Present Of The Past :: Houston’s Folk Underground / A Medley

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The early 1960’s: folk songs reflecting social change and protest amidst the Civil Rights Movement could be heard on radios everywhere. Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez inspired many a youth to pick up a guitar and harmonize with their peers. One of the lesser known communities that sprung up in the immediate aftermath was based in Houston, TX   at a club called The Jester Lounge. Opening in 1962, The Jester is known to be the supposed birthplace of folk music in Houston. Notable early performers from this period included K . . .

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Hiss Golden Messenger :: Wah-Wah Cowboys, Volume I & 2

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I made the first Wah Wah Cowboys mix in 2009-- almost ten years ago, which I cannot believe--as a way towards bit of mental calm after my wife and I had our first kid, Elijah, who is now nine years old and sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of hot chocolate; he'll be as tall as me soon. At the time, I was looking to collect in one place some music that seemed to share a distinct shaggy, swinging aesthetic. The songs on the Wah Wah Cowboys mixes-- I made the second one . . .

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Wes Montgomery :: In Paris / The Definitive ORTF Recording

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Resonance Records has been digging up a number of previously unheard recordings from the legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery in recent years. Their latest effort is more familiar – but it's just as essential. These 1965 live recordings have circulated in innumerable forms over the decades, but never in such stellar sound . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Kacy & Clayton

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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.

One of our favorite albums of 2017, Kacy & Clayton's The Siren’s Song found the pair widening their scope, building on an existing foundation of the music and traditions of Southern Appalachia, the British Isles, and their rural ranch Saskatchewan home. Here, fittingly, they pay tribute to fellow Canadian exports Gordon Lightfoot and Ian & Sylvia. Kacy & Clayton, in their own words, below.

For our Lagniappe Session, we chose to record a couple songs from two Canadian artists that have had a profound influence on our own music. The first being Gordon Lightfoot’s Bend In The Water, and the second being Ian & Sylvia and the Great Speckled Bird’s Calgary.  We consider Bend In The Water to  be one of Lightfoot’s most good-timing compositions and an important installment in the Canadian Canoe-Rock sub-genre. Calgary is  filled with perfect imagery of ice flows on the Bow River, a card game on the Gulf of Mexico, and one friend’s desperate plea to borrow money from another.

Kacy & Clayton :: Bend In The Water (Gordon Lightfoot)

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SIRIUS/XMU :: Aquarium Drunkard Show (Noon EST, Channel 35)

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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Image via Christian Marclay.

SIRIUS 510:   Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Dorothy Ashby - The Moving Finger ++ The Black Beats - The Mod Trade ++ X'lents - Psychedelia ++ Kalyanji Anadji - Dharmatma Theme Music ++ Shark Move - Evil War ++ Khruangbin - Maria Tambien ++ July - The Way ++ Usha Khanna - Hotel Incidental Music . . .

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Jerry David DeCicca :: Time The Teacher

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“Watermelon,” the second track on Jerry David DeCicca’s Time the Teacher, is an ode to – you guessed it – watermelons. With an almost nursery-rhyme like cadence and gentle backing vocals, it’s as simple a song as they come. Or is it? Through some strange alchemy, by the end of “Watermelon,” you may find yourself in wonder at the complexity and perfection of the song’s subject. That’s right -- watermelons are a goddamn miracle.

Time the Teacher is filled with these quiet moments of resonance and revelation, whether DeCicca is dealing with the death of long-lost lover or the mystical tapping of a woodpecker at dawn. Guided by producer Jeb Loy Nichols and Benedic Lamdin, the intimate vibe of the lyrics is matched by the music, which is spare and lovely. Rich piano, gospel-tinged vocals, upright bass and fluttering horns, provided by a cast of European players, all frame DeCicca's warm vocals. For touchstones, you could point back to Van Morrison's early '70s work or any number of private press LPs from the same era, but it's to the songwriter and his cohorts' credit that Time the Teacher never feels like an exercise in nostalgia. Instead, it feels vibrant and alive, even in the mellowest, most melancholy passages.

AD recently caught up with JDD via telephone from his home in Bulverde, Texas, where many of the songs on the record were formed on his front porch with a can of Tecate nearby.

Aquarium Drunkard: You made this record in a completely new way for you, working with players remotely. What did that process reveal to you?

Jerry David DeCicca: Nobody that plays on the records is American. They're all either English or European; I think the trumpet player is Italian. So there's a very European sensibility to the playing. [All the players are into] American modern jazz but have their own sensibility. They have their own sense of humor and I think to be able to have that...is pretty rare. All the players are more experimental.

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Ayalew Mesfin :: Hasabe (My Worries)

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A long overdue collection of East African Ethio-groove and funk.

With Hasabe (My Worries), Now Again Records, in collaboration with Vinyl Me Please, make the case for Ayalew Mesfin's place among Ethiopian musical heavyweights Mulatu Astatke, Mahmoud Ahmed, and Alî¨mayî¨hu Eshî¨té. Though Mesfin's music appeared several times throughout Buda Musique's long-running î‰thiopiques

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Catching Up With John Lurie

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The world of music has seemed a much less colorful and interesting place in the years since John Lurie stopped recording. The former leader of NYC jazz ensemble The Lounge Lizards, film score composer and occasional collaborator with the likes of Tom Waits, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, the 65-year-old artist had to put down his trusted saxophone due to the fallout of contracted Advance Lyme Disease. He instead funneled his energies into the dual pursuits of visual art and his Twitter account, both of which are marked by his arch sense of humor and biting political commentary.

