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Scout Gillett :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

“I don't want a record to sound like what everyone else is trying to sound like,” Scout Gillett says, and that means keeping her various inspirations close, allowing Neil Young, Lucinda Williams, and The Deftones to share space in her imagination. Gillett joined us virtually on a sunny Wednesday morning from her home in Los Angeles to discuss her new album, Tough Touch . . .

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Kim Gordon :: PLAY ME

Shuddering beats disintegrate, dragging pieces of themselves over rough surfaces, all noise and rhythm and confrontation. Kim Gordon, now on her third album as a solo artist, works again with Justin Raisen, churning up a particularly dirty, distorted variety of hip-hop crossed with indie rock, blitzed by amp buzz and ruptured occasionally by guitar. Over this seething, volatile bed, Gordon chants ominous verses that glance on, but do not explicate, the day’s big questions: AI, climate change, alienation, colonial overreach . . .

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Adiós Augie Meyers: 1940-2026 

On March 7th, musician and producer Augie Meyers passed away at the age of 85. A founding member of the Sir Douglas Quintet and The Texas Tornados with Doug Sahm, Meyers also played with a host of legends, including Bob Dylan, Tom Jones, Tom Waits, and more. Today, we share this remembrance by another artist Meyers collaborated with, songwriter Jerry David DeCicca (who helms our Dollar Diamonds column . . .

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

It’s a dream. 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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Greg Belson’s Divine Funk: Rare American Gospel Soul And Funk

Hit me! Get sanctified, testify, and let it all hang out across a dozen raw Holy Ghost-infused funk and soul jammers where the spirit locks deep in the pocket. Putting in the work, DJ and record collector Greg Belson is the selector, unearthing heavyweight rarities from his personal crates. Originally released in 2021, Divine Funk is back in print as of last year via Cultures of Soul . . .

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The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis :: Deface the Currency

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis return, for their second collaboration. While their first record dealt in deep grooves and comfortably familiar rhythms, Deface the Currency aims for something noisier, angrier and more invigorating. The guitar takes command, with Anthony Pirog unleashing boiling leads and laying down thickets of distorted drones, while the rhythm section barrels away behind him. Lewis holds his own, sometimes playing fierce counterpoint to Pirog, sometimes bolstering the guitar's attack, and often making his own searing, soaring declarations . . .

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Tokyo Pulse :: Japanese Funk, Modern Soul and City Pop from The Tokyo Scene 1974-88

The recent algorithmic explosion of Japanese city pop with Haruomi Hosono, Yoshiko Sai, Masayoshi Takanaka, and others didn't even come close to exhausting the otherworldly fertility of the genre. For the new compilation by international reissue label Wewantsounds, Tokyo-based DJ Notoya selected lost, hidden, and obscured city pop tracks, none of which have quite entered the Western market yet . . .

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Tilaye’s Saxophone With The Dahlak Band ((የጥላዬ ሳክስ ከዳህላክ ባንድ ጋር))

Released sometime in the late 70s, Tilaye Gebre's album as a featured performer was taken from a one-take, single microphone live recording during their residency at the capital’s Ghion Hotel. Unfolding across nine, slow-burning tracks, the band feels woozily cool, locked in a groove that feels unconscious. There’s a telepathic current running through the players that fashions a sound both nocturnal and bright but a little grizzled by its stripped-down recording texture too . . .

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Even If It’s Flawed or Crooked :: Catching Up With Buck Meek

Buck Meek joins Aquarium Drunkard from his LA-based studio Ringo Bingo, to discuss his latest album The Mirror, his relationship with collaboration and solitude in songwriting, giving himself permission to be uninhibited in frankness, a childhood obsession with Garth Brooks’ Ropin’ The Wind and more . . .

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Stereolab :: Emperor Tomato Ketchup at 30

Thirty years old this month, Stereolab's 1996 breakthrough record Emperor Tomato Ketchup was equal parts transitional and revolutionary. Upon three decades of reflection, the retrofuturism bridgegap keenly foreshadowed the self-coined groop's prolific trajectory, spanning all the way through last year's comeback album Instant Holograms on Metal Film. From borrowing basslines from Gil Scott-Heron to meditative three-word mantras, ETK represented a singular pop/experimental nexus virtually unheard of in its mid-nineties timing, casting a kaleidoscopic umbrella in its influence over endless genres and eras . . .

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David Lee Jr. :: Evolution

New Orleans — birthplace of the syncopated rhythm splinter known as the second-line. Cut to 1974. Drummer and composer David Lee Jr. quietly releases his lone solo LP, the Afro‑futurist Evolution, privately pressed to just 400 copies on his own Supernal Records imprint. A percussive spiritual meditation in motion, the record folds intricate polyrhythms into hypnotic, repetitive loops that sound as urgent and on-point today as they did half a century ago. Four hundred copies. Infinite resonance . . .

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Dagmar Zuniga :: In Filth Your Mystery Is Kingdom / Far Smile Peasant In Yellow Music

One of the most striking records from 2025 finally gets its deserved vinyl release with AD93's issuing of Dagmar Zuniga's in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music. The pluricultural artist's debut was also assembled in a pluricultural environment, across Norway and Greece and Georgia, and found a rapid, cult-like admiration within a certain Brooklyn scene of lo-fi and experimental art—featuring Zach Philips, its success would eventually lead Zuniga to tour with Mount Eerie . . .

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Matt Valentine :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

The latest Wet Tuna LP is called Vast — and you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a better title for this collection of strange and funky flights. It’s a wide-open, far-flung album, deeply textured and ridiculously detailed, but somehow spacious and inviting. A psychedelic micro-galaxy/macro-dose that teems with life and imagination. Close to a decade in, this is the fourth proper Wet Tuna offering (not counting an array of more “under-the-counter” situations), but the project is just another whistle-stop on the Matt Valentine express . . .

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Bonnie “Prince” Billy :: We Are Together Again

It would be a mistake to take the simplicity of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy’s songs at face value. Certainly, his tunes do have a pared down grace. And yet, listen closely and you’ll catch the embellishments, the flicker of saxophone, the soft cushion of strings, the flutter of flute, the smoke wreathes of communal singing. The center, as always, is Will Oldham, his tetchy, querulous voice, his warm way with melody, his startling, occasionally absurdist sprays of poetic imagery, but these songs are beautifully filled out by a cast of long-time friends and neighbors from the Louisville area . . .

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