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BCMC :: Stash

This second album from Bitchin’ Bajas’ Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay is more composed and less improvised than its predecessor Foreign Smokes, its ideas worked out not on the fly but over time as the two musicians honed their tunes in the live setting. These tracks pursue intricate, repeated riffs that are more regular, almost geometrical, than the ones on the debut album, which tended towards spreading pools of tone washed sound . . .

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The Tower Recordings :: Furniture Music For Evening Shuttles

Let's run it back again. It's 2026 and Matt Valentine has returned to the AD orbit. Between a recent Lagniappe Session and the release of All One Song, we've been revisiting Furniture Music For Evening Shuttles, a record at the very center of the Tower Recordings story . . .

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Aquarium Drunkard :: 2026 Midyear Review

The year is half done, and to commemorate, we've rounded up nearly 140 selections that represent AD's favorites. As always, the list is unranked and unruly—archival and reissued releases shared in tandem with the latest arrivals. Let it blurb . . .

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Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe :: Manifestations in the Shadow of an Uncertain Land

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe's later-career move into the realm of soundtracks and film scores is pretty logical. Over two decades since he began recording (under the name Lichens), Lowe has made sound that hints at imagery and traces wordless stories. But to say he makes cinematic music would be to sell Lowe short. After all, making music for movies is in some senses pretty simple; there is a set of well-defined moves and cues that signify actions and plot points. I bet the challenge is more in deciphering studio notes than writing the actual scores . . .

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Virginia Astley :: From Gardens Where We Feel Secure

Summer beckons. Released in July 1983, Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure comes on like a hazy memory preserved on quarter-inch tape. Press play and listen as swallows bank overhead, church bells ring in the distance, and the whole countryside exhales at half-speed . . .

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Leah Senior :: Pt. Roadknight

For roughly a decade and over five albums, Leah Senior has been making airy, breathy, lightly syncopated folk music. Her songs are delicate but not slight, built on pristine runs of acoustic guitar and cooing, trilling vocals. In this fifth album, however, the Australian singer hints at a broader, more communal palette of sounds . . .

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

Waking up convinced you remember a place you’ve never actually been. Broadcasting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

SIRIUS 890: Intro ++ Makaya McCraven – Above & Beyond ++ SML – Taking Out The Trash ++ Nala Sinephro – Space 4 ++ Sarathy Korwar – We Take Things For Granted ++ Boards of Canada – Palace Posy ++ Roberto Musci – Claudia, Wilhelm R And Me ++ Nala Sinephro – Space 1 ++ Boards of Canada – Naraka ++ Mike D – True Colors ++ Ben LaMar Gay – Dress Me In New Love ++ Alabaster DePlume – With Your Hands ++ Beak> – Brean Down ++ Juana Molina – Cosoco ++ Betonkust – Sent Items ++ Boards Of Canada – 1969 ++ Virginia Astley – A Long Summer Since Passed ++ Josiah Steinbrick – Full Bloom ++ Anika – Yang Yang (Dub) ++ Holy Tongue – Misinai ++ Broadcast – Corporeal ++ Susumu Yokota – Uchu Yanjyo ++ Tonstartssbandht – What Has Happened ++ Cave – Beaux ++ Düngen – Franks Kaktus ++ Tara Clerkin Trio – In The Room ++ Shrunken Elvis – Marina Pt. 2

Takako Minekawa :: Roomic Cube

On Roomic Cube, musician Takako Minekawa has a deliberate tunnel vision in the counterbalance of the cheerfully buoyant and accompanying comedown. Prior to later collaborations with artists like Jim O'Rourke and guitarist Dustin Wong, Minekawa shared the retrofuturistic "Shibuya-kei" spotlight with like-minded nineties contemporaries like Cornelius and Kahimi Karie. Moving in a cosmic headspace that balances subtle melodicism and electroacoustics with downright playful lyrical repetition, the album's accomplished sound collage is as much a reflection of the canonical microgenre as any other . . .

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All One Song :: Matt Valentine on “Berlin”

Here to talk about “Berlin” with us today is someone we've been fans of for a long time now—the mighty ⁠Matt Valentine⁠. MV has been making beautiful noise for over three decades now, from ⁠Tower Recordings⁠ to ⁠MV & EE⁠ (with his partner Erika Elder) to various solo excursions and collabs. For the past decade, Matt’s primary focus has been Wet Tuna, which also features Erika and bassist Jim Bliss. The latest Tuna LP is called ⁠Vast⁠ — and you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a better title for this collection of strange and funky flights . . .

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The Hobknobs :: Helmets Off

The Hobknobs make fragile, minimal songs with a surreal, philosophical bent. “Dictionary” sounds like the pencil sketch of a Velvet Underground song, the guitars trebly and luminous, a slackly shaken tambourine the only percussion. The words, however, belie the track’s sonic simplicity, exploring the difficult semiotics of signifier and signified in short, plain words . . .

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Aquarium Drunkard Book Club :: Chapter 38

Welcome back to the stacks. It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our irregular gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading. In this month’s stack: William Eggleston’s uncanny visions of everyday America; Brian Cullman’s improbable encounters with Nick Drake, Miles Davis, and countless others; the shifting landscapes of Los Angeles through Gavin Lambert and Bret Easton Ellis; and Art Pepper’s Straight Life, one of the most candid memoirs in jazz literature . . .

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Videodrome :: All The Real Girls (2003)

In All The Real Girls, first love collides with dead-end roads, textile mills, and the uneasy realization that growing up may not be enough to escape where you came from. Eric Hehr on David Gordon Green's bittersweet masterpiece . . .

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Victor Vieira-Branco’s Bark Culture :: The Giant Is Awkward

A new voice enters the conversation. Enthralling, mysterious, and beautifully disorienting, The Giant is Awkward finds Bark Culture widening its range and sharpening its identity as pianist Sam Yulsman opens new possibilities within the group's sound. It's a significant step forward for a band already operating from a position of uncommon chemistry . . .

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Boards of Canada :: Inferno

In our particulate-dense media environment, a decade-plus silence takes on the weight of a gesture in its own right—an invitation to focus, to stay awhile. Structurally, Inferno is less interested in the tension-release of deep raving than in the discursive backroads of a philosophical sci-fi novel . . .

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Box of Stars :: Walnut Street

Box of Stars sport a mournful air on Walnut Street, their country-folk tinged songs nodding at life's disappointments with gentle resignation. Through spare, rustic arrangements and the ghostly vocal interplay of Macaulay Lerman and Katy Helmann, the band traces relationships, passing years, and ordinary joys that have slipped out of reach . . .

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