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

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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can now be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with an encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app. Justin Sullivan is Night Shop. Tune in as he guests during the first hour.

SIRIUS 531: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Marc Bolan - Pain And Love (demo) ++ Damien Jurado - Allocate ++ Night Shop - The One I Love ++ Billie Holiday - I’ll Look Around ++ Santo & . . .

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Mattson 2 Play ‘A Love Supreme’ :: The AD Interview

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John Coltrane's vaunted A Love Supreme is a record with baggage. And while almost none of it is negative, the price of absolute reverence can be untouchability, or worse, mass appeal. And while the record may be Starter Pack worthy, underneath fifty-three-years of slow-burn into the popular consciousness  is still a musicality and composition that wows first-time listeners and to-this-day informs creators and philosophers alike.

But the album has never been untouchable. Artists have tried recreation and exploration, all with varied results. Yet it is still bold for the Mattson 2 to attempt a rendering of the esteemed Classic. Judged as a whole, the Mattson twins' take on Coltrane's opus is part worthy homage, part contribution to the ever-ongoing dialogue around the piece. Their version feels fresh, unique, and technically incredible.

Aquarium Drunkard: Did your dive into A Love Supreme start from a place of recitation and trying to get it down pat, or was there a creative undercurrent or burst right from the start?

Jared Mattson: It wasn’t an initial burst - what we wanted to do was pay reverence to the piece as far as the foundation and the theory of it - really get that dialed in the classic jazz manner. We had all the elements available in our head when we got to recording, and with all these elements, were able to create and add our own, unique voice to it. We didn’t want to repeat the lines that we had learned but we wanted those lines to be there just in case we wanted to quote from the original in a more referential sort of way.

Jonathan Mattson: I think that also highlights a really important point about jazz in general — half of jazz,   musicians say, is covers of older stuff, paying reverence to the past, and the other half is doing more original stuff. And what Jared and I did was, we did our homework and learned the piece and learned all the stuff around it, even the musicology aspects of it, we took that and used our own original approach to it. And we applied our own background, our own original sound, and made it our own, leaving the integrity of the piece, so you could still tell that its Coltrane.

There are certain [versions of the record by other artists] that just sound too much like the original, why not just listen to the Coltrane album? I’d rather just do that. You’re getting so close to it, and Coltrane does it so much better. And then there’s the other school, which I love, and they do a completely different take on it. Like Alice Coltrane, she does “A Love Supreme” in an amazing way, but it’s so different, you could almost give it another name. Any jazz musician could really sit down and delve into Coltrane and learn the technique, but what we brought to it and made it ours was our backgrounds and our compositional style. And also our telepathy as twin brothers, our ability to jam and improvise together as twins.

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Cornelia Murr

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Lagniappe (la ·gniappe) noun ‘lan-ˌyap,’ — 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.

The Lagniappe Sessions return with Cornelia Murr whose debut lp, Lake Tear of the Clouds, dropped earlier this month. Produced by Jim James of My Morning Jacket

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Sidecar :: Aquarium Drunkard’s Bi-Monthly Newsletter

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Every two weeks, Aquarium Drunkard delivered straight to your inbox. Audio esoterica, interviews, mixtapes, playlists, exclusive content, and more. Check out this week's issue, featuring our recommendation of the meditative "Albatross" megamix, and don't delay, subscribe now

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Network 77 :: Escalator to the Stars

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Near the end of "Escalator to the Stars," the first episode of the new comedy series  Network 77, Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift, as hosts of a star sign-themed segment about pop music called Astrology Domine, speculate what about Bob Dylan "really encapsulates that Gemini spirit." "He constantly disappoints his fans," Hitchcock deadpans. "That's why they keep coming back for more." The joke sprawls out from there, into improvised riffs about Dylan's dating life and Iowa City's two Starbucks locations. By the time the credits roll, featuring the charging French new wave of Edith Nylon, you may find yourself wondering what exactly you just watched. Network 77 feels a little like being let in on a secret.

Quietly released onto the internet last month, the show features an all-star indie rock cast, including Swift, Hitchcock, Ted Leo, Jon Wurster of Superchunk and The Best Show, Pat Sansone of Wilco and The Autumn Defense, and more. The conceit is simple, built around a number of individual segments, including Pulse 77, a mock news report about the rise of "new wavers," Parade of Strange, which features a look at the "disappearance" of country singer Dottie Carroll, a Rockpalast-styled music program called "Muziekpop," featuring a performance by modern Nashville band Creamer, though you'd never guess it from the Raspberries meets Todd Rundgren sound. Along with these and other diverse clips, Network 77 provides the sensation of flipping through channels sometime in the late '70s or early '80s, complete with period-appropriate graphics and text, time checks, commercials, and bumpers for programs yet to air – including "The Judee Sill Show," a parallel universe variety show hosted by the late, and legendarily reclusive, singer/songwriter.

