As a member of Chicago rockers Twin Peaks, Cadien Lake James once howled and screeched. As lake j, his mature and confident choices elevante his tracks from rockers to a higher grandeur . . .
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Pianist, composer, and bandleader Vijay Iyer joins us on Transmissions. He joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss his new ECM release, Compassion, his collaborations with Shahzad Ismaily and Arooj Aftab, reflect on the post-pandemic nebulousness in the air, discuss his mentors Greg Tate and Amiri Baraka, and much more . . .
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Add Helsinki sextet Soft Power to the growing list of jazz-rock revivalists. On their third album Raw Bites, Soft Power marries krautrock musculature to the jazz dynamics of Canterbury-scene stalwarts like the Soft Machine. But where one might expect fusion excess, Raw Bites delivers a punchy, rollicking album, brimming with riffs and hooks. This band is one to watch . . .
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Guitarist Bill Orcutt has expanded past genre, throwing blues or jazz or noise into the experimental blender that is his distinct guitar playing. Whether the jagged notes jutting out of his Telecaster, the algorithmic waves made in his open-source synth program, or his layered compositions with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, he continues to subvert expectations time and time again. Ahead of his live release, Four Guitars Live with the aforementioned group, we sat down with Orcutt, talking about Steve Reich and Phill Niblock, improvisation, and using algorithms to find songs to cover . . .
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Everybody knows that Mal Waldron was the first artist released by Manfred Eicher's fledgling label ECM. Less well known is that the veteran pianist also had the maiden release on Eicher's experimental jazz imprint JAPO. That album, The Call, placed Waldron right at the heart of the burgeoning krautrock scene, teaming him up with affiliates of Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream and Et Cetera. The result was tripped-out, electrified space jazz of the very highest order . . .
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Though he's known for his work with Wilco and The Autumn Defense, Pat Sansone embraces wordless vistas and inner/outer cosmic tones on Infinity Mirrors, evoking the work of Steve Roach, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine Dream. Sansone corresponded with us about his teenage synth fixations, and how photography and mindfulness tie into the expansive spaces of his new album . . .
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Though one may not guess it from the more recent entries of her discography, at one moment, Jenny Sorrenti was deep in the underground annals of psych folk. The Italian songstress may have moved on toward the more madrigal/trad-folk side of things in recent years, but 1976’s Suspiro came barreling forth in sun-drenched pop with a flair for fuzz and grit. And though it has been recognized for its association with Jorma Kaukonen’s brother Peter making an appearance on mandolin and production duties, Sorrenti’s debut deserves the chance to stand on its own merit . . .
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Prati bagnati del monte Analogo from composers Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina was released on the Italian label Cramps in 1979. While nominally a part of the Italian minimalism genre, the music bears more in common with Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, released a year earlier. It’s minimal even by minimalist standards. Messina and Lovisoni were a part of the fertile avant garde scene in Italy . . .
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A new release, Castelo D'Água, comes out now via the incredibly consistent Brazilian micro-label Municipal K7. It maintains the characteristic amplitude of Sanchez' landscapes while attaining more closely to the wetness indexed in reverb. The tracks follow what Bachelard would call the homology between water and dreams: the oneiric as a fluid substance, a liquid flow, or rather a submersion into pre-formal matter . . .
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Recorded live and in the moment at Golden Beat recording studios in Los Angeles, Speak, Moment documents the first afternoon guitarist Dave Harrington (Darkside, Dave Harrington Group, Tapers Choice), saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi and drummer Max Jaffe met. Ahead of the album's release on March 8th, we're pleased to share the video for "Staring Into The Imagination Of Your Face," and Jaffe's comments on the hypnotic video . . .
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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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From the opening keys to the bouncy, echoing synths: indeed, the High Llamas are back with their immediate, radiating brand of orchestral lounge music. The last time we checked in with the prolific Sean O’Hagan, he referenced a parallel to the career trajectory of Robert Wyatt to describe his own creative tear of late. Perhaps recalling Mary Hansen’s vocals on Llamas tracks of yesteryear, the swaying new single “Sister Friends” features English pop singer Rae Morris taking lead vocals in a lush, jazzy duet . . .
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This week on the show: a conversation with Laetitia Sadier. As the main vocalist of Stereolab, her spacey voice shines as the human core in that project’s motorik and dense avant-pop, a blend of electronic music, krautrock, space age lounge sounds, and much more. Her latest is called Rooting for Love, and she joins us to discuss the collective and the individual, and the radical potentiality of love . . .
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At this year's NYC Winter Jazzfest, the dominant forms veered into New Age and ambient territory: abstract, pretty, burbling along in loose conglomerations of synths and “organic” instrumentation. And maybe jazz comingling with New Age sensibilities is exactly the antidote we need for today's troubling times . . .
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English guitarist Dean McPhee has spent more than a decade now patiently carving out a singular niche for himself. That patience has paid off — there’s really no one else who can create (and sustain) the darkly seductive mood that’s embedded within his work. Astral Gold, McPhee’s first album since 2021, continues to mine that same rich vein, with his luminous, electrified tones spiraling out over steadily looping undercurrents and uncanny percussive accents . . .
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