Outré California. 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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Living legend Willie Nelson will once again be hosting his annual 4th of July Picnic this year, more than 50 years after the Lone Star State tradition kicked off. For those of us who can't get down to Texas this Independence Day, this concert doc from '74 will have to do. Don't worry, it's about as good a time as you can have — you can practically smell the reefer, sun tan lotion and BBQ as tens of thousands of fans enjoy a weekend of the burgeoning outlaw country scene's best: Jerry Jeff Walker, Sammi Smith, Waylon . . .
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For his All One Song appearance, guitarist Chris Forsyth selected “Lookout Joe,” which first appeared on Tonight’s the Night just about 50 years ago in the summer of 1975. It’s a darkly humorous tune that has all the hallmarks of Neil’s Ditch era—that seedy swagger, a druggy vibe, Ben Keith’s wild pedal steel and backing vocals, and some dangerous guitar work. It’s a deep cut, but it’s a deep cut that’s very much worth getting into . . .
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The clock never stops, but sometimes music manages the impossible: slowing time for a moment. It's in those vibrational encounters with music that we find peace and we find ourselves. In the spirit of sharing the stuff that moved us, we're back with our midyear review. As always, the list is unranked and unruly; there's more than enough here to guide you into those rare encounters with deep time . . .
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It’s hot. 91 degrees today as I type this listening to records in my office in northeast Los Angeles. Preemptive 4th of July explosions abound after dusk, echoing the cities ambient social temperature. Like every summer, it’s all lit up. So let’s get to it: I’ve been bouncing between various books, films and records, some good, some great and some, well, trashy . . .
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Amid Pink Floyd’s inevitable implosion initiated by Dark Side of the Moon’s monumental success, the groundwork was laid out for the eventual collapse of the prog-gone-hitmaker behemoth. Egos ran amuck, an aging band found familial responsibility eating away at creative time, and the specter of commercial viability lurked behind every brainstorming and recording session. Fury and slurry ensued; accusations of members not pulling their weight lobbed off; the active feuds and subdued passive aggression over the directions of their projects would become lore as the group eventually parted ways. Buffered in chaos, Richard Wright quietly put . . .
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Dedicated students of the pop underground, Lightheaded inhibits a wide-eyed coexistence with formative heroes from the Glasgow indie school, sixties sunshine pop and plenty of like minded stalwarts from their Slumberland label. Following the New Jersey group's excellent debut Combustible Gems last year, Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! is a self-described more collaborative effort, including enlisting a handful of those formative heroes. Don't call it naivety, but the band's shambolic guitar pop dreams up their own hypothetical, optimistic world: lyrical themes of umbrellas, gardens and sunsets take center stage . . .
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Mario Cascardo's first few records, under the moniker Mario Maria, already captured a charming kind of Brazilian ingeniousness: João Gilberto-like vocals and airy guitars were filtered and fused through an old, broken laptop. It was lo-fi in the truest sense: not as an arbitrary aesthetic choice, but as the creative result of a technical obliqueness at the frontiers of capitalistic development. Cascardo's more recent releases as Atletas, like others from his label Municipal K7, provide even stronger evidence that lo-fi is now happening at the margins, where artists are using their own global displacement . . .
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Outré California. 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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Welcome to the very first episode of All One Song: A Neil Young podcast, presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Join liner notes author, musician, and Shakey historian and Doom and Gloom from the Tomb host Tyler Wilcox along with an array of great musicians and writers discussing their favorite Neil Young song, diving deep into Shakey lore and getting personal about this amazing body of work. It’s a series for Neil heads by Neil heads. Up first? Steve Gunn, with a look at Neil's epic fish daydream . . .
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The Campfire Headphase is a “trip” record rather than a “psychedelic folk” record. Not quite the ”Ultimate Trip” of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or the fuzzed out freakouts associated with the cemetery scene in Easy Rider, but the journey of a single person sitting by a fire and seeing where their thoughts lead them under some outside influence. The listener follows along, easing “Into the Rainbow Vein” and skimming along various observations, memories, and eventual realizations before coming out the other side with only a gradually-fading “Farewell Fire” left . . .
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A new project from Adeline Hotel's prolific Dan Knishkowky is always a welcome surprise, and here the guitarist/composer teams up with harpist and fellow Brooklynite Rebecca El-Saleh (Kitba) for a thrilling, improvisational affair. Finding a shared common ground over themes of "warm yet visceral" textures, the bridge between Knishkowky's fingerpicking guitar and El-Saleh's harp makes I'll Send You A Sign register as a transcendent soundscape infused with a jolted yet serene Americana landscape . . .
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It was just about two decades ago that Black Moth Super Rainbow pulsed and vibrated and vocodered into view, with the freak-electronic classic Dandelion Gum, a synth-blaring magical garden of day-glo delights. BMSR’s main proprietor has released music sporadically ever since, both under the Black Moth Super Rainbow name and as TOBACCO. So while it’s been seven years since the last BMSR album, Panic Blooms, there have been a slew of solo, beat-driven TOBACCO albums in the interim . . .
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Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer follow their 2022 collaboration with Different Rooms, an ambient collage record that once again unites the worlds of cosmic jazz and modular synthesis. The result of their second encounter is another meditative electronic improvisation marked by a glossy timbre of bells throughout, as smooth and crystalline as a pool of soft pebbles . . .
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Max Roach's deep vision of the drums as a communicator of limitless expression permeates every corner of his pathways. Starting in 1970, his M'Boom percussion ensemble was a collective that brought together an array of African, Latin and all sorts of global rhythms. On this 1979 record, the ensemble explores all sorts of polyrhythms with original compositions from all of the expanded octet, as well as abstractly paying tribute to the likes of Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk . . .
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