New Zealand musician Dean Roberts, beloved in the underground for his albums with Thela and White Winged Moth, passed away unexpectedly on August 10. As a tribute, his longtime friend and collaborator Matt Valentine offers up this personal remembrance . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
A few years back, Chris Forsyth hipped me to Robert Quine and Fred Maher's 1984 LP Basic, an instrumental album of guitar and drum machine rock that sounds like it's playing at the wrong speed. His new trio with baritone guitarist Nick Millevoi (whose recent Moon Pulses sounds like the record I wish U2 would make) and Mikel Patrick Avery on percussion and electronics more than winks at Basic with their debut, This is BASIC—at times its wonky, distortion saturated riffs recall that album for sure. But these guys are on their own trip . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Back in April, we had the great pleasure of speaking with Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs, two of our longtime musical heroes. Our conversation coincided with the release of Gastr del Sol’s new archival compilation, We Have Dozens of Titles, available now from Drag City Records. Over 25 years after disbanding the project in 1998, Grubbs and O’Rourke have assembled a beautifully flowing collection of previously unreleased recordings, bookended by excerpts from the duo’s performance at the Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Jennifer Castle has been in communion with the cosmos for as long as we’ve been listening, and certainly for at least a little while longer than that. On “Lucky #8,” the lead single from her forthcoming new album, Camelot, she emerges as an ambassador for celestial divinity—leaping in song in celebration of its ability to liberate us of our existential dread, almost parental in its omniscient embrace . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Welcome back to Transmissions, our weekly conversational offering. On today's show? Nashville’s own Rich Ruth, who joins us to discuss his jazz rock opus for Third Man Records, Water Still Flows . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Try a little tenderness! Fuubutsushi’s Meridians invites the listener into a sound world where gentleness is a strength, where delicacy speaks volumes. A wonderful sprawl across two LPs, the album’s 15 tracks patiently unfold and unfurl, finding a remarkably fertile middle ground between the rich interplay of Bill Evans’ classic early 1960s trio and Chicago’s exploratory post-rock scene of the mid-1990s . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
When we last caught up with guitarist William Tyler, it was to commemorate Secret Stratosphere, the ripping live record he'd made with his band of compatriots, The Impossible Truth. But his new single "Flight Final" finds Tyler returning to—and moreover, expanding on—the haunted radiophonic tones of his 2020 EP New Vanitas. There's a stark menace to the song's opening, before a light on the horizon cracks—like that big old moon emerging from behind a shadowy cloud—in the form of a sparkly synth reverie and Tyler's arcing waves of electric guitar . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
This week sees the Mississippi Records reissue of last year's revelatory, Keanu Nelson album Wilurarrakutu to a worldwide audience. Nelson is an aboriginal Australian from Papunya, a remote community northwest of Alice Springs, and for this album he recorded himself freely singing his own poems over template Casio beats. Expect simple reggaes, apotheotic synthpop ballads, and new age devotional hymns . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Released by Frederiksberg Records, the Danish label that recently reissued landmark multi-genre Scandivanian artists like Klaus Schonning and Karin Liungman, Soren Skov Orbit's Adrift feels like it fits right in while also extending the eclectic, adventurous fusion styles of Pekka Pohjola or Jan Garbarek, who similarly saw jazz as a means for reimagining other musical traditions: Ethiopian harmonies, Balkan melodies, Jamaican rhythms, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef and whatever else can filter the broken geometries of jazz through a silky folk noir . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Like the venerable touchstones of golden seventies pop, the strength of Nashville four-piece The Medium lies firmly in their established songcraft. On their promising sophomore effort For Horses, the band melded their confident baroque pop with a rousing dose of guitar-driven melodies. Curiously, the title of new record City Life represents a bit of a mirage . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
How do you not love a record called Patron Saint of Tireless Losers? On his second proper solo LP, Wilder Maker's Gabriel Birnbaum swirls in a kaleidoscope of symphonic psych-pop and folky strummers. Don't be fooled by Birnbaum's shaggy dog drawl and easygoing melodies—there's plenty of movement here, surprises lurking in the song's untidy corners. Sure, ambling acoustics and Beach Boys-ready harmonies abound, but on the album's best track, the electric piano-dappled "Perfect Again," barrels forward like a train . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
“Rated X” lacks the monumental sound collage quality of its taped compatriots. The quick (for this era of Miles) seven-minute tune leans into a minimal chaos, almost as if In a Silent Way was recorded in the depths of hell. What begins in disarray slowly becomes the most cohesive thing you’ve ever heard . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
“But what the hell do I know? I just record records that get streamed for free.”
A years-in-the-making conversation with songwriter and producer J. Mamana . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Painted dreams. 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 . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
The works of novelist, essayist and political activist James Baldwin continues to resonate in the culture and in the music of Meshell Ndegeocello nearly 40 years after his death. No More Water sets his words—and the words of poets Staceyann Chin and Audrey Lorde—to an incandescent soundtrack, influenced by jazz, folk, gospel, rock and the rituals of the black church . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.