Created, written, and directed by Rachel Lichtman, who wrote and directed the Boyce & Hart documentary, The Guys Who Wrote 'Em, Network 77 was born from a desire to create as “dense and beautiful a world as I could.” Calling in favors from friends, including graphic designer Jeff T. Owens and editor David Shamban, Lichtman turned to her massive library of vintage production tools – including a "super OG, groovy production music library" – to create something that feels as funny as classic SCTV and as retro-accurate as recent shows like IFC's   Documentary Now! and Netflix's GLOW.

“I knew there was an audience for this particular kind of vibe," Lichtman says. After all, it's what she wanted to see on the screen herself. “I have a fascination with lost art, lost graphics, fonts, or things that would never even make it to the 21st century," Lichtman says.

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Transmissions Podcast :: Yosuke Kitazawa/Remembering Richard Swift/Strange Stars

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Humid funk out there, but we're keeping cool. You are tuned into the July edition of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast, our monthly series of interviews,  features, and audio esoterica. On this episode, Justin Gage sits down with crate digger and producer Yosuke Kitazawa, to discuss Light in the Attic Records' Japan Archival reissue series, which kicked off last year with the essential rock/folk/and pop compilation Even a Tree Can Shed Tears, picks up next month with a grip of Haruomi Honsono reissues, and will eventually feature Japanese new age, AOR, ambient, and electronic music.

Then, we crack the spine on author Jason Heller's new book, Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded. Focusing on the 1970s, Heller explores the myriad ways science fiction influenced music across genre lines, from the rock of David Bowie to the cosmic jazz of Sun Ra, and examines the changing ways we continue to conceive our ideas about "the future." But first, Gage and co-host Jason P. Woodbury sit down to reflect on the passing of Richard Swift. A prolific producer and sideman–known for his work with Damien Jurado, the Shins, the Black Keys/Dan Auerbach, Laetitia Sadier, Foxygen, David Bazan, the Pretenders, Starflyer 59, Kevin Morby, and countless more–Swift also proved himself one of the most idiosyncratic voices in indie rock on his own solo LPs for Secretly Canadian. Recorded at the beginning of the month, just after the news of his passing had broken, the talk focuses on his legacy, history, of course, his songs.

Transmissions Podcast :: Remembering Richard Swift/Yosuke Kitazawa/Strange Stars

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James Booker :: The Lost Paramount Tapes (1973)

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One night in 1973, pianist James Booker and his band, freshly seasoned from recent shows at the nearby club Dirty Pierre's, sauntered into Paramount Recording Studios in Hollywood. It was late at night, maybe 10:30 or 11, and the plan was loose. Booker sat down at a spinet tack piano, and his group of Dr. John associates–bassist Dave Johnson, drummer John Boudreaux, saxophonist David Lastie, guitarist Alvin "Shine" Robinson, and percussionists Richard "Didimus" Washington and Jesse "Ooh Poo Pa Doo" Hill– proceeded to cut a record.

As the story so often goes, the tapes got shopped around to labels, each one passing on them, and a reference copy wound up shelved somewhere to be mostly forgotten. Booker went on to find appreciative audiences in Europe, where he was hailed as an American treasure, "the Black Liberace," or as Dr. John called him, "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced," all the while struggling with substance abuse, which eventually resulted in his passing in 1983.

But good sounds have a hard time staying a secret forever. This August, General General and Vinyl Me Please is set to reissue the wild recordings Booker and co. laid down that night, 45 years after the fact. The album follows a CD edition of the tapes released by DJM in the '90s, but the new version comes with expanded liner notes by Lily Keber, director of the essential Booker documentary Bayou Maharajah, and decked out with a new cover, featuring a photo snapped by Ginny Winn, one of the rare photos featuring a two-eyed Booker. The music here provides a startlingly electric taste of what led Allen Toussaint to call Booker "an extraordinary musician, both soul-wise and groove-wise."

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

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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can now be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with an encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app.

SIRIUS 530: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Gil Scott-Heron — Message To The Messengers ++ Sinkane — U’Huh ++ Gal Costa — Relance ++ Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy w/ Tortoise — Cravo î‰ Canela ++ Yoko Ono — Mind Train (AD edit) ++ Lizzy Mercier Descloux — Wawa ++ Yabby U — Conquering Dub (excerpt) ++ Serge Gainsbourg — Javanaise Remake ++ Brian Eno — No One Receiving ++ Faust — Just A Second (Starts Like . . .

