Looking back to look ahead. The clock never stops, but sometimes music manages the impossible: slowing time for a moment. Our list arrives in the spirit of sharing, and we’re back with our annual Year In Review. As always the following is unranked and unruly. Let it blurb . . .
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While this year marked the fortieth anniversary of the avant-pop debut World Standard, musician Soichiro Suzuki returns with a brand new record Komorevia under the long-running moniker. Lead single "Human Circle of Memory" is a carefully crafted work invoking the spirit of the last four decades of the singular World Standard universe, with fading reverberations and echoes of chiming bells and woodwinds overlapping with layered synthesizers (and soft vocals from Yoriko Matsumoto). A self-described sunlight filtering through the trees, indeed . . .
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While Milton Nascimento is more known internationally for his role in Brazilian jazz fusion, he also composed landmark MPB records of his own, that often brought forth folkloric Brazilians genres like toada, lundu, moda de viola, and even some Medieval revivalism. Maria Maria is a highlight among those explosions of ancestral rhythms. Composed as the soundtrack to a 1976 ballet about a black female slave choreographed by Group Corpo, it would eventually culminate in the historic Missa dos Quilombos in 1982, when Milton led a drum-filled Catholic mass for a legion of Afro-Brazilians in the Praça do . . .
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34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .
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1995 was an inflection point for so many of indie rock’s finest. But in the story Yo La Tengo, Electr-O-Pura doesn’t invite lofty historicizing. Sandwiched between two of their most important records, it feels like business as usual—and that’s why it’s so good. 30 years on, we can see how we were lucky enough to be invited inside their little world of inside jokes and off-kilter psychedelic jamming . . .
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This week on the show, a return guest: Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate and solo fame. He last joined the show part of a trio: in 2018, we taped with him, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, and Robyn Hitchcock live at the KXCI studio at Hotel Congress in Tucson Arizona. That talk also made it into the Transmissions feed again in 2021 . . .
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"I'm not being corny/this shit's for real," Flea intones over a bubbling jazz fusion groove on "A Plea," a new solo single which finds the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist returning to his first instrument: the trumpet. Backed by a cadre of the West Coast's most innovative and hip jazz players, this a musical rebirth for the Funky Monk . . .
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An immersive double LP of woodsy ambient from upstate New York. You may recognize Wednesday Knudsen’s name from her various collaborative projects — Pigeons, Stella Kola, Weeping Bong Band, a killer duo LP with Willy Lane, and probably many more. But Atrium is a true solo project, with Knudsen layering sax, synth, guitar, flute and autoharp to create a rich and spacious landscape worthy of such masters as Joanna Brouk, Laraaji and Iasos, alongside the Japanese environmental music tradition . . .
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The latest offering from Denver’s Totem Pocket begins with its wooziest, weirdest song, a bad trip translated into thick, sludgy sound. Stick with it though! You’ll be rewarded with a truly awesome slab of fuzzy and fierce dream pop. One crucial ingredient in the band’s very tasty recipe is pure volume — an element that many worshipers at the altar of shoegaze somehow forget about . . .
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Hark, the snow is falling! At least in some places of the world it is. As winter descends, we’ve got some recent/recommended records to soundtrack the chillier months. Fill up your cart for the latest Bandcamp Friday on Dec. 5 . . .
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Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) is an affecting meditation on the theatrical experience, exploring the nuances of film exhibition and the paradoxical loneliness of experiencing cinema in a darkened room amongst strangers — all together, yet still alone. It's a bittersweet love letter to the vagabond souls who seek solace in theaters, who relish in the ceremonial comforts of getting popcorn, settling into their seats, and waiting for the house lights to dim. This is a movie that not only loves movies, but also postulates that such love comes from going to see a movie in a theater, the experiential factor . . .
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Some records feel impossible to write about. Not because they lack substance, but because they possess too much of it: too much quiet, too much space, too much mystery. They resist language the way water resists a net. Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991) feel like works designed to escape description altogether. And perhaps the paradox is this: the quieter the music becomes, the more words people spend trying to grasp it. Silence invites interpretation; these albums invite entire libraries. Approaching them feels like stepping barefoot into a dark, vast hall – your perception sharpened, your . . .
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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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A year ago, Brooklyn songwriter Zachary Cale took a break from routine and made an album entirely on piano. Now Cale is back to his primary instrument, the guitar, in a new collection of songs that bridge the difference between Glenn Jones-style finger-picking and expansive, nearly new age-y instrumental music a la Yasmin Williams . . .
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Welcome back to Transmissions. This week: Steve Von Till, of sludge legends Neurosis, the tribal ambient spin-off Tribes of Neurot, solo albums under this own name, and the psych folk project Harvestman. He runs the independent label, Neurot Recordings. And as if all that isn’t enough, he’s also a poet, and an educator—when he’s not playing music, he’s bringing knowledge to the next generation, working as a fourth grade teacher in North Idaho . . .
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