JJ Cale: Pacific High Recorders, San Francisco, California, December 12, 1971

Breeze along to one of the earliest live recordings of JJ Cale out there. This Pacific High Recorders gig (broadcast on the Bay Area’s KSAN-FM) features JJ and band playing a deliciously laid back set a few months prior to the release of the singer-songwriter-guitarist’s classic debut LP, Naturally . . .

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It’s Hard Up North: The Photography of Michael Chapman

On True North, Michal Chapman's sounds are sparse but deep. And there's a similar quality to his photos from the early '60s. There's a dark beauty at work in them, and a curious quality that makes them—like his masterful songs—feel alive. "I only ever worked in black and white," Chapman says. "I have no interest in color. I think it’s one step away from reality . . .

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The Aquarium Drunkard Show / Radio

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

Tonight: We revisit Loose Fur, Lumerians, Sibylle Baier, Julien Gasc, Microphones, Jessica Pratt and more . . .

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Cosmic Pastoral: William Tyler on New Age, Windham Hill, and Emerging Sounds

The Windham Hill sound was inviting and warm, but nonetheless idiosyncratic, a hallmark of a moment when mainstream commercial success and the lack of traditional pop forms didn't negate each other . . .

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Transmissions ​​Podcast :: Twin Peaks/Desert Oracle/Sarah Louise

Welcome to our first podcast of the year, featuring discussion of Twin Peaks, Sarah Louise's new album, and Desert Oracle's Ken Layne on the upcoming alien invasion. Our podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, MixCloud, and TuneIn . . .

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Maston: Tulips, 45 RPM & Psilocybin

This is the story of taking mushrooms, unintentionally playing a record mastered for 45 RPM at 33, and discovering its shadow self . . . and then discussing the experience with its architect. Sonic examples, for the curious, included . . .

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Billy Swan ‎:: Don’t Be Cruel (Slow Version)

Billy Swan’s cover of the King’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” the Missouri native takes the fuzzed-out swing of Elvis’ original. Turning it upside through a lounged and syrupy lens. Doubling the song’s length to over four minutes, Swan takes his time with the lovelorn piece – letting the groove guide the way . . .

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Chris Cohen: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Like his work with Deerhoof, Cass McCombs, Ariel Pink, and Weyes Blood, Cohen's gentle psych-pop has always rewarded paying close attention. But Chris Cohen finds the songwriter addressing his world with more candor than ever before . . .

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Sonny & The Sunsets :: A Bigger Picture

After last year's streamlined solo album, San Francisco's favorite son returns with the forthcoming Hairdressers From Heaven, the first Sunsets album since 2016. Produced by James Mercer and Yuuki Matthews of The Shins, Hairdressers is also the first on Sonny's new Rocks In Your Head Records label. The album's first clipping, "A Bigger Picture," is pure Sonny & The Sunsets—a sunbaked pallet of instrumentation and voices carrying along an evocative tale both playful and scathing ("Past the Krispy Kreme where the lonely cops meet and share their Nutty . . .

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Deerhunter: Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared

A "science fiction album about the present,” Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? finds Deerhunter at the mesa of their dream pop playground . . .

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.O.rang :: Fields And Waves

First off, if you haven't done so yet, slide over here and dig in to Jeremy Larson's elegant tribute to the boundless ambition of Talk Talk's 1988 masterstroke, Spirit of Eden. He unpacks it all, the circumstances, the mythology, and, of course, the art -- a document that continues . . .

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The Aquarium Drunkard Show

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

Music from Julien Gasc, Goldmund, Atlas Sound, Chris Cohen, Cleaners From Venus and more . . .

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Pedro the Lion: The Aquarium Drunkard ​​Interview

Like Joan Didion's writing about Los Angeles, or Flannery O'Connor's examinations of the American South, Pedro the Lion's "Phoenix" is as much about an inner place as it is about a location on the map . . .

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Sharon Van Etten :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

In the four years since her last record, Sharon Van Etten has been busy. In that time she's gone back to school, scored a film, and become a mother. It's that last element that seems to hang over much of her excellent new album, Remind Me Tomorrow. Produced by John Congleton, it's solid leap forward for an artist who has made substantive changes with every album she's released. Aquarium Drunkard caught up with Van Etten, via phone from her home in Brooklyn, to discuss her new record, the paranoia of parenthood, the connective power of shared . . .

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The Cure: Apeldoorn, Netherlands 1980

Captured while on tour mid-summer in Europe, we find a nascent, if not potent, form of the group — one both informed by and contributing to the conversation of post-punk. Touring in support of their recently released Seventeen Seconds lp, this was the Cure in transition, having recently augmented its core with the addition of Simon Gallup (bass) and Matthieu Hartley (synths). Whereas the group’s sound, and presentation, would soon morph and evolve, this VHS rip finds them perfectly suspended in Dutch time . . .

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