itasca has grown over the last decade or so from a solitary acoustic pursuit into a full-band enterprise where pensive art folk kicks up a country rock ruckus. Her latest, Imitation of War, was conceived in the isolation of COVID out in California’s Yucca Valley but came to life in collaboration with long-time associates, Evan Backer on bass, Daniel Swire and Evan Burrows on drums, Robbie Cody producing and mixing.

“My past albums feel like growth experiences, but with this album I’ve gotten to a place where I still feel like it’s me, now, and we recorded it two years ago.”

Robert Pollard :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

2023 was a fantastic year for Guided by Voices. The trio of records that came out – La La Land, Welshpool Frillies, and the late-year Nowhere to Go But Up – are some of the best the band has put out in the seven years its most recent incarnation has been together. Founding member Robert Pollard seems just as chaotically creative as ever, whether it’s the pure volume of songs or the developing shape they take. Over the holiday break, Pollard caught up with Aquarium Drunkard via email about the latest trio of albums, how the writing process works for the band 7 years and 16 albums in, the challenge of writing lyrics for music that already exists, and the transformative power of a Glen Campbell cover of your own work.

Thandi Ntuli :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Rainbow Revisited was recorded over the course of two sessions in 2019, between Ntuli’s grand 2018 epic Exiled and last year’s shimmering Blk Elijah & The Children of Meroë. An accomplished bandleader, Ntuli might never have recorded a collection of solo tracks had percussionist/producer/sorcerer Carlos Niño not reached out after seeing a video of her warming up.

Catching Up With Ilyas Ahmed

It’s been a busy couple of months for Ilyas Ahmed. First, Grails (the long-running band Ahmed joined a few years back) released the awesome Anches En Maat, which was quickly followed up by an extensive European tour. Then in October, the Portland, OR-based artist released his excellent new solo record, A Dream of Another. Recently, we hopped on the phone to get his thoughts on a variety of topics.