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Dexter + Franz :: Panoramic Highway

Dexter + FranzPosted on

While Panoramic Highway draws on a wide array of influences spanning geography and time, it's anchored by the sounds of Marin County’s coastline, where Dexter+Franz recorded at the Panoramic House. Throughout the album, field recordings and samples of the ocean and beaches seamlessly weave in and out of the songs. Waves crash, seagulls chirp, and synth textures float through the mix like gusts of salty sea breeze. In these moments, Panoramic Highway becomes an elemental experience, rooted in the soundscapes of nature . . .

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Posted on Dexter + Franz

Felt :: Be Still (The Beach Boys)

Felt The Beach BoysPosted on

Toward the tail end of their ten-album run in the eighties, English jangle pop outfit Felt had sights on 1968's understated Beach Boys classic Friends for the band's only known cover. This transformative take on Dennis Wilson's soulful, momentary piano ballad "Be Still" sits comfortably next to Primal Scream's Screamadelica-era cover of another Dennis gem in "Carry Me Home" (keyboardist Martin Duffy would play in both bands). A shimmering beauty reminiscent of every frosty, ethereal component of the brilliance of Felt . . .

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Posted on Felt The Beach Boys

The Lagniappe Sessions :: Leah Senior

Lagniappe Sessions Leah SeniorPosted on

Australian singer-songwriter Leah Senior turns to two selections from the British folk guitar tradition for this installment of the Lagniappe Sessions. Recorded at home with Jesse Williams, her take on John Renbourn’s “Rainy Day” slows the tune’s insistent central riff, drawing out its sinuous, unhurried quality and the delicate, cascading descent that follows. On Jansch’s “Tell Me What Is True Love,” a lilting picking pattern opens onto a similarly pastoral expanse . . .

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Posted on Lagniappe Sessions Leah Senior

Kings of Convenience :: Quiet Is the New Loud

Kings of ConveniencePosted on

The muted hues, the subdued texture of the light, the encroaching dusk. There’s a sort of unspoken beautiful melancholy to autumn that has nothing to do with gloom or sadness. It hangs in the air, soft at the edges. Released 25 years ago this year, Kings of Convenience’s Quiet Is the New Loud gave that aching melancholy a voice . . .

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Posted on Kings of Convenience

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

SIRIUSPosted on

Broadcasting from Le Guess Who? festival, Utrecht, Netherlands — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

West Coast wanderings and backcountry reveries. Cosmic country, fingerpicked blues, folkers, garage hallucinations, loose ends and autumnal open roads.

34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .

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Posted on SIRIUS

Billy Boyo :: Zim Zim 

Billy Boyo Reggae/DubPosted on

Soundsystem check. A lost star of early ’80s dancehall, Billy Boyo was just fourteen when he recorded Zim Zim in London in 1983. One of the era’s great young singjays, Boyo moves between vocal and dub across twelve tracks, his delivery drifting over heavyweight riddims before disappearing into the mix. Full of swagger yet mellow and unhurried, he rides the bass-heavy arrangements through a thick haze of echo and reverb . . .

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Posted on Billy Boyo Reggae/Dub

Transmissions :: Derrick Bang on Vince Guaraldi

Podcast Vince GuaraldiPosted on

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with your host Jason P. Woodbury. We've entered the holidays, aka the official "Vince Guaraldi Season." This week on the show, we're digging into the work of Guaraldi with Peanuts historian and author of Vince Guaraldi at the Piano, Derrick Bang. We discuss it all: Guaraldi's fascination with the bossa nova sound in the late '50s, his status as a composer who didn't write or read music—writing from a purely melodic standpoint, his work with Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete; his groundbreaking Grace Cathedral Jazz Mass; and of course, his . . .

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Posted on Podcast Vince Guaraldi

La Ola Nocturna: Experimental Songs & Deviant Pop from the Spanish 80’s

CompilationPosted on

La Ola Nocturna is the third installment of Bongo Joe’s highly successful series on experimental pop in post-Franco Spain, and the first to chart the wave after dark. If La Contra Ola crowned the industrial liturgies of Esplendor Geométrico and the electronic punk of Aviador Dro, and La Ola Interior drifted through the ambient, exotica, and proto-Balearic landscapes of Miguel A. Ruiz and post-minimalists like Javier Segura and Finis Africae, who carried the Fourth World Music of Jon Hassell and Brian Eno into Iberia, this new volume walks the borderlands between those territories, where left . . .

