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A La Altura: Visionary Mexican Music 1977-1999

Experimental music history is still, in large part, a Euro-American project. Rare are the efforts that highlight Latin American pioneers like Beatriz Ferreyra or Jocy de Oliveira, and rarer still are histories of electronic scenes with a pop, new age edge. A La Altura: Visionary Mexican Music 1977-1999 excavates the ambient underground of Mexico City, tracing a vibrant, largely overlooked circuit of independent cassette culture, dubbed tapes, and street stalls. Compiled by Carlos Icaza and Mark McNeill after a decade of research into the city’s cassette history, it offers a long-overdue portrait of Mexico’s experimental . . .

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Chris Lyons :: New Love for the Old Flame

After a pair of excellent albums fronting his New Orleans quartet Silver Synthetic, last year's Painters Street saw musician and vocalist Chris Lyons venturing into promising solo pathways. On sophomore record New Love for the Old Flame, Lyons presents a dazzling collection hovering like the forlorn days of the golden AM dial. The comfort of a lazy afternoon personified in sound . . .

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Jimmy Webb :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Jimmy Webb has written some of the great songs in the modern American songbook. After turning 80 in August, he's releasing Yours For The Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb, via the revived Sun Records. Featuring guests like Michael McDonald, Graham Nash, and Amy Grant, the new album features both new recordings of long lost songs and original demos. With songs that stretch back across the decades, it's a collection that showcases Webb's mastery. He joins us to discuss the magic of a song demo, his upbringing in the church, and his lifelong love of science . . .

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

Broadcasting 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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Ghost Dubs :: Oblique

On his second album as Ghost Dubs, German producer Michae Fiedler pares his beats and grooves further back, reducing his already minimal palette to the stark rhythmic and textural fundamentals. But the tracks on Oblique resist the remoteness of some ambient dub — they might be skeletal, but they’re not bare-bones . . .

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Transmissions :: Joe Casey of Protomartyr (2026)

This week on Transmissions, we're speaking with return guest Joe Casey of Protomartyr. The band's new album, Hotel Usona is a timely meditation on our empire in decline but also a document of defiance and even a kind of hope. Check in, tune out . . .

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Fela Kuti & Africa ’70 :: Live in Berlin (Berliner Jazztage, 1978)

No retreat. No surrender. Filmed at the Berliner Jazztage on November 4, 1978, with Tony Allen still at the kit, this 87-minute document captures Fela Kuti and Africa ’70 at the end of their Herculean run. Unearthed decades later, the tapes capture the collective’s internal chemistry intact at the very moment its future was set to fracture . . .

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Introducing Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard: Longform Listening. Worldwide. 24/7.

A Continuous Broadcast from Aquarium Drunkard.

Hand-curated. No playlists. Nothing to scroll. Nothing random. Everything intentional.

Transmitting from the hills of Northeast Los Angeles, Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard is a free, always-on radio station. Press play and you’re tuned in to what’s on the air right now, alongside everyone else. The broadcast continues and tracks advance whether or not you’re listening.

The app is free, but requires an active Apple Music subscription. All tracks powered via Apple Music.

James Barnes is the guru/architect. Justin Gage is the selector.

Tune in to an old new way to Listen . . .

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Soundtrack, Angelo Badalamenti)

Mid-October approaches, and the owls are not what they seem. The best records belong to a particular hour, season, or state of mind. The soundtrack to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me seems to exist just beyond all three, somewhere between the last light and whatever waits after dark . . .

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Booker Stardrum :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Jazz grip. Booker Stardrum’s work spans solo recordings, electronic experiments, and collective improvisation. In 2026, he’s released his fourth solo album, Close-up On The Outside, alongside new records with Play Time, OOPS!, Silk Fence, and SML. We spoke with Stardrum about his compositional process and the challenges and possibilities of working across so many different musical settings . . .

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RFAD :: October 2026

Freeform transmissions from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab. Airing every third Sunday of the month, RFAD on dublab features the pairing of Tyler Wilcox’s Doom and Gloom from the Tomb and Chad DePasquale’s New Happy Gathering. This month, Tyler kicks things off with a grab-bag of folk jazz and dream pop; Chad follows it up with an hour of Senegalese folk, Malian funk, Malaysian jazz, Filipino psych & more. Sunday, 4-6pm PT . . .

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PAINT :: Whip of an Ear

No one is making music quite like PAINT, the project of musician and Allah-Las guitarist Pedrum Siadatian. If a song title can be prophetic, it's "Illusion of Voice" here, in which the vocals of real and hypothetical cast of ensemble characters and collaborators weave through a shadowy labyrinth full of twists of surrealistic transparency. From police blotter audio soundscapes to warbled poetry reads, fourth record Whip of an Ear is an obtusely captivating listen and one of the prolific musician's best offerings yet . . .

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Piero Umiliani :: Il Corpo

Piero Umiliani’s Il Corpo is the sound of something beautiful beginning to sour. Released in 1974, the soundtrack finds the Italian composer in familiar aesthetic territory, where jazz, funk, psychedelia and library music bleed into one another. Sunny music for shady people, it embodies the anything-goes spirit of Italian library music, spinning a parallel film from grooves, fuzz and atmosphere . . .

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Transmissions :: Richard Thompson (2026)

Hippies, Thugs, and Heroes finds guitarist Richard Thompson sounding as savage, lyrical, and eloquent as ever. This week on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, we're pleased to welcome Thompson back to the show. If you dig Transmissions, there’s a pretty solid chance that you already know that he's one of the founding fathers of British folk rock, known for his work with Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, his former wife Linda Thompson, Nick Drake and others . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Beefheart & McQuinn

Beefheart & McQuinn’s Midtown Downtime arrived earlier this year as a ten-song distillation of folk-rock’s softer, more unhurried pleasures. Think. close harmonies, crisp arrangements, and an easygoing, J.J. Cale-like sway. For their Lagniappe Session, William Murray and Winter McQuinn turn to three favorites from their record collections: Danny O’Keefe’s “The Road,” Mark Fry’s “Song For Wilde,” and Heron’s “Lord & Master.” Spanning road-worn singer-songwriter fare and the pastoral reaches of British folk, the selections share the qualities that animate the duo’s own work . . .

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