On The Turntable

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    Modern Nature

    Modern Nature :: The Heat Warps

    When we last checked in with Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature, he and his band were drifting into territory that suggested ambiance over sturdy form on 2023’s No Fixed Point in Space. But with the rhythm section of bassist Jeff Tobias and drummer Jim Wallis augmented by new guitarist and vocalist Tarra Cunningham, the UK band’s latest, The Heat Warps, finds Cooper in the most guitar centric zone he’s explored since the heyday of his old indie rock band Ultimate Painting.

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    Mark Hollis

    Mark Hollis :: Mark Hollis

    The quietly revolutionary Talk Talk singer made one final album before calling it quits: his self-titled solo album debut, from 1998. While often overshadowed by the majestic experimentation of his former project’s late work, Mark Hollis harbors its own secrets and surprises, while building upon the work those albums began. As a final testament, it’s a fitting paradox, full of roaring silences and whispering explosions, a collection of whisper-thin abstractions that have been annealed into something durable and concrete.

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    Cass McCombs

    Cass McCombs :: Interior Live Oakey

    Interior Live Oak is a striking change of pace for Cass McCombs. His last album Heartmind was all set pieces: eight distinct tracks with eight distinct vibes. Interior Live Oak works in fewer hues but more shades. Every song here has its own little signpost, an indelible sonic signature to situate and settle you on your trek across the record’s four exquisite sides. By the time it wraps on the barn-burning title track, you’re ready to hit play on “Priestess” and do it all over again. It’s a fully-realized ecosystem, a California of the stereo.

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    Western Extra

    Western Extra :: Zig Zags on the Book of Changes:

    “Wish you were here/as I sing bloody mary to the mirror/and the chandelier begins to tremble,” sings Donovan Quinn in a charcoal shaded drawl, in the laid-back but evocative “Black Pine Estates.” It’s the first cut from the first album by Western Extra, Quinn’s project with Chris Rose of Vampire Hands and Robust Worlds, and as close as you can come, musically speaking, to getting stoned with your most well-read friend.

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    Smoke

    Smoke :: Everything

    In this day and age, very few albums are truly lost. Some just get misplaced. Take Bay area jazz band Smoke’s 1973 album Everything, an album that should be universally acknowledged as a stone-cold classic of groove music and proto-acid jazz and yet seldom gets mentioned. A half-century later, it still sounds fresh. Spacey, funky and ambient in turn, Everything managed to anticipate so much of where twenty-first century jazz has recently wound up.

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    Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley, Ethan Miller

    Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley, Ethan Miller :: S/T

    There’s serious rock and roll firepower at play in this inaugural disc from three grizzled, amp-damaged veterans. You know Bill Orcutt from his noise-jamming youth in Harry Pussy or his more recent coruscating solo electric albums. Steve Shelley comes direct from drumming through free-form grooves with Winged Wheel and, before that, from his work with Sonic Youth, the acknowledged acme of cerebral guitar interplay. And Ethan Miller is the man behind the 21st century’s last practicing classic rock band, Howlin’ Rain and, before that, the sky-scorching Comets on Fire.

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    Augustus Pablo

    Augustus Pablo :: East of the River Nile

    East of the River Nile is a masterpiece of haunting and hazy ambience from Augustus Pablo (aka Horace Swaby), whose plaintive melodica leads waft through these dubbed-out instrumentals like fragrant and heady strains of ganja mist.

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    The Sorcerers

    The Sorcerers :: Other Worlds and Habitats

    The Leeds, UK group The Sorcerers have long excelled at making an irresistible brand of action exotica, cooked up from Sun Ra records, Ethio-jazz, Moondog minimalism and funky library grooves. The return of original keyboardist Johnny Richards, bringing with him a battery of vintage synths, gives their fourth album Other Worlds and Habitats an eerie, sci-fi glow and sprinkles everything in moondust. The result is an album of thick spacey global jams made up of vibes, horns, flutes, synths and one of the most rock solid rhythm sections out there.

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Mark Hollis :: Mark Hollis

The quietly revolutionary Talk Talk singer made one final album before calling it quits: his self-titled solo album debut, from 1998. While often overshadowed by the majestic experimentation of his former project’s late work, Mark Hollis harbors its own secrets and surprises, while building upon the work those albums began. As a final testament, it’s a fitting paradox, full of roaring silences and whispering explosions, a collection of whisper-thin abstractions that have been annealed into something durable and concrete.

Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts :: Denver 2025

We wrapped up the first season of our All One Song podcast last week, bringing to an end a summer’s worth of heady conversations with some great musicians and writers about their favorite Neil Young tunes (and much more). And in a pleasing bit of synchronicity, Neil himself showed up in Denver a few days later to play his first show in Colorado in almost a decade—and we were there to witness it.

