Posts

Transmissions :: Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music)

This week on Transmissions, guitarist Phil Manzanera, who joins us to discuss his latest project, a memoir called Revolución to Roxy. Writing about his childhood in revolutionary Cuba, his lifelong fascination with music, and his collaborations and run-ins with people like Brian Eno, David Gilmour, Robert Wyatt, and more, Manzera reveals his Zelig-like status as one of art-rock’s most creatively pivotal figures. He joins us to discuss it all . . .

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.

Dirty Three :: Love Changes Everything

Twelve years on from their last album together, Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White reconvene in a sprawling improvisation of tidal force, six cuts or one, depending on how you look at things. The tracks flow one into another like water running through sluices, inexorable and boundary-less. It’s as if, once started, the Dirty Three couldn’t stop until they had exhausted themselves . . .

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 Place Don’t Make Sense To Me No More: Bob Dylan’s “Street-Legal”

Street-Legal is loud and brash and ugly. There’s a little stink to it, no question. But it reveals the world from which it hails in ways unlike any other Bob Dylan record. It is the primal scream of a man and his nation confronting a future of diminished horizons. It is white diamond gloom and destruction in the ditches. It is a seminal document of bad vibes . . .

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.

Richard, Cam And Bert :: Somewhere In The Stars

Richard Tucker, Campbell Bruce, and Bert Lee were regulars though not exactly superstars in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene. They played as often for change, outdoors in Central Park as at the best known downtown venues, and they made just one album, Limited Edition, in 1970, long out of print until a digital reissue in 2014.

Indeed, Tucker is now best known for his creative partnership with his wife at the time, Karen Dalton. This collection of early, unreleased material includes the original recording of “Are You Leaving for the Country,” which Dalton covered memorably on her 1971 album . . .

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.

Anastasia Coope :: Darning Woman

Citing influences such as 80s art-rock, Trish Keenan, Brigitte Fontaine, medieval choruses, church choirs, 50s harmony groups, and more, Coope almost sounds something like coalescing into Nico fronting early Animal Collective. Her deep, hypnotizing chant-like singing leads warbled, gossamer folk into an air of surreal stream of consciousness – her self-looped vocals, guitar, and sparse piano lines echoing against themselves in spectral delight, building cavernous choral fantasies where the tiresome realities and expectations of everyday life fold in on themselves . . .

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.

Levek :: Look A Little Closer

... other songs evoke The Zombies, and others yet Talk Talk. Solar and lunar at the same time, the ebbing, scarce light of Levesque's fingerpicked guitars comb into a dense honey dough. It's like he produced the ethnological recordings of the music of a group of divine beings from an 1980s fantasy B-movie . . .

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.

Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: June 2024

Freeform transmissions from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab, airing every third Sunday of the month. This month features Tyler Wilcox's Doom & Gloom From The Tomb with a selection of semi-summery sounds new and old, followed by Chad DePasquale's New Happy Gathering with a mid-year halftime report of favorite 2024 digs. Sunday, 4-6pm PT . . .

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.

Cornelius :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

From his home in Tokyo, Cornelius joined us to discuss the ethereal qualities that make up his current material, his longtime admiration for The Durutti Column, looking back on breakthrough album Fantasma, the Kraftwerk-inspired visual components that augment his live performances, and much more . . .

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.

Hölderlin :: Hölderlins Traum

Hölderlin remains a footnote in the greater Kosmische tome. Like many of the Kraut canon’s lesser-knowns, Hölderlin’s legacy and overall impact would be marked by sporadic line-up changes, discrepancies in sound and direction, and even lawsuits. Their reputation is further shrouded in the fact that the group, along with big-timers Klaus Schulze and Manual Gottsching, were key parties to the eventual falling out and demise of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and his Pilz and Cosmic Couriers label. Sensationalism be damned, prior to the drama and tumult that would follow, Hölderlin managed to lock . . .

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.

Someone Like Me :: A Compilation

Efficient Space, the label that heroically issued this compilation, defines the songs it gathered as "confessional loner folk, devotional song, civil rights activism." I would suggest it is much more. Like Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk before it, Someone Like Me offers a glimpse into the transcendental sprouts in the salt of the earth, this time by way of alien americana and abstract, out-of-time lo-fi . . .

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

Pacific bivouac. 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.

Funk Tide :: Tokyo Jazz​-​Funk from Electric Bird 1978​-​87

The Parisian label Wewantsounds delivers yet again with Funk Tide – Tokyo Jazz-Funk from Electric Bird 1978-87, a compilation surveying the Japanese jazz label’s ferocious first decade, culled by the Tokyo-based DJ Notoya. The eight tracks within, many of which are seeing their first release outside of Japan, comprise a bonanza of fusion, city pop, smooth soul sounds, and beyond . . .

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.

Transmissions :: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco

2024 marks 20 years of Wilco's current lineup, and the band is celebrating with another installment of their Solid Sound Festival and a new EP, Hot Sun Cool Shroud. Band leader Jeff Tweedy joins host Jason P. Woodbury this week to discuss the fest and the absurdities of life in a band . . .

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.

Marina Allen :: Eight Pointed Star

Marina Allen's Eight Pointed Star brings back her light fusion of indie rock and Americana, evoking the folk revival of late '60s icons like Joni Mitchell and Karen Dalton as much as it does present-day peers Dana Gavanski and Andy Schauf . . .

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.

Waltel Branco :: Meu Balanço

One of the unrecognized masters of Brazilian music, Waltel Branco seemed to have been everywhere from the 1940s to the 1970s, Zelig-like. As the director of the Som Livre studios of Rede Globo, he produced most major records of Brazilian music history, with more than three thousand official credits and a few thousand more in dispute, for wildly different works, from the afro-folk of J.B. de Carvalho to the samba of Elizeth Cardoso to the bossa nova of João Gilberto to the tropicália of Gal Costa to the soul funk of Tim Maia . . .

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.