Modern Nature :: The Heat Warps

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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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Double Wide Denim: A Medley

MixtapesPosted on

Double Wide Denim: a weird amalgam of Mel McDaniel, Don Williams, Dickey Betts, David Allan Coe, Molly Hatchet, ZZ Top, Dwight Yoakam and beyond. A playlist that evokes Coors Lite, charcoal grills, ice chests, lakes and pontoon boats . . .

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Water Damage :: Live at Le Guess Who?

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Live at Le Guess Who is exactly what the title suggests: a live recording from the much loved Utrecht experimental music festival documenting a single set from mighty Austin collective Water Damage. The band’s motto is “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation.” Its members pursue the collective liftoff that comes from grinding a riff down so hard that it turns into something else. “Reel 28” carries the faint echo of Oneida’s “Sheets of Easter.” Instead of one note, there are five, but the way that tight, repetitive discipline yields transcendence and expansiveness is exactly the same. This is music as . . .

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Isaac Sherman :: A Pasture, Its Limits

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An adventurous electroacoustic artist working in the tradition of Terry Riley and Laurie Spiegel, Isaac Sherman combines the refracted glow of L.A.’s ambient jazz scene with more tactile synth excursions. Though adroit at loop-based synth improvisation, Sherman has turned to tighter structures and more definite rhythms for his first proper album. Though its name suggests a concern with boundaries and demarcations, A Pasture Its Limits finds ways to make the territory it stakes out feel expansive if not endless . . .

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Augustus Pablo :: East of the River Nile

Augustus Pablo Reggae/DubPosted on

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. Recorded at some of the most hallowed studios in Jamaica—Harry J’s, King Tubby’s, Channel One, and Black Ark—East of the River Nile boasts some serious dub royalty with master engineers like Errol Thompson, Sylvan Morris, Prince Jammy, and Lee Perry manning the console while the Barrett brothers, Robbie Shakespeare, Earl “Chinna” Smith, and The Upsetters are among the heavies . . .

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The Sorcerers :: Other Worlds and Habitats

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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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Gwenno :: Utopia

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Gwenno's Utopia is an exceptionally compelling work that masterfully strikes a balance between playful and poignant in both the musical and lyrical expression. It’s a beautiful and sophisticated work that stands out for its singularity and humanity, marking a momentous moment in Gwenno’s artistry . . .

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

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Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. No static at all.

34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .

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All One Song :: Ethan Miller on “Music Arcade”

All One Song Neil Young PodcastPosted on

This week, our All One Song guest is Ethan Miller. Ethan has been a longtime fixture in the underground, first coming to my attention back in the early aughts as the co-founder of the psych noise pioneers Comets on Fire. But Ethan is nothing if not prolific — he’s played with an array of awesome bands over the years, from Howlin Rain to Feral Ohms to Odyssey Cult. Ethan was also one-fourth of Heron Oblivion with our previous guests Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley … and he’s one-third of the Orcutt Shelley Miller trio, with another previous . . .

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Yesternow: Editor’s Note Volume Four

YesternowPosted on

In this installment: The fading artistry of the billboards of the Sunset Strip. Late summer sounds spanning sunshine psych-pop to Mexican no wave. Crosstown car jams of late. The great Terence Stamp. The American analog to Oasis. Stevie Wonder in 1974 and more. The comments are open . . .

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Smoke on the Skyline: Bohren & der Club of Gore’s Sunset Mission and the Art of Doom Jazz

Bohren & der Club of Gore JazzPosted on

Some albums don't so much arrive as materialise – like a wisp of cigarette smoke caught in a streetlamp's beam after rain. Bohren & der Club of Gore's Sunset Mission (2000) is one of them, unfolding at a pace that leaves room for the scent of petrichor to linger in the air. There's a European lineage here, from the melancholy of Tomasz Stańko's Polish jazz to the urban fog of Miles Davis' Ascenseur pour l'échafaud soundtrack. But the pacing belongs to Bohren alone – glacial, immersive, and attentive to the silence between notes. Like David Lynch . . .

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Happy End :: S/T (1973)

Happy End Harry HosonoPosted on

When Japanese four-piece Happy End wanted to follow up their folk rock masterpiece Kazemachi Roman with their own slice of the "California sound" in 1972, they went about it the natural way. Show up at Hollywood's mythical Sunset Sound studio, equipped with a suitcase full of cash and a pearl (a special gift for the producer Van Dyke Parks). Though the language and cultural barrier proved challenging, Haruomi Hosono looks back on the sessions fondly. With a decisively mellow tone throughout, the final eponymous Happy End record recalls formative west coast influences such as Buffalo Springfield, while foreshadowing . . .

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Hand Habits :: Blue Reminder

Hand HabitsPosted on

From the opening moments of “More Today,” it’s clear that Blue Reminder will be lush and lucid, its massive drum-and-guitar onset giving way to smoke-y, smoldering, blues-nodding torch song. “And if this ends tomorrow…/no actually I just don’t want it to,” Duffy muses, getting at the central paradox that our happiest moments contain the seed of later sadness. Because really, this is an album written in contentment but aware of its impermanence. It’s the chill through the weighted blanket, the prickle of unease in a shared laugh with loved ones. We’re . . .

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Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: August 2025

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Freeform transmissions 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 an hour of Thai rock & roll, lo-fi drum machine gospel, private press psych, Congolese electronic soul, Senegalese funk, and more. Tyler follows it up with a bunch of Neil Young-ian bonus tracks as a complement to the All One Song podcast that he's hosting this summer. Sunday, 4-6pm PT . . .

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Negro Leo :: Água Batizada

Brazil Negro LeoPosted on

Rio de Janeiro-based label QTV has just reissued one of the most influential Brazilian records of the last 10 years, and certainly the best of the scene of "canção torta" ("twisted song-form") that the label themselves initiated in the 2000s. Água Batizada is the most pop-sounding Negro Leo ever was, uncategorizable and leftfield as his work tends to be, as it focuses on the extreme potential for indie experimentation and soft surrealist poetics within the musicosmovision of MPB . . .

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