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W. Cullen Hart and Andrew Rieger :: Leap Through Poisoned Air

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Here's an archival gem for Elephant 6 heads: a collaborative EP from the late visionary Will Cullen Hart and Elf Power's Andrew Rieger. Though very brisk, the timing of this snapshot (culled from recording sessions circa 1999-2000) vividly conjures the opaque psychedelic sweet spot of the Olivia Tremor Control and beginnings of Hart's essential offshoot project Circulatory System . . .

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Aquarium Drunkard Book Club :: Chapter 33

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Welcome back to the stacks. It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our monthly gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading. In this month’s stack: all things Roxy Music, some narco strung out street-lit by way of east Texas, the infinite puzzle that is the crack in the cosmic egg, the ever erudite and entertaining travels of the late Patrick Leigh Fermor, and more. Your librarians for this installment are Justin Gage, Tyler Wilcox, Ian Everett, and Mark Neeley . . .

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Transmissions :: Justin Gage (2025)

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We close out the 10th season of Transmissions with a special look under the hood with Justin Gage, who founded Aquarium Drunkard 20 years ago in 2005. Initially envisioned as just a place to share cultural recommendations with friends, Aquarium Drunkard blew up as the blog rush began. Suddenly, Gage found himself running a respected media outlet. 20 years later, he joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss how Aquarium Drunkard has stayed true to the maxim of only the good shit . . .

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Not To Be a Self-Deprecating Guy :: Ty Segall Speaks

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Ty Segall has been making records since 2008, and he’s recorded a lot of them — 16 including his latest Possession, out May 30 on Drag City. We caught up with Segall recently to talk about his dense but uncrowded new set of songs, his partnership with the filmmaker Matt Yoka, his love of old soul and California and the revelatory string of acoustic shows he recently performed across the U.S . . .

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The Budos Band :: VII

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The Budos Band builds a fire with the dry tinder of percussion, cracking and popping on hand and kit drums. It catches in a vaporous pool of keyboards, fuzzy guitar leads and insistent bass, and then jets out in sudden sparks of brass, the heat concentrated in sharp, incendiary bursts. This seventh album from the Brooklyn-born funk/soul/Afrobeat/Ethio-jazz collective rocks a bit harder than some Budos Band offerings but doesn’t mess with the formula. These songs slouch and swagger, grooving from the hip in loose, louche sensuality, but they’re also super on point, the . . .

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Time is Too Precious :: Swamp Dogg Talks Pool, New Doc, and Cooking

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You can count on Swamp Dogg to always do the unexpected. Whether crafting album covers that have baffled listeners for decades, pairing autotuned vocals with sleek indie soul, or going country, songwriter, producer, and raconteur Jerry Williams blazes his own path. So tellingly his new documentary, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted eschews typical music doc tropes in favor of psychedelic animation, oddball shorts, poignant interviews, and yes, an overarching artistic project of painting Swamp Dogg's signature rat image in the pool at his San Fernando Valley home: "That pulled me in, the fact that I was going to . . .

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Slide On Rainbows :: Early Roxy Music In Focus

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A "state of mind" is how Bryan Ferry once described Roxy Music. Born from art school roots, the early era of the band conjures up all sorts of identifiers, undoubtedly anchored by the visionary presence of Brian Eno, postmodern decadence in the seventies rock hierarchy, and the art-rock genre turning itself inside out. Curating all sorts of Pop Art signifiers from film to the avant-garde to classic Americana pastiche, this angular approach to pop music remains quite unlike anything else that came before or after . . .

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Cameron Knowler :: CRK

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For the past few years, Cameron Knowler has quietly worked his way into the epicenter of the Soli revival. Making a name for his playing with the excellent Anticipation collaboration with Eli Winter a few years back, Knowler has since become a familiar face in the realm of steel string. Indebted to his instrument’s history; his playing steadfast, concise, and open to the possibility of the unexpected. CRK is no exception to this rule . . .

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Mal Waldron :: Sweet Love, Bitter

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Clouded by the obscurity of the film itself, Sweet Love, Bitter is a poignant example of the brilliance of jazz pianist/composer Mal Waldron. Adapted from 1961 novel Night Song (loosely inspired by the life and final years of the legendary Charlie Parker), Waldron's soulful soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment to the gritty, somber themes and even lucid dream montages. After decades of languishing in obscurity, Sweet Love, Bitter proves to be a provocative, multi-faceted display of jazz culture . . .

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Eli Winter :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

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Appearing here at Aquarium Drunkard in 2022 for a Lagniappe Session, Chicago guitarist Eli Winter described one of his cover selections as "Arabian Nightingale" as "arresting, cool, and strange." The three words come to mind regarding his latest LP, A Trick of the Light. Another full-band outing following his self-titled 20202 LP, the recording drifts even deeper into jazz rock territory, pairing Winter's snarling electric guitar lines with drifting pedal steel and sax. Aquarium Drunkard caught up with Winter to discuss the record's genesis and what inspired him to spoof Hot Ones in a music video . . .

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

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Outré California. 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 . . .

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Videodrome :: SLC Punk! (1998)

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In many ways, SLC Punk (1998) is a love letter to the punk movement as it existed in the mid-1980s. But it’s also a salient example of “quarter-life crisis cinema,” tackling themes such as identity, disillusionment, and the fear of adulthood during that liminal moment of life when youthful idealism begins to clash with reality . . .

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Transmissions :: Damien Jurado

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This week on the show, something different: an extra-sized Transmission that’s been locked in the vault for years, a two-hour talk with singer/songwriter Damien Jurado. Jurado’s songs are worlds meant to be lived in, full of strange characters in dream states, caught between the static on flickering TV channels, and with this episode, the penultimate, which is a fancy word for “second to last” of our 10th season, we explore those worlds with the man himself . . .

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Sketch Show :: Audio Sponge

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Even for Yellow Magic Orchestra loyalists, the new millennium timing of the short-lived Sketch Show made the project easy to fly under the radar. Audio Sponge is the 2002 debut from duo Hauromi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. While veering back at seminal influences like Brian Wilson, the mellowness of the compositions here are downright hypnotically restrained; a canopy of soft glitch samples, acousto-electric rhythms and relaxed vocals that simply evaporate as soon as they're uttered . . .

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Posted on Harry Hosono Ryuichi Sakamoto Sketch Show Yukihiro Takahashi

Jess Sah Bi :: Jesus-Christ Ne Déçoit Pas

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Several years after recording the 1985 cult classic Our Garden Needs Its Flowers with Peter One, Ivorian folk musician Jess Sah Bi had a brush with death, falling severely ill with an unknown ailment that mystified doctors and religious healers alike.  Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas was released in 1991 and sold around 3000 cassettes in the Ivory Coast before the master tapes were lost. Now, the great Awesome Tapes From Africa, which also brought the aforementioned Our Garden Needs Its Flowers to a whole new generation of listeners across the world, has resurrected Sah Bi’s document of . . .

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