New attention is being drawn to Lurie's musical efforts of both past and present this year, thanks to the return of his artistic alter ego Marvin Pontiac. The character - a mentally unstable outsider folk-blues musician inspired by the guitar music of Mali and the blues harmonica of Little Walter - is one that he cooked up in the late '90s to accompany a self-released album of almost childlike tunes called simply Greatest Hits, featuring a stunning array of his New York brethren like guitarist Marc Ribot, keyboardist John Medeski, and vocalist Angelique Kidjo. While the 1999 CD of this album has gone out of print, it will be back in circulation via Northern Spy Records, who are re-releasing it as a limited vinyl edition this coming Record Store Day.

The reissue comes on the heels of a brand new Marvin Pontiac release that was snuck into the world late last year. Called The Asylum Tapes, the digital-only album is supposedly a collection of recently unearthed recordings found in a Detroit mental institution, with Lurie playing with various blues and folk tropes with the tossed-off earthiness of Jandek's '80s-era recordings.

AD caught up with Lurie via email to discuss the legend of Marvin Pontiac and check up on the health and well being of one of our favorite musicians.

Aquarium Drunkard: How are you feeling these days? How is the state of your health?

John Lurie: That is not a question I can answer simply. Advanced Lyme is the weirdest. The way it comes and goes and how the symptoms switch from one thing to another. I am certainly better than I was.

AD: How does it feel to be putting music out into the world again?

John Lurie: Wonderful. Horrible. Everything in between. Felt like an accomplishment to get it done. I owe Nesrin Wolf and Pat Dillett quite a bit. Also James Yost.

AD: Why did you decide to return to the world of Marvin Pontiac instead of releasing music under your own name?

John Lurie: The world of Marvin Pontiac had been created and is a nice place for me to visit. Because this is mostly, guitar, banjo, harmonica and vocal, it made much more sense to do a Marvin Pontiac record. John Lurie’s musical world radiated from the saxophone which I cannot play anymore. Christ, you have turned me into one of those people who talks about himself in the third person.

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Aquarium Drunkard Presents: They’ll Pay You For It – A Mixtape

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“I’m telling you, this is the most unique situation. These people, the disco spinners, are building careers. They could not care less about what you have, you know, on your mind, financially or any other way. They are building careers, and all they care about is crowd reaction. If you give them a record that the crowd stands up and screams for, if necessary, they’ll pay you for it...”

Lace up, strap in, and let loose. We’re going up to Oregon and surveying the terrestrial terrain the whole way, with stops in LA . . .

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Khruangbin :: Beyond Con Todo El Mundo

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The well from which Khruangbin drink is deep. And wide. While geographically based in Texas, sonically, the trio's aesthetic is global. An atmospheric masala of funk and soul, strained through a lucent scrim of psych, the group draw from a bold and eclectic set of influences of which they synthesize a sound wholly their own.

This installment of Diversions catches up with the group on the heels of their new lp, Con Todo El Mundo, out now via the Dead Oceans label. Here, Khruangbin pull back the curtain, guiding us through a sampling of records that have played a role in their development, consciously or otherwise. As expected, it's a heady brew. Dip in, below.

Scientist - Scientist Wins The World Cup: The core tracks of this album were recorded by the Roots Radics, a first call session band in Jamaica when this was recorded. Laura Lee learned how to play bass by playing along to this record, since its melodic bass lines are so easily heard and sound so good. But aside from the music, it's the sonic treatment by Scientist that really makes this record shine. It's so expansive and spacious. Nothing gets in the way of anything else, even while there's such a deadly groove keeping the songs firmly grounded. Instead of full vocal lines and verses, the singer’s voice comes through in fragments--putting less focus on the vocals and making them become atmospheric. It’s a sonic approach that Khruangbin utilizes often. Given that there’s only three of us, we try to use space as its own instrument.

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Trees Speak :: S/T

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On its recent self-titled lp, Tucson-based psychedelic collective Trees Speak terraform long stretches of the 1-10 that carves through the Sonoran Desert into a cosmic autobahn. Led by visual artist Daniel Martin Diaz -- whose work has been featured in Low Rider Magazine and Juxtapoz and comprises a large-scale installation at Sky Harbor Airport -- Trees Speak incorporates work from players known for their work in groups like become a member or log in.

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Naan Violence :: Breakfast With The Sirens

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Transcendental free sitar music led by Arjun Kulharya of Atlanta, GA. Layered with analog synthesizers, acoustic guitars, flute and tabla, Naan Violence's expansive sonic palette feels at once organic and untethered. Cosmically and spiritually in line with forebears such as Sun Ra and Ravi/Ananda Shankar, Kulharya's work also finds itself of a piece with fellow chromatic travelers and contemporaries such as Bitchin Bajas.

Naan Violence :: Breakfast With The Sirens

For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard . . .

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Seun Kuti :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Seun Kuti The AD InterviewPosted on

Having long ago stepped out from behind the shadow of his iconoclast father, Seun Kuti has kept the fierce independence and self-determination that are a hallmark of his family name, and kept the band his father created together now more than 20 years since his passing.

Kuti’s latest release, Black Times addresses a myriad of issues confronting his native Nigeria, Africa as a whole, and the world beyond. He is unafraid to infuse a precise and clear political message into his music, while simultaneously using the platform of the music of afrobeat itself as an outlet of creative dialogue. AD caught up with Kuti at his studio in Lagos, Nigeria.

Black Times by Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 feat. Carlos Santana

Aquarium Drunkard: You've worked with Robert Glasper on these last two records - can you speak a bit about his role within the record, as well as what you see the role of production being in your music?

Seun Kuti: You know, for me, the production process is separate from the music - because it's mostly live. The production of the music starts during composition. You know, you write melodies, the right tones for the instruments. You know, Glasper adds the final touches in post-production, working on the solos, working on the sounds of the instruments. There are new ideas and we try to incorporate them. So yeah   it's always in a stage of production. It's a building process -- even when we mix sometimes I'm doing shit.

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