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Spencer Cullum :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

On Spencer Cullum's latest release, the closing chapter to the Coin Collection series, Spencer’s focus has shifted from curiosity to frustration. In trying to make sense of what’s unfolding before our eyes today, it helps to go back to the past. That’s exactly what Cullum has done with his most recent work . . .

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Bandcamping :: Spring 2026

Mayday, Mayday! The latest Bandcamp Friday hits on May 1, giving us all the chance to put some pennies (and hopefully more) into the pockets of those hard-working musicians out there, without any of those pesky fees getting in the way. A few recent recommendations are below — fill up your cart . . .

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

Outré California. Via satellite, transmuting 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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All One Song :: Micah Nelson on “Change Your Mind”

This week, Micah Nelson⁠ drops into Aquarium Drunkard's Neil Young podcast to talk "Change Your Mind." Since 2014, Nelson has served as one of Neil’s closest collaborators, playing guitar first in the Promise of the Real, then in Crazy Horse, and now in the Chrome Hearts. He’s toured all over the globe with Young, delivering epic, deep-cut heavy sets. During that time, he’s appeared on such records as The Monsanto Years, Earth, The Visitor, Fuckin’ Up, and last year’s Talkin to the Trees . . .

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Charles Mingus :: A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry

An overlooked experiment from a remarkably ambitious late fifties period of bassist Charles Mingus, 1958's A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry doesn't actually include poetry in the traditional sense. Episodically exploring the Harlem-based narrator's relationship with jazz, the elongated "Scenes in the City" features spoken word vignettes by actor Melvin Stewart and was partially penned by Langston Hughes. In addition to the piece's music cues of Mingus and his band, the rest of the material drops the verbal experiments in favor of equality enticing tracks that went on to inform the seminal Mingus . . .

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Turner William Jr :: Vipérine

It would be easy to write a verbose piece about the immersive nature of Turner William Jr.’s musicianship or drone on about the philosophical implications of the vipérine, a flower that is both at home on the shoulder of roadways and dry barren landscapes. But it seems much more important to state clearly, without metaphor or poetry, that Vipérine is a beautiful album, effortlessly weaving the rich presence of sacred music to the forward momentum of genre-agnostic artistry . . .

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Drew Gardner :: Wave Field

Drew Gardner may be best known for the cosmic shimmer and drone of Elkhorn, his duo with Jesse Shepherd or his own trippy solo work, but he’s a long-time Hawkwind head as well. Wave Field, recorded with Garcia Peoples’ Tom Malach and Andy Cush on guitar and bass and Ryan Jewell on drums, is far more motorik and krautish than what you’ve heard from Gardner up to now . . .

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The Sleeves :: Self-Titled

Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature expanded on the last album, The Heat Warps, to include the U.K. improvisatory guitarist Tara Cunningham. Their dual guitar play was loose and intuitive, softening the lines drawn by the band’s motorik sound and adding an unpredictable but well-thought out element to its songs. Now, the two of them extend their conversation in Sleeves, in this quiet but riveting concoction of acoustic guitar and voices . . .

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Sun Ra Arkestra :: Live In Berlin, 1970

Off-axis early peak expansion. Captured at a moment when the Arkestra was stretching further into its own woozy mythos, Berlin 1970 hangs in low orbit, charged with a sidelong electricity. Grooves materialize, then fracture the frame—sliding from radical abstraction to something that starts to hold . . .

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Talk Talk, Montreux 1986: Before the Silence

By July 1986, Talk Talk were still a functioning live unit touring behind The Colour of Spring. But something had already shifted as evidenced by this set from that summer’s Montreux Jazz Festival. Listen closely and you can hear the architecture beginning to loosen: tempos breathe, arrangements open, and familiar material begins to drift toward something less fixed, less performative . . .

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Westerman :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Where Westerman's first record neurotically arranged harmonies into refined ambiences and lush production aesthetics reminiscent of Peter Gabriel and Mark Hollis, and the second succumbed to unsettlingly unformatted bittersweetness, like Nick Drake making a party record, in A Jackal's Wedding he tries to put things into motion once again, if only by breaking them apart. First you clinch it, then you stress it, then it bursts and pours out . . .

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African Head Charge w/ Lee “Scratch” Perry :: Glastonbury Festival 1990

Glastonbury, England. June 1990. One foot in the dying century, the other feeling for whatever comes next. Amid the sweating sprawl, DJ Earthpipe furtively records African Head Charge’s heated 66-minute set with Lee “Scratch” Perry on a Sony Walkman. A séance disguised as a sound system sermon, the tape folds time in on itself---hallucinatory, ritualistic. Press play and drift as tectonic basslines shift beneath the surface . . .

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The Kynds :: So If Someone Sends You Flowers Babe

Here’s one that’s been on serious repeat lately. A mid-60s garage rock gem, “So If Someone Sends You Flowers Babe” is the A-side on the sole release by a group known as The Kynds. A trio from upstate New York, organist Joseph Cirincione, drummer Jerry Porreca, and bassist Dan Wood (with one of them anonymously on vocals) laid down the track in Kinderhook while gigging in the area in 1966, fashioning a lo-fi garage rock gem with merry-go-round keys, a sparse drumbeat, and warped humming bass. It’s a mysteriously cool platter, a . . .

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

Via satellite, transmuting 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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Fela Kuti :: Live in Detroit 1986

There are records that feel like documents and there are records that feel like contraband. Live in Detroit 1986 sits firmly in the latter… a tape smuggled out of the room, dubbed and redubbed into soft focus until the hiss becomes a third rhythm section. Captured less than a year after Fela Kuti’s release from prison, at Detroit’s Fox Theatre during his first U.S. tour, the set lands with a charged, itinerant electricity: part exorcism, part declaration . . .

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