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Laurindo Almeida Quartet Featuring Bud Shank (1955)

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Before landmark bossa nova records like Antônio Carlos Jobim’s The Composer of Desafinado, Plays (1963) and Getz/Gilberto (1964), there was Laurindo Almeida Quartet Featuring Bud Shank (1955). This quiet trailblazer of Braz-jazz not only meets all the criteria for Midnite Jazz, but also captures the nocturnal side of midcentury Brazilian samba/West Coast Jazz fusion . . .

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All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast and Big Ears 2026 Live Streaming Morning Show

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Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions is returning to your podcast feed. We are pleased to announce season two of All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast and Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions' streaming morning show at Big Ears. Join us March 26 for a special episode featuring Thurston Moore and Kramer, and then April 1 for Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo on AOS . . .

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Yukihiro Takahashi :: Saravah!

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A sojourn into any old Paris nightclub, circa late seventies. The suave and funk-laced exotica from those speakers just might have sounded like something straight from Yukihiro Takahashi's glossy debut record Saravah! While 1978 was the year of the Yellow Magic Orchestra trio's pivotal debut record, it also marked the debut solo offerings of members Ryuichi Sakamoto (Thousand Knives) and Takahashi. A suave affair featuring his YMO bandmates and other Japanese all-stars like guitarist Shigeru Suzuki, Takahashi takes on Italian and French pop, borrows elements from his previous glam/art-rock group Sadistic Mika Band and . . .

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Linton Kwesi Johnson :: Bass Culture

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May 1980, London: Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson drops Bass Culture on Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, the first of two LPs he’d release that year. Jamaica-born and Brixton-raised, the album finds Johnson distilling Babylon’s heavy hand into deep, subterranean basslines laced with incendiary street-level missives — “muzik of blood, black reared pain, rooted heart geared, all tensed up . . .

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Iron & Wine :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

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Sam Beam thought he had writer's block as he entered the studio post-pandemic. But it turns out that wasn't the case at all: the sessions produced so much music Beam had to split it into two different albums, 2024's Fiona Apple-featuring Light Verse and his eighth album, Hen's Teeth, released by Sub Pop in late February. "Deciding on which ones go on the record is just an intuitive thing," Beam says. "There’s no right or wrong answers, you just try to find ones that flow into the next, keep you on your toes . . .

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Gregory Uhlmann :: Extra Stars

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The SML guitarist moves away from the instrumental collective's fragrant, glitched-up grooves on his new solo album, instead charting a path through weirder waters. Featuring a wealth of pedals, loops, samples and synths, Uhlmann creates a strikingly diverse yet surprisingly simple world, one in which wisdom and naivete strike a tentative balance. Though his sound may be warped and stretched, Uhlmann's peculiar emotional resonance rings clear and true . . .

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V/A :: Pop Ambient 2026

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Drifting in on a familiar frequency, Volume 26 of Kompakt’s annual ambient dispatch feels nocturnal, gently untethered, and softly out of focus. An hour-plus slow exhale, the compilation—like the series itself—lingers in the in-between, favoring atmosphere over immediacy without drifting into aimless abstraction. While open to the casual, passing tourist, these sets thrive in their subtle currents, revealing deeper layers to those who appreciate the power of the pause . . .

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Damaged Bug :: Zuzax

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Now five albums into the Damaged Bug solo project, John Dwyer brings the pounding krautish grooves you expect, as well as some things you don’t: gothy, baritone, ballads a la Roxy Music or John Cale; 70s-fusion jazz-influenced improvisations, and Afro-beat rhythms. Damaged Bug has always been more open-ended than even the wide-ranging Ohsees, and it’s a treat to see an artist like Dwyer following his own inclinations, wherever they might lead, and often into illuminating new territory . . .

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The Box Set: An Appreciation, Vol. 2

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The initial standard for a compact disc was 74 minutes. Legend has it the length was decided upon in order to fit all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony onto a single disc. In terms of format, the arrival and adoption of the CD in 1983 changed not only how we listen to recorded music, but how it’s presented as an art form. No longer beholden to the 22 minute confines of a “12 side, artists began experimenting with the medium… as did labels. Welcome to the second installment of The Box Set: An Appreciation in which things take a . . .

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Jay-U Experience :: Enough Is Enough

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With the mercury hitting 91°F here in Los Angeles, our summer crate is calling. At five tracks and under thirty minutes, Enough Is Enough makes no apologies for refusing to hitch its wagon to a single sound, offering instead an unruly sonic free-for-all. And it works. Each track stakes its own claim, from wet rubberband reggae and crunchy, Sabbath-tinged acid rock to loose-limbed jazz-funk and thick Afrobeat heat. Yet somehow(!) the album maintains its aesthetic cohesion. Find a patch of shade and dig the informed chaos. No rules. No boundaries . . .

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The Grateful Dead :: The 1975 Ace’s Sessions (2026 Edition)

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There are Dead Freaks … and then there are Dead Freaks. If you find yourself in the latter category, point your browser immediately over to the always-excellent Save Your Face blog, where you’ll find a massive collection of rehearsal sessions at Bob Weir’s home studio — Ace’s. It was there that the Grateful Dead holed up in 1975 to dream up their Blues For Allah LP up from scratch. And by massive, we mean it: the tapes total just about 24 hours . . .

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Florian Pellissier Quintet :: Pacifiques Biches

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Jazz grip. Via Paris, the Florian Pellissier Quintet dropped their fifth long-player, Pacifiques Biches, in the waning days of last year, casting a subtle, if luminous, glow over the tinsel-lit holiday hustle. Echoing the reflective sophistication of 1970s European jazz, the album weaves atmospheric textures and interplay into a nuanced tapestry of understated restraint. Impressively, and this is no small feat, its nine tracks maintain a contemporary edge without slipping into the well-trodden traps of obvious pastiche . . .

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Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: March 2026

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Freeform transmissions from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab. Airing every third Sunday of the month, RFAD on dublab features the pairing of Tyler Wilcox’s Doom and Gloom from the Tomb and Chad DePasquale’s New Happy Gathering. This month, Tyler kicks things off with a mix that celebrates a very small sampling of the diverse/eclectic artists playing this year’s Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. Chad follows it up with a collection of 2026 digs, both new + archival. Sunday, 4-6pm PT . . .

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Scout Gillett :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

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“I don't want a record to sound like what everyone else is trying to sound like,” Scout Gillett says, and that means keeping her various inspirations close, allowing Neil Young, Lucinda Williams, and The Deftones to share space in her imagination. Gillett joined us virtually on a sunny Wednesday morning from her home in Los Angeles to discuss her new album, Tough Touch . . .

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Kim Gordon :: PLAY ME

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Shuddering beats disintegrate, dragging pieces of themselves over rough surfaces, all noise and rhythm and confrontation. Kim Gordon, now on her third album as a solo artist, works again with Justin Raisen, churning up a particularly dirty, distorted variety of hip-hop crossed with indie rock, blitzed by amp buzz and ruptured occasionally by guitar. Over this seething, volatile bed, Gordon chants ominous verses that glance on, but do not explicate, the day’s big questions: AI, climate change, alienation, colonial overreach . . .

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