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Transmissions :: Mark Lightcap (Acetone/Dick Slessig Combo)

Acetone Dick Slessig Combo PodcastPosted on

This week, we welcome one of our favorite musicians to the show: Mark Lightcap of Acetone and the Dick Slessig Combo. Last year, New West Records reissued Acetone’s discography, featuring illuminating liner notes by J. Spaceman of Spiritualized/Spaceman 3 and Drew Daniel of Matmos/The Soft Pink Truth. The occasion prompted a great conversation with Mark that we published in written form last year. This week on the show, he joins us for a loose talk from his backyard in LA. From “beautiful music” to his run-ins with Oasis, this conversation takes plenty of fascinating turns . . .

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Pat Keen :: I Saw A Bug

Pat KeenPosted on

I Saw A Bug isn’t a lonesome highway; it’s an American cabaret. There are backcountry signifiers, to be sure—banjo and pedal steel and fingerstyle guitar—but there are also eerie synths and drum machines and MIDI programming that make the album feel like a slightly extraterrestrial simulacrum of American music. Almost as if aliens were trying to recreate the country and western songbook based on the handful of AM radio signals that had finally made it past Alpha Centauri . . .

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Richard Tripps :: Between The Morning

Richard TrippsPosted on

Like the coziness of nostalgia, the 4-track tape recorder is immediately evident during the guitar jangle that opens "Blue Eyed Open Sky". Recorded in a tent cabin on a river in the musician's hometown of Big Sur, California, the lo-fi aesthetic of Richard Tripps sophomore album was a deliberate choice, inspired by the analogue charm of tape, where the musician's formative demos crossed paths with key influences like the VU and fellow Big Sur psych-folk outfit The Range of Light Wilderness . . .

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Guided by Voices :: Strut of Kings

Guided By Voices Robert PollardPosted on

“Olympus cock in Radiana/struts the strut of kings,” declares Robert Pollard, against a vamping guitar riff in this, the 41st year of the phenomenon known as Guided by Voices. We can celebrate 30 years of being able to listen to the great Bee Thousand now, but the real triumph is that Guided by Voices just keeps going. Its crashing guitar chords and Who-like drum explosions, its dream-state lyrical surrealities, its inevitable melodies burst from Strut of Kings as fresh and powerful as ever . . .

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You Can Sound Like Yourself :: David Bazan on Pedro the Lion’s Modesto

David Bazan Pedro the Lion The AD InterviewPosted on

Nothing is simple. Self-knowlege is won painfully, insight by insight, song by song. On his latest album under the Pedro the Lion banner, Santa Cruz, songwriter David Bazan examines the complications of family, faith, and the past—and how it informs the present moment . . .

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On Harry Whitaker’s Black Renaissance

Harry WhitakerPosted on

On January 15, 1976—what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 47th birthday—the pianist Harry Whitaker assembled a group of musicians at Sound Ideas Studio on West 46th Street in Manhattan to record what would eventually be released as Black Renaissance – Body, Mind And Spirit. Whitaker had gained experience playing piano in Roy Ayers’ band and as musical director for Roberta Flack for most of the 1970s, but this session was an opportunity for Whitaker to see his specific musical vision become reality . . .

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Transmissions :: The Dirty Three

Jim White Mick Turner Podcast The Dirty Three Warren EllisPosted on

There are heavy hitters, and then there's The Dirty Three. A trio comprising violinist Warren Ellis, guitarist Mick Turner, and drummer Jim White, these Australian independent rock legends recently returned with their first album in 12 year, the aptly titled Love Changes Everything. This week on Transmissions, The Dirty Three explore their history, reflect on the life and work of Steve Albini, and recall their days opening for The Beastie Boys . . .

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Posted on Jim White Mick Turner Podcast The Dirty Three Warren Ellis

Luis Gasca :: For Those Who Chant

Luis GascaPosted on

A regular sideman and session player for various jazz and rock acts in the Bay Area during the early '70s, trumpeter Luis Gasca eventually stepped back from performing. But his 1972 LP For Those Who Chant cements his legacy, featuring his Latin jazz stylings and players like Joe Henderson, Lenny White, Stanley Clarke and Carlos Santana . . .

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Wild Up :: Julius Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence

Julius EastmanPosted on

Julius Eastman was a minimalist maverick. Wild Up is a group of Los Angeles-based musicians who have anthologized Eastman’s works since 2021. In their fourth installment, The Holy Presence, Wild Up lands on Eastman’s final compositions, ones that reflect on religiosity and resistance . . .

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Linda Thompson :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Linda Thompson The AD InterviewPosted on

On her new album, Linda Thompson doesn't sing. But her ever-vibrant personality is on full display on the aptly named Proxy Music. Joined by vocalists like Rufus and Martha Wainwright, John Grant, Eliza Carthy and Dori Freeman, the record captures the melancholic spirit of her classic albums with Richard–who shows up here, too . . .

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Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd :: The Moon and the Melodies

Cocteau Twins Harold BuddPosted on

First released in 1986, the collaborative record of dream pop deities Cocteau Twins and minimalist giant Harold Budd is still among the most interesting crossbreeds between so-called pop and so-called art music. By the time of its release, The Moon and the Melodies‘ mix of cerebral drone experimentation and crystalline emotional delivery was at least on par with those at the frontier of pop’s absorption of the avant-garde: John Cale, Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, and the like . . .

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Master Planners: Interpretations of Pharoah Sanders’s Magnum Opus

Pharoah SandersPosted on

Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas's thirty-minute magnum opus, 'The Creator Has a Master Plan' is arguably the paradigmatic work of spiritual jazz, setting the template of deep groove, free blowing and global rhythms that has long characterized the form. But it has also become, improbably enough, something of a standard, covered dozens upon dozens of times--both within the bounds of jazz and beyond them. We scoured a half century of covers and rounded up a handful of our absolute favorite incarnations . . .

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

SIRIUSPosted on

Selects from the AD mid-year review. 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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Videodrome :: Stop Making Sense (1984)

Talking Heads VideodromePosted on

Stop Making Sense is unabashedly effervescent, like a jolt of straight dopamine. For being a concert film about a famous band at the height of their success, there's nothing about Stop Making Sense that's trying to be cool or sexy, flashy or pedantic — it's just trying to have a good time . . .

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Transmissions :: Joe Pernice

Joe Pernice PodcastPosted on

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, Joe Pernice of The Pernice Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys, and Chappaquiddick Skyline—as well as books, records, and other projects under his own name. The Bros are back with Who Will You Believe. Pernice joins us to discuss . . .

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Posted on Joe Pernice Podcast