For those who've reached their sanity threshold for cloying Christmas fare, here is an album that will wipe the screen clean. An ethereal, odd masterpiece from 1969 -- "Buchla Christmas" by the fascinating Warner Jepson, electronic musician and video art pioneer . . .
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Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. Tonight's broadcast is culled entirely from our 2023 Year In Review ...
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .
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Welcome to the twelfth installment of First & Last, a series of mixes providing a glimpse into the world of Japanese private press, or 自主盤, pronounced “jishuban”, which loosely translates to “independent board.”
As autumn fades into the quiet embrace of winter, immerse yourself in the hushed tones of acoustic introspection, where each note invokes the stillness of the changing seasons . . .
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Looking back to look ahead. It’s our Year In Review 2023. As always, our list is unranked and unruly. Let it blurb.
Aquarium Drunkard exists because of the passion of its contributors and the support of its generous Patreon community, so consider pledging your support as we ring in the new year. If Aquarium Drunkard improves your listening life, the Patreon is the best way to reciprocate. Only the good shit, now, then, and the unspecified moments in-between . . .
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Rainbow Revisited was recorded over the course of two sessions in 2019, between Ntuli’s grand 2018 epic Exiled and last year’s shimmering Blk Elijah & The Children of Meroë. An accomplished bandleader, Ntuli might never have recorded a collection of solo tracks had percussionist/producer/sorcerer Carlos Niño not reached out after seeing a video of her warming up . . .
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While three records and six sides of music sourced from radio airchecks and audience tapes might sound a little excessive to some, Maximum Swing delivers on its promise. It fleshes out the picture from the famed Smokin’ at the Half Note record and shows it wasn’t just a lone night of musical inspiration. And while this group has been documented elsewhere - 2017’s Smokin’ In Seattle, for example - this is a good chance to hear them on their home turf and for an appreciative crowd. It’s another welcome piece to the Montgomery canon, and another example that he . . .
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Earlier this year, we shared a sweet Codona recording from late in the trio's all-too-brief run. Here's one from right near the beginning. This Swiss FM broadcast from 1978 captures Codona in full flight, with Collin Walcott’s sitar, Don Cherry’s trumpet and Nana Vaconcelos’ percussion weaving a magical web. The players waste no time getting right into it; the opening "New Light" is 16 minutes of pure joy . . .
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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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Another great one from Ryley Walker’s Husky Pants label, which has quickly become a reliable source for sweet sounds both old and new. Jake Acosta’s Rehearsal Park is made up of two long pieces (27 and 17 minutes, respectively) that feel warm and accessible but somehow somewhat unclassifiable. RIYL Oren Ambarchi? (Ryley describes it as “If Glenn Branca went to Hampshire. If Phish was black dice.”) Oscillating grooves, interlocking melodies, unexpected string and horn sections, free-flowing rivers of sound — it reveals hidden layers and buried textures the more you get into it . . .
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Me Neither, the new album by James Elkington, has the appearance of library music as it is made up of a series of 29 brief instrumental pieces, the shortest of which is 36 seconds long. Elkington is known for his solo work, being a member of Brokeback, and supporting artists such as Jeff Tweedy and Richard Thompson. The new album is a departure from Elkington’s previous singer-songwriter material as most of the tracks feature a theme played on the acoustic guitar, while others are ambient soundscapes with found sounds such as sirens and avian chirping . . .
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Fabiano do Nascimento seems weary of the "Brazilian music" label, at least when it ties him to particular artistic expectations. He prefers to aim for an impossible universality than to ever be pigeonholed to an ideal of national sound. His new solo material, out via Brazilian music aficionados Far Out, complicates this ambivalence . . .
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Welcome back to the stacks. It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our monthly gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading. In this month’s stack: tales of aliens in upstate New York, the life and times of American folklorist Harry Smith, yet another (worthy) Dylan tome and the paranoid end of the 1970s. Your librarians are Justin Gage, Scott Bunn, Tyler Wilcox, and Jarrod Annis . . .
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Diamonds From the Deepest Ocean is a new series exploring classic Bob Dylan bootlegs from the CD era. Before broadband internet, YouTube, and bottomless hard drives overflowing with FLACs, many Dylan fans relied on the grey market to gain entry into the world of unreleased Dylan. This series celebrates those tangible treasures and wonders: “What’s lost when you can have it all?”
Now playing: Blown Out On The Trail (1988 . . .
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When John Martyn set up shop at the Leeds University Refectory, the place was still smoking from legendary sets laid down there by The Who and The Groundhogs just a few years prior. Little did he know, Martyn was about to complete the Leeds trifecta. Live at Leeds finds Martyn barrelling headlong into the uncharted reaches of his own expansive trajectory, flanked by Pentangle’s Danny Thompson on bass and Spontaneous Music Ensemble founder John Stevens on kit . . .
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"For Who the Bell Tolls For" begins with a choice. Many are the albums that hum and hiss at their beginnings with the sounds of the studio. They transport us into and out of the creative process with a wink and a nudge as if to say the beauty you're about to hear is the product of process, of mistakes and retakes, of many parts becoming a sum. Jonathan Rado makes such a choice, punctuating it with the muffled expletives of trying to get things right before things start rolling in earnest . . .
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