Concrete Music: On Chris Mosdell’s Equasian

Chris Mosdell Yellow Magic OrchestraPosted on

Despite his success working with other musicians, Mosdell's experimental solo album, Equasian (1982, Alfa Records), remains a relative obscurity outside the borders of Japan. In this conversation, we spoke with the lyricist about his early career with Yellow Magic Orchestra and how his eclectic album of musical concrete poems came to be . . .

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Zenjungle & Valiska :: Years From Now

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Zenjungle and Valiska straddle jazz, drone, and ambient on Years From Now. A sequel to the duo's 2014 album A Changing Light, it's an album about "uncertainty, coping, dreams, memories, and connections . . .

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Marthe Zambo :: Ebele Minga / Bidan

Marthe ZamboPosted on

A highlife and proto-disco delight from Cameroonian singer Marthe Zambo, “Ebele Minga” radiates in marrying more traditional West African roots music with early leanings into electronic and synth-based rhythms. It’s difficult to put a particular date on this 7”, but it seems to perhaps just precede Zambo’s 1980 debut lp, Bikola, a record which also finds her just dipping her sonic toes into a more modern style of dance music . . .

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The Cure :: Carnage Visors (Film, 1981)

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Released in 1981, the 28 minute instrumental piece “Carnage Visors” was originally conceived as the score to filmmaker Ric Gallup’s (brother of the Cure’s Simon Gallup) animated short of the same name. The piece was used in lieu of an opening band during the Cure’s 1981 tour in support of the group’s Faith lp. The film has since disappeared, the only known copies belonging to Robert Smith, Gallup, and the Cure’s Lol Tolhurst . . .

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Okay Temiz :: East Breeze

Okay TemizPosted on

Fusing its eastern base with latin rhythms, de rigueur flourishes of psych and a second helping of sinuous funk, Temiz's polyrhythmic stew effortlessly bends/blends myriad modalities. For a taste, tuck into "East Breeze", a tune that immediately sets the table with a sinister bağlama riff (courtesy of Arif Sag) that floats above all manner of percussion... in addition to berimbaus, talking drums, zithers, finger bells, woodwinds, and a rather nasty synth line. Bon appétit . . .

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Phil Cook :: Finding The Purity In Music

Phil Cook The AD InterviewPosted on

We catch up with Phil Cook on the eve of the release of his beautiful new instrumental record, All These Years. Through an unwavering smile, he talked about the importance of a fertile cultural landscape, how the label he just started is anything but, and why he decided to release a solo piano album now . . .

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Happy Thanksgiving :: Doug Sahm And Friends – Austin, TX 1972

Doug Sahm ThanksgivingPosted on

Tradition runs rampant around Thanksgiving: generations of old recipes, football, Alice’s Restaurant, The Last Waltz, and, of course, a parade of balloons shutting down NYC. What else do you need? If you thought you were covered in the Thanksgiving tradition department, we did too…until a few years ago, when someone blew the dust off a long lost tape — Doug Sahm’s Thanksgiving Jam . . .

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Percy Mayfield :: My Error

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A curiously eccentric slice of downbeat soul, Percy Mayfield’s “My Error” circuitously revels in a knowing misery—a uniquely dark songwriting and vision of despair that earned him the nickname of Poet Laureate of the Blues. The track, a downtempo and mysterious waltz, comes from Mayfield’s 1970 lp Sings Percy Mayfield . . .

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Feast of Smoke :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Feast of Smoke The AD InterviewPosted on

Custom built for late night drives, Feast of Smoke finds Amber and Paul Oldham (Palace Brothers/Bonnie "Prince" Billy) mingling their voices over star blues, narcotized rock & roll, and swampy pop. They join us for a discussion about the record's roots . . .

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CJQ :: The Black Hole

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Molten astral jazz from the Motor City. By the time they recorded The Black Hole at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1973, CJQ (Contemporary Jazz Quintet) were Detroit’s answer to the electric clarion call resounding throughout the jazz world. With one foot in the stratosphere and the other in the streets, CJQ propel themselves with the same thrust of Miles’ Cellar Door band and Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi unit, while syphoning fumes of the raw energy given off by Detroit underground comrades like the MC5, Funkadelic, and the Tribe collective . . .

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Sally Anne Morgan :: Cups

Sally Anne MorganPosted on

When Sally Anne Morgan released the warm and welcoming Thread in autumn of last year, it felt like its own kind of Thanksgiving album—earthy, folksy, full of friends and radiating with joy. AD’s Tyler Wilcox called it a “natural, healing space, where everything is free and nothing is a weed.” What a striking and cerebral turn it is, then, for her to return this month with Cups—a solitary affair with a longer, more sustained compositional approach, allowing each note to bend of its own accord in search of melody and harmony . . .

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Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: November 2021

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Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard returns for its regular third Sunday broadcast. Four hours of freeform radio from the RFAD crew on November 21 from 4-8 PM Pacific . . .

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

SIRIUSPosted on

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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Pavement :: Slow Century (Documentary)

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With a Pavement reunion tour going all over the place in 2022, it's a good time to revisit Lance Bangs' excellent Slow Century doc. Originally released in 2002, it tracks the band from the scruffy early days as a "special new band" through their, er, slightly less scruffy time as indie rock darlings . . .

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Chris Spedding :: Songs Without Words

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“Video Life” this is not. Prior to being reborn in the late 70s while riding the crest of British new wave, guitar guru Chris Spedding kicked off the decade with his solo debut, 1970’s Songs Without Words. Originally a Japan-only release, the instrumental jazz album found itself reissued and augmented in 2015 with a number of the tracks shortened, along with the inclusion of bonus track “Sub-Continental Drift . . .

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