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L.A. Burnout: Volumes One & Two

L.A. Burnout MixtapesPosted on

Via 2006, back by subscriber request as Autumn approaches.

L.A. Burnout is made up of the sounds floating around Los Angeles in the late ’60s and ’70s. A faded aural imprint of the canyons, beaches, wildfires, neighborhoods, late-nights and early mornings of a bygone L.A. Play this mix around dusk while driving through Topanga with the windows rolled down – it’s the next best thing to time travel . . .

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Secular Music Group :: Volume 2

Secular Music GroupPosted on

Making good (and then some) on the promise of their debut, Secular Music Group’s Volume 2 is a gorgeous jazz fantasia that beautifully brings together Sun Ra, Jewel in the Lotus and the European Library Music tradition under one expansive umbrella. The Connecticut-based ensemble records everything analog, live and direct to a four-track machine — an approach that might seem unnecessarily fussy at first. But the results are impossible to argue with . . .

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World Standard :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Japan Soichiro Suzuki World StandardPosted on

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the debut album from World Standard, the avant-pop moniker of wunderkind musician Soichiro Suzuki. Also an accomplished and passionate music writer (including the Mondo Music series on exotica and lounge music), Suzuki joined us from his home in Japan for a wide-ranging conversation about his varied musical and writing career, now spanning four decades. Among the topics discussed include formative influences like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, deriving inspiration from David Lynch and Twin Peaks, his long running collaboration with Hauromi Hosono, creating music for tinnitus sufferers, giving talks and lectures on The . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Winter McQuinn

Lagniappe Sessions Winter McQuinnPosted on

Fittingly, I happened upon Winter McQuinn and his associated Melbourne scene right around the time I was visiting Australia in 2023 and have kept rapt attention since. McQuinn’s third album Where Are We Now? is set to drop later this month, via the Sydney based Third Eye Stimuli Records, and with it his first Lagniappe Session. Here, McQuinn works up a full band arrangement of the autumnal 2017 Anna St. Louis chestnut "Fire," before digging into Charles Brown's "On The Corner" and Roger Miller's 1973 adventure in animation courtesy of Robin Hood's "Oo-De-Lally . . .

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Posted on Lagniappe Sessions Winter McQuinn

Fletcher Tucker :: Kin

Fletcher TuckerPosted on

Fletcher Tucker has been enmeshed with the landscape of Big Sur for most of his life, first as a visitor in his youth, and, for the last 15 or so years as an inhabitant of the land. But his sense of deep-seeded wonder for the place remains undiminished, and it's glowingly evident on his latest recording, Kin, featuring seven songs that expand and contract with animistic intent . . .

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Lucrecia Dalt :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Lucrecia Dalt The AD InterviewPosted on

Lucrecia Dalt has spent the better part of the last decade crafting some of the most quietly ecstatic sounds in experimental music. The new album by the Colombian-born, Berlin-spun, US-based artist finds her the most content with her own creative process, weaving together the intimate and the vast, the conceptual and the personal, the intellectual and the sensual, with imperative freedom. Recorded in the high desert of New Mexico, A Danger to Ourselves breathes with the expansiveness of the surrounding landscape and her own avant-garde influences while remaining tethered to pop song forms and to the . . .

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Posted on Lucrecia Dalt The AD Interview

Steve Gunn :: Nearly There

Steve GunnPosted on

Right on the heels of his gorgeous instrumental outing Music for Writers, Steve Gunn returns to his songwriting realm with Daylight, Daylight, a new album out November 7 on No Quarter. Enlisting longtime confidante James Elkington as producer and primary collaborator, Gunn sent demos of the album’s seven songs to his co-conspirator, giving him carte blanche to adorn them with string and woodwind arrangements, later brought to life by Macie Stewart (violins and viola), Ben Whiteley (cello), Nick Macri (upright bass), and Hunter Diamond (woodwinds). What results is an absolute masterwork, one of the finest additions to Gunn . . .

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Dollar Diamonds :: Volume One

Dollar DiamondsPosted on

For one reason or another, Jerry David DeCicca has been on his knees since he was born. Crawling, praying, begging, looking for cheap records. He lost the best years of his life lurking and sort-of working in record stores. The alphabetized bins were filled with genred gems decorated in dollar signs that exceeded his hourly wage. So, it was the Dollar Bins, usually on the floor covered in dust mites (or worse), where he found classics on the cheap. And he still does! Times have changed, but there's a lot of great records out there that can still . . .

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Herbal Tea :: Hear as the Mirror Echoes

Herbal TeaPosted on

Herbal Tea’s Helena Walker bills herself as a folk artist, but her latest album hews closer to the slowcore 1990s dreamscapes of artists like Mazzy Star, Mojave 3 and Cocteau Twins. The artist, out of Bristol, UK, builds shimmering mirages of sound out of altered guitar, piano, synths and the kind of edgeless, weightless soprano that wafts through ambient visions of heaven.  

Walker worked mostly alone, late at night to create these songs, turning to long-time friend Henry C . . .

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

SIRIUSPosted on

Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. No static at all.

34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .

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Mark Hollis :: Mark Hollis

Mark Hollis Talk TalkPosted on

The quietly revolutionary Talk Talk singer made one final album before calling it quits: his self-titled solo album debut, from 1998. While often overshadowed by the majestic experimentation of his former project’s late work, Mark Hollis harbors its own secrets and surprises, while building upon the work those albums began. As a final testament, it’s a fitting paradox, full of roaring silences and whispering explosions, a collection of whisper-thin abstractions that have been annealed into something durable and concrete . . .

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Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts :: Denver 2025

All One Song Neil YoungPosted on

We wrapped up the first season of our All One Song podcast last week, bringing to an end a summer’s worth of heady conversations with some great musicians and writers about their favorite Neil Young tunes (and much more). And in a pleasing bit of synchronicity, Neil himself showed up in Denver a few days later to play his first show in Colorado in almost a decade—and we were there to witness it . . .

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Transmissions :: Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords)

Bret McKenzie PodcastPosted on

Welcome to season 11 of Transmissions. This week: New Zealand songwriter, actor, and composer Bret McKenzie. You may know him as one half of the indie pop/comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, but he's back with a new solo album of '70s inspired pop, Freak Out City. He joins us to discuss, divulge about his reggae past, and share a story about one of Ian McKellen's worst acting days . . .

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Anastasia Coope :: Pink Lady Opera

Anastasia CoopePosted on

Over a loosely persistent drumbeat, thumping strings, and bright fantasia synths, Anastasia Coope chants of falling castles and coveted truths on “Pink Lady Opera,” the first song shared from her forthcoming DOT ep, out this Halloween, and her first new piece of music since her excellent 2024 debut, Darning Woman . . .

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Go Kurosawa :: Soft Shakes

Go Kurosawa Japan Kikagaku MoyoPosted on

The post-Kikagaku Moyo universe expands with the release of soft shakes, the solo debut from Go Kurosawa, the disbanded Japanese quintet’s drummer and vocalist. The second solo release from a member of the now defunct band, following Tomo Katsurada’s Dream of the Egg EP last year, soft shakes finds Kurosawa, who is also a co-founder of the excellent Guruguru Brain label, remaining largely true to his former outfit’s sound while also injecting his own sandcastle style of playful eclecticism . . .

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Posted on Go Kurosawa Japan Kikagaku Moyo