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Daniel Bachman :: The Morning Star

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Our romanticized image of the American Primitive-style guitarist is of a solitary figure. We picture him or her alone, hunched over six strings, eyes closed in concentration or reverie, shutting the noise of the world out. On his latest effort, the ambitious, challenging and beautiful  The Morning Star, Daniel Bachman lets some of that noise in.

The . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Wilder Maker

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Lagniappe (la ·gniappe) noun ‘lan-ˌyap,’ — 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.

Wilder Maker’s new album Zion is an angry yet passionate, tongue in cheek dispatch from singer/guitarist Gabriel Birnbaum (Debo Band) and his long-time collaborators Katie Von Schleicher, Nick Jost (Baroness), Adam Brisbin (Sam Evian, Jolie Holland) and Sean Mullins. The album is self-described as a "kaleidoscopic snapshot of years hustling for a break in New York City” - and ultimately reconciles that while change cannot be stopped, embracing the current uncertain state of being is where art is created. That is “Zion” - for better or for worse — for all of us. Wilder maker in their own words, below . . .

Wilder Maker :: I Wanna Destroy You (The Soft Boys)

This is a song both me and Katie had secretly wanted to cover for a long time - this is closer to my concept than hers - the lyric is so angry, and I was interested in feeling that anger but also finding a steady, repetitive rhythm that would give it a calm, uncanny, creepy feeling. A violence under the surface that you could only barely see, rather than a straight up sneer.

The original is also so strum heavy that i thought it would be cool to reimagine it without any chugging guitars. Me and Sean tracked the piano and first drum track live and then we all slowly layered things over it, including Adam Brisbin's beautiful guitar arpeggio part. We spent a lot of time making editing choices and removing parts to keep it feeling clean and minimal.

Wilder Maker :: Back, Baby (Jessica Pratt)

Katie took the production lead on this one. This is such a beautiful song that we just wanted to augment it, create an alternate version where it was recorded with a full band. We used a drum part very close to the part for a Wilder Maker song called “Infinite Shift” that got cut from Zion, but which I hope we can release soon, and added just enough to make it feel full, trying to avoid any kind of heaviness that would weigh it down. Katie’s piano part is one of my favorite moments, and the watery weird guitar that me and Adam added to the refrain that closes it out. Oh, and Nick’s hilarious baroque bass melody in the part where the drums drop out, that cracks me up still.

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Did It! :: A Jerry Rubin Player

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In the last years of the 1960s, pop culture and revolution felt synonymous. "The late 1960s-early 1970s were an era when on a college kid’s dorm room, there would be a poster of both Mick Jagger and Angela Davis," said author Pat Thomas last week when we spoke with him about his book covering the rise of political provocateur Jerry Rubin,  Did It! From Yippie To Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, An American Revolutionary.

In his own way, Jerry Rubin was a rock star. The revolution may not have been televised, but it was certainly soundtracked. Following our long-form interview, Thomas offered up this Rubin-themed mixtape, featuring songs the defined an era, and Rubin's renegade spirit:

It was pure coincidence yet simply part of the synergy of the 1960s, that during the week of late August riots on the streets of Chicago, the Beatles released “Revolution” as a single (at the beginning of that tumultuous week) and the Rolling Stones released “Street Fighting Man” as a ‘45 as the protests wound down five days later. Talk about iconic bookends!

While just shouting out the slogan, “Yippie!” was part of the soundtrack of the era, Jerry Rubin was closely aligned with many of the musicians of the day. Protest singer Phil Ochs become a friend early on, while an unknown Rubin was still marching across the UC Berkeley campus in 1965. Ed Sanders, co-leader of the infamous Fugs was part of the Yippie conclave when they started up in ‘67. Rubin encountered Bob Dylan in ’65 and again in ‘72 trying to rope the legendary bard into street-level political activism without success, and most infamously, it was Rubin who introduced the band Elephant’s Memory to John and Yoko which resulted in the Lennon’s double-album of protest songs Some Time In New York City,  in which Rubin is mentioned twice in various song lyrics and was responsible for some of the subject matter, such as the song “John Sinclair,” about the manager of the MC5.

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Diversions :: Nathan Salsburg / Beyond ‘Third’

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Diversions, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, catches up with our favorite artists as they wax on subjects other than recording and performing.

The first time I heard "Impossible Air," the third track from Kentucky guitarist Nathan Salsburg's third lp Third, I was overwhelmed. Though like the other nine songs that accompany it, "Impossible Air" features nothing more than the sound of Salsburg's unaccompanied acoustic guitar, each low string buzz and striking string bend captured simply and cleanly. Like the best guitar soli, Salsburg's songs offer a gift to the listener: the gift of space. His songs, formed from elements of ancient American traditons and elegant Celtic ballads, create room to feel, articulating that weird middle ground between melancholy and sweetness. Like Salsburg's previous works, it's wonderful, but there's something new at work here, on his finest album yet, a new sense of lightness and grace.

