Posts

Helado Negro :: Running

Roberto Carlos Lange, the mind behind Helado Negro, feels like music's eternal optimist. This Is How You Smile, his new album, first saw daylight last week via Brooklyn's RVNG Intl. If not the one we deserve, Lange is definitely the hero we need. His music unfolds with a patient grace and an absolutely sublime beauty; his cooing vocals floating gently across electronic atmospheres, radiantly beaming about Latin pride, family, friendship, and love . . .

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Goat :: Let It Burn b/w Friday, Pt. 1

Heady psych, heavy on the fuzz, via Gothenburg's Goat. Released last spring, "Let It Burn" b/w "Friday, Pt. 1" combines the band's self-proclaimed "best song," written for a short film fittingly featuring a sacred goat pit against evil pagans, with a studio outtake jam that lives in a decidedly more placid space, transmitting warm, astral, free-jazz tones. Come for the doom, but stay for the cosmos. words / c depasquale

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Scott Hirsch

Cut from the same dank and swampy cloth as JJ Cale and Bobby Charles, Scott Hirsch has paid his dues over the past two decades; both solo and with The Court & Spark / Hiss Golden Messenger. Last year’s Lost Time Behind the Moon found Hirsch mining languid, back porch Americana coupled with humid country-funk. Or: JJ Cale on cough syrup.

This installment of the Lagniappe Sessions finds Hirsch at his Ojai, CA studio, Echo Magic West, laying down three wildly emotional covers by the likes of Dire Straits, Commander Cody and Dylan – all of which will leave you wondering . . .

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

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app.

This week: Things get pretty 'free' checking in with jazz and experimental, both new and vintage, during hour one. Then, guitar . . .

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In Memoriam: Sara Romweber (Let’s Active)

Sara Romweber was 17 the year I was born. She lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but had been talked into joining a band with a couple from about an hour and a half away in Winston-Salem. That band, Let's Active, would record and release their debut EP, Afoot, two years later, and its goofy, fun video for the perfect . . .

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Michael Rother :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

With Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Harmonia, guitarist Michael Rother was instrumental in developing Kosmische Musik, or Krautrock. A new boxset charts his often pastoral and filmic solo trajectory . . .

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Aquarium Drunkard :: SXSW 2019

Is there still a Tostitos stage? The last time Aquarium Drunkard threw a proper fête at sxsw (2013) our now sitting president was referred to as “the Donald.“ Man, this simulation just gets weirder and weirder…

Anyway, we’re back. Join us Tuesday night, March 12, as we take over the Patreon house on Rainey street from 8-2am. Here’s what you can expect: The Cactus Blossoms, William Tyler, Jess Williamson, White Denim, RF Shannon, y la Bamba . . .

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Open Door To The Galaxy: The Radio Plays of Jo Harvey and Terry Allen

With a series of radio plays recorded between 1986-1992, Terry Allen and Jo Harvey presented the mythic Southwest, a wide open imaginary landscape haunted by denizens Allen describes as “climates” rather than characters. A handful of these fated souls are profiled in Pedal Steal + Four Corners, a handsome collection of Terry’s longform audio works by Paradise of Bachelors that spans an LP, CDs, and a book rich in lore and photographic documentation . . .

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Deep Into Steve Tibbetts’ Life Of

On Steve Tibbetts' Life Of, the new age trappings are gone, the subtle accompaniment of piano, “gong cycles,” gamelan influences (based on his travels and study in Bali and Nepal), the still-in-there-someplace Midwestern Kottke vibes, all synthesized so exquisitely. The secret sauce in his playing is partly due to his instrument; an old Martin D-12-20 12-string with worn down frets and dead strings. He describes it as having a “peculiar internal resonance, as though it has a small concert hall inside of it . . .

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Like Some Cool River :: Reimagining Richard Thompson

Like Some Cool River is a sampling of Richard Thompson covers from over the decades, with inspired offerings from old comrades (Sandy Denny, Iain Matthews) alongside devoted acolytes (Robyn Hitchcock, Stephen Malkmus). There are a few surprises along the way, too. Dig in . . .

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Viajante da Fronteira (A Mixtape)

An imaginary journey back to the lagoon where Hermeto Pascoal, O Grupo, and some butterflies made music in the river. 17 otherworldly tracks from Brazil . . .

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Music Book: An Exploration of Japanese Sounds

Aquarium Drunkard presents Norio Sato's (Record Shop Rare Groove, Osaka, Japan) exclusive mix 'Music Book: An Exploration of Japanese Sounds', for the Mr. Good Boy Record Cart . . .

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Twain: New Miami Sound

On his latest, a lean, seven-song release entitled New Miami Sound, Davidson shows leaps and bounds in his songwriting, embracing piano-driven rhapsodies found in the unlikeliest of places; nostalgia-tinted folk for long casted shadows just beginning to fade. Branching off some strange lineage of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Harry Nilsson, his warbly, rustic vocals and subtly profound prose seem to sneak up on you. Often, it feels as though you might turn around to find it gone . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions: William Tyler/Second Session

Returning for his second Lagniappe Session, guitarist William Tyler offers up new covers of Fleetwood Mac and Yo La Tengo, and sets about interpreting compositions by George Frideric Handel and Antonín Leopold Dvořák . . .

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Pierre Bensusan :: Le Conseil De Guerre

Issued in 1977 via Rounder Records, Pierre Bensusan 2 is largely comprised of the acoustic guitarist's take on traditional European folk music. Sung in Bensusan's native French, the two sides scan hoary folklore from the Scandinavian tundra to the British isles. Folklore that is both interpreted and, at times, appended by the artist . . .

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