Transmissions :: Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords)

Welcome to season 11 of Transmissions. This week: New Zealand songwriter, actor, and composer Bret McKenzie. You may know him as one half of the indie pop/comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, but he’s back with a new solo album of ’70s inspired pop, Freak Out City. He joins us to discuss, divulge about his reggae past, and share a story about one of Ian McKellen’s worst acting days.

Anastasia Coope :: Pink Lady Opera

Over a loosely persistent drumbeat, thumping strings, and bright fantasia synths, Anastasia Coope chants of falling castles and coveted truths on “Pink Lady Opera,” the first song shared from her forthcoming DOT ep, out this Halloween, and her first new piece of music since her excellent 2024 debut, Darning Woman.

Go Kurosawa :: Soft Shakes

The post-Kikagaku Moyo universe expands with the release of soft shakes, the solo debut from Go Kurosawa, the disbanded Japanese quintet’s drummer and vocalist. The second solo release from a member of the now defunct band, following Tomo Katsurada’s Dream of the Egg EP last year, soft shakes finds Kurosawa, who is also a co-founder of the excellent Guruguru Brain label, remaining largely true to his former outfit’s sound while also injecting his own sandcastle style of playful eclecticism.

Turn My Head Into Sound: A History of Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine

While there is no shortage of online scholarship about My Bloody Valentine, Turn My Head Into Sound is the first published biography of the group and its visionary founder, Kevin Shields. Taken with Mike McGonigal’s entry in the 33 1/3 series that focuses strictly on the band’s landmark album Loveless, and the various books and documentaries dealing with the band’s record label, Creation Records, we now have as comprehensive a picture of Shields and his activity between 1985 and the present as we are likely to get.

Jens Kuross :: Crooked Songs

While on tour in Boise two years ago, Hayden Pedigo found himself mesmerized by the performance from local opener and Idaho native Jens Kuross. Conjuring thoughts of rarified accomplishments like Arthur Russell’s transformative World of Echo, the Woodsist debut of former session musician Kuross is a deliberate attempt to recapture that intimate setting in recorded form. The emotional sparseness and stripped down, electric piano compositions register Crooked Songs as a landing spot for the beginning of a bountiful second act for Kuross.

Chicago Underground Duo :: Hyperglyph

The throughline of their vast body of work is Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor’s commitment to the Chicago Underground project, the origins of which date back to 1998. Sometimes morphing into Chicago Underground Trio, or most recently as Chicago Underground Quartet with guitar player Jeff Parker and saxophonist Josh Johnson on 2020’s jazz-centric Good Days, Mazurek and Taylor inevitably return to each other as simply Chicago Underground Duo with Hyperglyph.

Videodrome :: The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967)

Just like Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, and Dean Martin before him, Roy Orbison attempted to cross-pollinate his musical career with screen acting via the western genre. But unlike the aforementioned singers, Orbison’s time as a matinee idol would be short-lived, producing only one film: Michael D. Moore’s The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967).

Modern Bible: A Lost Acid Folk Masterpiece from the Japanese Underground

As a record collector, some albums exist more like myths than tangible objects. You come across a passing mention, just enough to spark curiosity, and soon you’re chasing shadows, trying to confirm whether the record even exists. About 15 years ago, this happened to me with a record called Modern Bible, a recording deep from the Japanese underground credited to an Angura theatre troupe named Gekidan Buraiha (“Gekidan” being a Japanese word for “theatre troupe”).

King Tubby Meets Jacob Miller in a Tenement Yard

An absolutely wicked, top-ranking slab of primo mid-70s dub from King Tubby. Ranging from the hard-driving squelch of “Dreada Dread Dub” and “Roman Soldiers of Dub” to the trailing twinkle of “Suzie Wong Dub” it’s easy to imagine keyboardist Touter Harvey stepping onto the Mothership and tapping in for Bernie Worrell. Filtered through Tubby’s arsenal of echo, flying hi-hat, and other flick-of-the-wrist console wizardry, these dubs are heavier than two tons of high grade in the sunshine, and they’ll linger straight through to next summer.

Aquarium Drunkard Book Club :: Chapter 35

It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our monthly gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading. In this month’s stack: the labyrinthian life and career of one Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John the Night Tripper, the rise, fall, and resurrection of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, a deep dive into the revolution in rhythm and sound that is Jamaican dub and reggae, a wild ride through the NYC underground, from Fluxus to free jazz, and the first installment in Rachel Cusk’s critically acclaimed trilogy The Outline.