Lijadu Sisters :: Horizon Unlimited

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Numero Group has just announced a high fidelity release of the Lijadu Sisters' beloved 1979 album Horizon Unlimited, This is the first in a multi-year series of records (including unreleased material!) in a campaign to bring the pioneers of Nigerian afro-pop to a wider audience, a project that the label calls "equal parts reissue and reparation . . .

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Lower East Side Art Lab :: Inside The Pyramid Cocktail Lounge with Matthew Shipp 

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Imagine a young and unknown future free jazz icon, cutting a rug on a crowded, carefree dance floor in a rundown part of the Lower East Side next to a hedonistic crew of marauding drag queens, experimental theater pioneers, hardcore punks, old Ukrainian neighborhood patriarchs, painters, poets, and other East Village outcasts and weirdos. Matthew Shipp joins us to discuss the legendary Pyramid Cocktail Lounge, its kaleidoscopic clientele, and the anarchic freedom of early '80s NYC . . .

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Peel Dream Magazine :: Rose Main Reading Room

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Since 2018, Joseph Stevens' project Peel Dream Magazine (aptly named after BBC Radio 1's John Peel) puts out music of unpredictable variety with predictable recurrence. While the band describes itself as extending the luxurious studio pop tradition of Burt Bacharach or The Beach Boys, and even as a middle point between Steve Reich and Sufjan Stevens (!), any attentive listener will recognize in its sound the influence of luminaire indie acts: the softest parts of Yo la Tengo and The Clientele, the playful lightness of Stereolab and The High Llamas . . .

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Wally Badarou :: Echoes

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Lying somewhere between the demarcations of electro-pop, high life, and the Caribbean diaspora sits the solo excursions of synthesized session heavyweight Wally Badarou. A guru behind the computerized keys and best known as The Talking Heads’ secret weapon on Speaking in Tongues, it was Badarou’s penchant for unfathomably catchy fills and phrasings that elevated “This Must be the Place” and “Burning Down the House” to the legendary earworm status they maintain today. This may be the most immediate reference point on Badarou’s extensive resume, but the sounds explored on his solo records are illuminated more clearly within . . .

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Soft Machine :: H​ø​vikodden 1971

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A few weeks after the release of the incredible Fourth, the classic quartet of the Soft Machine--Mike Ratledge, Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt--played an unlikely two-night stand in an art museum in Høvikodden, Norway, some twenty minutes outside of Oslo. Personal relations within the band were low; tensions were high; and founding drummer Robert Wyatt was already looking for the exit. But what transpired on those nights, now captured in a massive archival release from Cuneiform Records, was arguably the finest incarnation of the Softs at the absolute peak of their powers. Høvikoddden . . .

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The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)

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Amour velours. 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 . . .

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Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers :: Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens

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Central Park's Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens, the first recorded collaboration between long-time AACM musicians Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers, produces imaginary soundscapes to the concrete landscapes of Manhattan's largest open area. This delicate psycho-cartography, a miniature model of what is already supposed to be a microcosm of nature itself, is weaved through the slow erosion of the geology of the piano by the crying winds of the trumpet . . .

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Emergency Group :: Mind Screen

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Emergency Group don’t have anything to prove at this point, at least not around these parts. Over a pair of albums (and an all-timer Lagniappe Session), they have shown themselves one of the most lethal improvisational rock units around. But while everyone would have welcomed another helping of their headlong neo-kraut assault, their new album goes in a different direction entirely. In Mind Screen, Emergency Group have made a smoldering late-night record, all quiet interplay and expansive spaces . . .

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Transmissions :: Mark Lightcap (Acetone/Dick Slessig Combo)

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This week, we welcome one of our favorite musicians to the show: Mark Lightcap of Acetone and the Dick Slessig Combo. Last year, New West Records reissued Acetone’s discography, featuring illuminating liner notes by J. Spaceman of Spiritualized/Spaceman 3 and Drew Daniel of Matmos/The Soft Pink Truth. The occasion prompted a great conversation with Mark that we published in written form last year. This week on the show, he joins us for a loose talk from his backyard in LA. From “beautiful music” to his run-ins with Oasis, this conversation takes plenty of fascinating turns . . .

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Pat Keen :: I Saw A Bug

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I Saw A Bug isn’t a lonesome highway; it’s an American cabaret. There are backcountry signifiers, to be sure—banjo and pedal steel and fingerstyle guitar—but there are also eerie synths and drum machines and MIDI programming that make the album feel like a slightly extraterrestrial simulacrum of American music. Almost as if aliens were trying to recreate the country and western songbook based on the handful of AM radio signals that had finally made it past Alpha Centauri . . .

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Richard Tripps :: Between The Morning

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Like the coziness of nostalgia, the 4-track tape recorder is immediately evident during the guitar jangle that opens "Blue Eyed Open Sky". Recorded in a tent cabin on a river in the musician's hometown of Big Sur, California, the lo-fi aesthetic of Richard Tripps sophomore album was a deliberate choice, inspired by the analogue charm of tape, where the musician's formative demos crossed paths with key influences like the VU and fellow Big Sur psych-folk outfit The Range of Light Wilderness . . .

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Guided by Voices :: Strut of Kings

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“Olympus cock in Radiana/struts the strut of kings,” declares Robert Pollard, against a vamping guitar riff in this, the 41st year of the phenomenon known as Guided by Voices. We can celebrate 30 years of being able to listen to the great Bee Thousand now, but the real triumph is that Guided by Voices just keeps going. Its crashing guitar chords and Who-like drum explosions, its dream-state lyrical surrealities, its inevitable melodies burst from Strut of Kings as fresh and powerful as ever . . .

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You Can Sound Like Yourself :: David Bazan on Pedro the Lion’s Modesto

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Nothing is simple. Self-knowlege is won painfully, insight by insight, song by song. On his latest album under the Pedro the Lion banner, Santa Cruz, songwriter David Bazan examines the complications of family, faith, and the past—and how it informs the present moment . . .

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On Harry Whitaker’s Black Renaissance

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On January 15, 1976—what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 47th birthday—the pianist Harry Whitaker assembled a group of musicians at Sound Ideas Studio on West 46th Street in Manhattan to record what would eventually be released as Black Renaissance – Body, Mind And Spirit. Whitaker had gained experience playing piano in Roy Ayers’ band and as musical director for Roberta Flack for most of the 1970s, but this session was an opportunity for Whitaker to see his specific musical vision become reality . . .

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Transmissions :: The Dirty Three

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There are heavy hitters, and then there's The Dirty Three. A trio comprising violinist Warren Ellis, guitarist Mick Turner, and drummer Jim White, these Australian independent rock legends recently returned with their first album in 12 year, the aptly titled Love Changes Everything. This week on Transmissions, The Dirty Three explore their history, reflect on the life and work of Steve Albini, and recall their days opening for The Beastie Boys . . .

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Posted on Jim White Mick Turner Podcast The Dirty Three Warren Ellis