A. Savage :: Several Songs About Fire

Several Songs About Fire, the second solo release from Parquet Courts frontman A. Savage, is an LP in the truest sense. There are 10 tracks across two sides, forty-five minutes and change. There is a picture of the artist on the cover. The songs are strong and solid, at once distinct and of a piece, shot through with themes and ideas that recur and refract from one moment to the next. These are tried-and-true strategies, the hallmarks of one of the very finest mediums ever conceived: the album. Don’t fix what ain’t broke . . .

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Sarah Webster Fabio :: If We Come As Soft Rain

Circa Folkways Records, 1976 — Sarah Webster Fabio’s “If We Come as Soft Rain” is a gentle, timeless gem from her album Jujus/Alchemy of the Blues: Poems by Sarah Webster Fabio, one of four poetic recording albums released by the Oakland-based educator, poet, and literary critic . . .

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Transmissions :: Colleen

This week on Transmissions, we welcome returning guest Cécile Schott, aka Colleen. Her latest, Le Jour Et La Nuit Du Reel, was tracked using a minimalistic setup, a Moog Grandmother and two delays: a Roland RE-201 Space Echo and a Moogerfooger Analog Delay.
But for Schott, this assemblage allows for near infinite synthesis, and a genuine multitude of expression. As the world gets stranger and more difficult to understand, the record wordlessly questions what is real—and the times of day and night when the line between real and imaginary blurs . . .

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Diversions :: Grails

Grails’ history stretches back to the late 1990s, with the Portland, OR-based collective fearlessly exploring various galaxies over the course of several absorbing LPs. Their latest masterpiece, Anches En Maat, suggests that they’re nowhere near finished with those explorations. Here, Grails dive headlong into a sleek, neon-lit zone — one you can imagine providing the awesome soundtrack for a prime-era Michael Mann flick, with a welcome dose of David Axelrod drama tossed in for good measure.

With a European tour looming, Grails shared some inspirations and influences with Aquarium Drunkard. Heady times await . . .

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Equipment Pointed Ankh :: From Inside The House

Blasting out of Louisville, Kentucky, is the mutated and industrial avant-pop of Equipment Pointed Ankh. Released at the top of the year from Bruit Direct Disques, From inside the house, the third album from the band—currently billed as a quintet comprising improvisers Jim Marlowe, Christopher Bush, Dan Davis, Ryan Davis, and Shutaro Noguchi—is an envelope-pushing statement of sonic adventure . . .

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Catching Up With Teenage Fanclub

Recently, the venerable power pop juggernaut known as Teenage Fanclub released its 11th studio album, Nothing Lasts Forever, some 34 years after bursting on the scene. The new disc marries the roar of noisy guitars with the sweetest sorts of melodies, and like those earlier albums, it represents a band doing exactly what they like. We took the opportunity to talk to Ray McGinley and Norman Blake about their career so far, their early albums, their partnership with Alan McGee of Creation Records and their fixation with loud, feedback riddled bands like Sonic Youth and the Stooges, as well as . . .

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No Way Out: An Oral History of Sunburned Hand of the Man: Flex

In this week’s episode, we try to wrap our brains around how Sunburned Hand of the Man actually makes their freeform music. Through the episode, we consider the semantics of improvisation and practice in the context of this free form entity. In that context, we learn how the open nature of the band manifests in unspoken rules of not telling each other what to do. This, in turn, allows the band members to enter and commit to the jam in a way that is more authentically connected and elevated . . .

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Modern Nature :: No Fixed Point In Space

Space is the operative word for Modern Nature. Since his days leading bands like Mazes and Ultimate Painting, Jack Cooper’s music has gone panoramic, leaving ample room for softly uttered vocal melodies and semi-improvised instrumentation. On the loose ensemble’s latest album – now including members of The Necks, This Is Not This Heat, and the legendary Julie Tipppets (FKA Driscoll) – Cooper’s poetic lyrics are delivered patiently, leaving pregnant pauses between each line as the instruments swell and contract. Songs begin with the melancholy, drifting post-rock sound pioneered by Talk Talk, before bristling strings, eerie horns, and . . .

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Holding Court :: Ryan Walsh on Morphine

With Light in the Attic's release of The Night and Like Swimming, the story of Morphine unfolds deeper thanks so new liner notes by Ryan H. Walsh. He joins us to discuss the Boston trio's singular sound . . .

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

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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Transmissions :: Jarvis Taveniere (Woods)

Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions; this week on the show, we're joined by arvis Taveniere of Woods. You know his long running Woods band with Jeremy Earl of course—and Woodsist, their record label and Woodsist Festival, which returns September 23-24 upstate with Kevin Morby, Avey Tare, Cochemea, Tapers Choice, Ana Saint Louis, Natural Information Society, Kurt Vile, Scientist, DJ Aquarium Drunkard—that’s our own Justin Gage—plus many more. The band also just released a glowing new album, Perennial, which finds the band in a gentle, rambling mode . . .

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Videodrome :: Thief (1981)

Thief has been hailed as a Marxist neo-noir classic, a cinematic bridge between the gritty realism of the crime-dramas of the 1970s and the hyper-stylized action films of the 1980s. But besides being a genre bedrock, Thief is a nuanced character study that serves as an allegory for the trappings of capitalism . . .

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Peter Case :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Peter Case might have made his name with the speedy rock trio The Nerves and the chiming Plimsouls, but he's spent much of the last handful of decades following his muse into unexpected territory. His latest albums, Doctor Moan and The Midnight Broadcast, speak to his breadth, drawing deeply from blues and jazz—harkening back to classic works like his 1986 solo debut, which was crafted with T-Bone Burnett and Mitchell Froom. All along, Case has been interested in chasing songs in a very classic and rooted sense, and he's keen to see where they might lead . . .

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Baby Chuck :: Memphis In June, 2018

There's a Paul McCartney record from 2005 called Chaos and Creation In The Backyard that came out just as I was beginning my senior year of high school. I've never listened to it, but I think about its title all the time . . .

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No Way Out: An Oral History of Sunburned Hand of the Man: Heavy Rescue

This week, we shift from the band’s chronological narrative to consider the many factors that bind this chaotic mass of people together in this creative yet uncommercial experience. We open with our focus on the role that music has played in the band members’ individual lives and how a shared love of music brought them all together. This morphs into a consideration of the band’s many artistic influences, with a close look at the impact of the Wu-Tang Clan on Sunburned. We hear about the complicated and often difficult backgrounds of many of the Sunburned musicians and . . .

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