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Posted on Compilation

The Clientele :: Suburban Light

The ClientelePosted on

It can be difficult to verbalize exactly what autumnal records are capable of eliciting. One thing is undeniable: October and November are the months for The Clientele's 2000 debut album Suburban Light. Perhaps most impressive, the uninitiated would never detect that such an accomplished record was comprised mostly of a smattering of the band's earlier 7" singles from the years prior. Though ideal for any season, the record is an impeccable collection of reveries that paint a viscerally evocative picture of sundown strolls with scattered leaves underfoot . . .

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Posted on The Clientele

Steve Gunn :: Sundowner

Steve GunnPosted on

A long neglected album dates to the beginning of Steve Gunn’s career, when it seemed that the guitarist might become a Takoma-style picker rather than the songwriter/improvisational experimenter he has since turned out to be. The playing is agile and folk-blues focused; the singing, when it comes, is similarly traditional and not as polished as Gunn has become. The music earned the approval of no less than Jack Rose, and its reels and rambles and psychedelic drones feel very much of a piece with the master’s work . . .

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Posted on Steve Gunn

Chrome Chasm :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Chrome Chasm The AD InterviewPosted on

The Houston-based trio known as Chrome Chasm features three veteran improvisers doing what they do best — improvising. Together, guitarist Tom Carter (Charalambides), saxophonist/flautist Mlee Marie (Hearts of Animals) and pedal steel-er Will Adams (Lower Dens, Ka-Nives) create bewitching, twilit music that’s somehow both minimalist and wide-open — a vast landscape that somehow contains countless sonic details.

Aquarium Drunkard chatted with Tom, Mlee and Will to find out more . . .

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Posted on Chrome Chasm The AD Interview

Miles Davis: Europe ‘71

Jazz Miles DavisPosted on

Across the Miles Davis electric era there’s no greater divide than that between 1972’s On the Corner and what came before it. But the signposts are there if you know where to look, with recordings from a European tour in the fall of ‘71 revealing Miles subtly, deftly moving the pieces into place for his next iteration . . .

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Posted on Jazz Miles Davis

Jason Dungan & Johan Carøe :: Routine

Jason Dungan Johan CarøePosted on

Copenhagen-based composers Jason Dungan (Blue Lake) and Johan Carøe join forces on Routine, a quietly transportive collection of ambient folk and new age soundscapes shaped through an exchange of musical fragments. Blending acoustic instrumentation, electronics, and Dungan’s self-designed 36-string zither, the duo arrive at something intimate and unhurried—a luminous meditation on domestic ritual, the rhythms of everyday life, and the quiet wonder of being alive . . .

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Posted on Jason Dungan Johan Carøe

Panamint :: S/T

Anna St. Louis Jarvis Taveniere Panamint Reverend BaronPosted on

Panamint began as a studio experiment between longtime collaborators Anna St. Louis and producer Jarvis Taveniere, who reunited to put Taveniere’s new Los Angeles studio through its paces. What started with left-field covers of Post Malone and Helene Smith soon evolved into a set of original recordings, joined by Danny Garcia, aka Reverend Baron. Out this week, their self-titled debut EP draws on the timeless pull of vintage soul and classic pop . . .

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Posted on Anna St. Louis Jarvis Taveniere Panamint Reverend Baron

Sam Gendel :: Advanced White Trash

Sam GendelPosted on

In his classic book Mythologies, French thinker Roland Barthes criticizes plastic because it can be molded into anything—cheap, colorful surfaces open to infinite transformation. Contemporary pop is made of the same stuff, and Sam Gendel’s Advanced White Trash makes the case for what’s beautiful, even freeing, about it. The record sounds like something that was uploaded to SoundCloud at 3 a.m., a Roland Sound Canvas emulator buffering on a dying phone someone found in a Walmart parking lot, and still it comes out strangely appealing, almost hypnotic . . .

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Posted on Sam Gendel