Before Pharoah Sanders, before Blazing Saddles, before Muhammad Ali's training camp, there was "Two Moonlins And Mother." Big Black's compact boogaloo gem distills a lifetime of rhythm into three minutes of humid, percussive heat . . .
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Broadcasting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. Slow dissolve. Kosmische drift. ECM-adjacent. Synth meditations. Folk reveries. Keith Jarrett. Harmonia. Eno. Ashra. Gaussian Curve. Chet Baker. Sybille Baier. CAN. Fellow travelers.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .
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Recorded at the height of the Black Ark with Lee "Scratch" Perry at the controls and The Upsetters firing on all cylinders, Musical Bones gave legendary trombonist Vin Gordon the rare opportunity to step out of the backline and into the spotlight. Originally released in 1975 as a UK white-label pressing of just 300 copies, it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, becoming one of reggae's great collector's grails . . .
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The Charlie Hunter Quartet's track-by-track cover of Bob Marley's 1974 classic Natty Dread probably shouldn't work, but somehow the sublimely talented soul jazz guitarist and his group pull it off. Rather than staying faithful to the sound of Marley's reggae standard, Hunter captures the joy and exuberance of the music. Mixing in salsa, jazz-funk, high-life and blues, Hunter's quartet turn what might have been a polite tribute into an explosive celebration. It should be on every summer playlist . . .
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This week on the show, we welcome Nashville-based music journalist, critic and author Erin Osmon, to discuss her tremendous book, Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America, which chronicles how heartland rock, typified by artists like Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, and more, brought a populist, Americana-inspired sound to the airwaves of the radio and MTV . . .
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Issued in 1977, My Good Friends captures a moment when eastern Nigeria's musicians folded highlife, funk, soul, and psychedelia into something restless and idiosyncratic. The results are gloriously untidy. While the contemporary story of Nigerian popular music is often told through towering figures like Fela Kuti, William Onyeabor, and King Sunny Adé, records like this reveal a parallel current—one built on synthesis rather than singularity . . .
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The initial standard for a compact disc was 74 minutes. Legend has it the length was decided upon in order to fit all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony onto a single disc. In terms of format, the arrival and adoption of the CD in 1983 changed not only how we listen to recorded music, but how it’s presented as an art form. No longer beholden to the 22 minute confines of a “12 side, artists began experimenting with the medium… as did labels. Welcome to the third installment of The Box Set: An Appreciation . . .
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For years, Brazilian shoegaze has felt like a borrowed climate. Estranhos Lugares Para os Olhos suggests otherwise, recasting the genre's familiar wall of sound in tropical hues. Echo Upstairs doesn't abandon shoegaze's dream-state—it changes the weather . . .
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Thirty years on, the Trainspotting soundtrack remains one of the defining musical documents of the 1990s. Equal parts mixtape, time capsule, and gateway drug, it introduced a generation to Iggy Pop, Underworld, Lou Reed, and a world of records just beyond the mainstream . . .
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Hovering and almost ethereally weightless, Acid and Honey delivers the kind of saltwater-soaked psychedelia as only crafted by Byron Bay's The Babe Rainbow. With velvety warm basslines and drum machine rhythms, the band's seventh album continues down a recent path of ebullient reggae, R&B explorations and and a dose of warm, synth-coated waves. Meditative and explorative, such freshly applied studio textures reveal an assortment of dazzling mellow subtleties and coastal ambiance that register as the band's finest golden hour . . .
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Guided by an adherence to a philosophy of "outernationalism", Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto's overlooked 1989 record Beauty concluded a pivotal decade of transnational works and collaborations. An audio patchwork tapestry that defies "world music" in its modern conventions, Sakamoto corralled countless collaborators for the sessions (a few including Brian Wilson, Sly Dunbar, Robert Wyatt, Senegalese vocalist Youssou N'Dour, and Arto Lindsay). A self-proclaimed cultural map including Okinawan folk songs and a Rolling Stones cover, Beauty is a spectacle to behold, reaching beyond any regional boundaries . . .
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Filled with percussion pillaged from obscure funk cuts and interjections from early emcees like T La Rock and Kurtis Blow, Endtroducing rummages through the aboriginal dreamtime of hip hop just as it began its first period of slick commercial dominance. It also occasioned the creation of a new genre, trip hop, that quickly went on to mean something mostly different. But even though it used the past for parts and appeared at the close of the analog era, we're still catching up to it. Who knows what sickness lurks in the hearts of bins? The Shadow knows . . .
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Once again, it's dubwise summer. This is the season for tight rhythms, faded melodies and infinite echo. But rather than serve up another collection of classic Jamaican riddims, we decided to sketch out some of the afterlives of dub. Dub's impact on experimental music at the turn of the twenty-first century is incalculable. And every sound that soothed the Y2K soul, from post-rock to trip-hop to illbient to dub techno, owes something to roots reggae's downtempo electric stepchild. Over the past three decades, It has become one of the fundamental idioms of out music . . .
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This week on Transmissions we're joined by Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, Mouse on Mars, calling in from Germany to discuss creating Spatial, No Problem with Lee "Scratch" Perry. The two have been friends since they were kids. In 1993, they formed Mouse on Mars, drawing from electronic traditions, live instrumentation, breakbeats, and a propensity for collaboration with other artists, including Mark E. Smith of The Fall, members of the National, and Stereolab—who, hey now, provide our show’s theme song: “Flashes in the Afternoon . . .
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Spend a few minutes talking with Styrofoam Winos and it becomes obvious why Any River feels so effortless. There are no fixed roles, no designated leader, and very little interest in conventional band hierarchy. Just three longtime friends following songs wherever they lead. We sat down with Joe Kenkel, Trevor Nikrant, and Lou Turner to talk collaboration, improvisation, everyday poetry, and the enduring rewards of making music together . . .
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