“The songs that came out – and the songs that are still coming out – there’s an ease," Salsburg says over the phone from his home in Kentucky, nursing his first cup of morning coffee following a string of West Coast shows with his musical partner Joan Shelley. The years between Third and his last solo record, 2013's Hard For To Win And Can't Be Won have found Salsburg on the road and collaborating in the studio with Shelley, James Elkington, Wooden Wand, Bonnie Prince Billy, and others. Working with friends has opened his approach up, and made "the joy of playing more acute and more readily available."

"My first two records, I felt like they needed to be representatives of some inchoate yearning or the need to express myself in some big way," Salsburg says. "I say this with some sarcasm, because everyone who plays an instrument wants to do that. But [I was inspired by] the fun of playing with Jim and Joan, and when I came back to doing solo guitar music, I didn’t ask it to do so much, or really anything for me. The fun of playing with those two extended itself into playing solo."

Third by Nathan Salsburg

In this installment of Diversions, Salsburg opens up on the cultural ephemera at work in his life while conceiving and recording Third. When he's not releasing beautiful records, he spends his time working as the curator at the Alan Lomax Archive at the Association for Cultural Equity, and recently launched a podcast featuring recordings from the archives called Been All Around This World. Salsburg, in his own words, below.

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Carl Stone :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

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Listening to Carl Stone's second compilation for the excellent archival label Unseen Worlds, it's not uncommon to find yourself completely lost in a web of sounds. It's not necessarily a disorienting feeling. Instead, it's kind of like wading into a cool pool. It's only once you're all the way in that the temperature feels right. Utilizing samplers and armed with a keen ear, Stone's pieces, like 1993's languid and majestic "Banteay Srey" and 1988's sprightly "Sonali," fall together in surprising ways; the moods and sensations shift, but the expansive feeling always remains.

Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties is the sequel to the 2016 compilation Music from the Seventies and Eighties, and it documents Stone's shift into more tranquil waters. Recorded between 1983-1993, right as approaches similar to Stone's avant-garde layering and sampling were being explored in the mainstream via hip-hop, the collection presents a unified vision comprised of disparate sources – Mozart melodies, flutes, a Burundi children's song – brought together in a way that draws an elegant line connecting Steve Reich's chopped and looped epics to Robert Fripp's swelling Frippertronics suites to William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops. We caught up with Stone from his home in Japan to discuss the music gathered here and his ever-evolving process.

Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties by Carl Stone

Aquarium Drunkard: What initially brought you out to Japan? How long have you been out there full time?

Carl Stone: Since 2001. I first came to Japan in 1984 to perform a piece. I applied for and got a grant to live in Japan for about six months from the Asian Cultural Council. That was in 88-89, and that led to a lot of subsequent opportunities. In 2001, I was over and I got headhunted by a someone at [Chukyo University] who was looking to fill a slot they had vacant. I’d never really thought about teaching before. I’d visited many times and I liked Japan, but I never thought that I’d live there. But they made me a decent offer and provided the kind of stability and I said, "Why not, let’s do it." I’ve been here ever since.

AD: How often do you get back to the states?

Carl Stones: Two or three times a year, minimum. I haven’t cut my ties. I have a lot of friends and family and I keep an apartment in Los Angeles as a sort of pied-î -terre for me when I go back.

AD: You’ve made extensive field recordings of urban spaces in Japan. Have you done similar stuff in American cities?

Carl Stone:  I have some material I’ve recorded in the US that’s made it into a composition or two, but I haven’t for the most part. The Tokyo soundscape is really fascinating. It’s part of the reason I really enjoy living here. It’s a city with a lot of very characteristic sounds you can’t hear anywhere else. What’s the soundscape of New York really? If you were to take the sound of the traffic out, the whole thing would collapse. With a place like Tokyo, there’s so much more there.

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

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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can now be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with an encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app.

SIRIUS 530: Sir Richard Bishop - Essaouira ++ Adanowsky - Me siento solo ++ Mind Over Mirrors - Lanterns on the Beach ++ Jack Logan - Shrunken Head ++ Vic Chesnutt & Liz Durrett - Somewhere ++ Brute - Morally Challenged ++ Smoke - The Trip ++ Leonard Cohen - Is This What You Wanted ++ Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Into My Arms ++ Ephram Carter & His Fife And Drum Band - Sorrow, Come . . .

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