Posts

Tamaryn :: Tender New Signs

As year-end lists begin to bubble up among the Internet, Tamaryn will continue to be sidelined as a shoegaze line item, a band that puts its sound and mystery between themselves and the listener. But that's not entirely true. Tender New Signs outlines -- very clearly -- that Tamaryn is more intimate and sonically busier than their outstanding debut full-length, The Waves. Producer and guitarist Rex . . .

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Esther Phillips :: Alone Again, Naturally (1972) / Use Me

Check the players: Ron Carter on bass, Maceo Parker on Tenor Sax, George Benson and Cornell Dupree on Guitars, and Billy Cobham and Bernard Purdie on drums. Damn. Via Esther Phillips 1972 LP, Alone Again, Naturally.

MP3: Esther Phillips :: Use Me (Bill Wilthers . . .

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Max Roach With The J.C. White Singers :: Motherless Child (1971)

I suppose descriptors such as "scarce" and "rare" are pretty subjective in 2012, and for most of us, bar the most hardcore of collector-masochists, that is a good thing. But there was a time, and not so long ago, I remember looking high and low for a decent copy of this record, Max Roach With The J.C. White Singers' Lift Every . . .

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The Modern Lovers :: Stonehenge Club – Ipswich, MA, 1970/1971

Aside from the essential Precise Modern Lovers, live documents of Jonathan Richman's first musical forays are few and far between. But this recording surfaced just a few years back, capturing Jonathan Richman, Jerry Harrison, David Robinson and Ernie Brooks playing two full sets at the Stonehenge Club in Ipswich, MA, sometime in 1970 or ‘71. The band would've been a ways away from making the demos that made up their posthumous debut, but the Lovers are more or less fully formed, with Richman's odes to New England, complicated college girls and the highway when . . .

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SIRIUS/XMU :: Aquarium Drunkard Show (Noon EST, Channel 35)

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.

Notes: Yoon Nam, of Jet Lag Radio, in my guest selector this week. You can download her DJ set,

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George Cromarty :: Grassroots Guitar

George Cromarty had already experienced a weird brush with fame before he recorded his debut album in 1973. As co-writer of the song "Plastic Jesus," he and collaborator Ed Rush are probably the only people to be covered by both Paul Newman (in the film Cool Hand Luke) and the Flaming Lips. But Cromarty had left that type of novelty folk song long behind by the time he created . . .

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Aquarium Drunkard Presents: Jet Lag – A Mixtape

Over the past couple of years I’ve been irregularly highlighting some of my favorite voices online (and beyond), inviting them to guest DJ my show on SIRIUS XMU. For those of you sans satellite radio we’ve been turning these sets into mixtapes, with sounds ranging from the blown-out psych bootcut of DJ Turquoise Wisdom, to the international taboo of Ponytone. Today we catch up with the host behind one of my favorite radio programs of the past year, Jet Lag.

Hosted by Yoon Nam, Jet Lag concentrates on vinyl recordings of international psych, prog, outsider folk, vintage soundtracks, library music, and other rare sounds from the 60s and 70s. It airs Sunday nights from 8 -10 pm on WRAS Atlanta, 88.5FM. Founded in 2006, Yoon traverses the globe weekly featuring a diverse mix ranging from PFM and Ejwuusl Wessahqqan, to Jean Le Fennec and Korean masters Jung Hyun Shin and Jung Mi Kim.

After the jump -- two hours of Jet Lag, broken up into two sets.

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Aquarium Drunkard: Sidecar (Transmission 7) — Podcast / Mixtape

Alluvial plain blues to save yr soul. More freeform interstitial airwave debris transmitting somewhere off the coast of Los Angeles.

Direct download, below; subscribe to future transmissions via iTunes and/or through the RSS, here. The first six transmissions can be found and downloaded, here. Imagery courtesy of d . . .

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The Velvet Underground :: The Boston Tea Party – January, 1969

More often than not, most of what you read concerning the Velvet Underground will inevitably note how woefully underappreciated the group were during its brief lifespan. But the VU were superstars -- and not just in the Warholian sense -- in certain parts of the U.S., including Boston. This quintessential New York City band made Boston its home away from home for much of the late 60s, playing dozens of sold-out shows at the Boston Tea Party to a devoted cult of followers. And what kind of people attended these shows? Let's hand the mic to

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The Allah-Las :: S/T

The first thing you hear on the Allah-Las’ self-titled debut LP sounds like a distant wave, or maybe a spring reverb amplifier head being jostled about in the studio.

Whatever it is, it hardly feels accidental. The Allah-Las are more than just California boys, they’re West Coast avatars. The record’s 12 songs are sun-bleached two- or three-minute gems dressed up in barre chord garage rock . . .

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Jessica Pratt :: S/T

The only thing visible on the cover of Jessica Pratt’s debut album is her face bursting out of an antique blackness in bright contrast. The image is zoomed in so closely it suggests that the world only exists within inches of Pratt’s expressionless face, features dissipating into the negative space. One could expect an intense, introspective affair, but there’s a searching quality in many of these songs, and what she uncovers in the darkness is intimate and up close.

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Calvin Love :: The Aquarium Drunkard Session

This Friday, during the second hour of the Aquarium Drunkard show, we're airing the session Calvin Love laid down for us at Red Rockets Glare Studios last summer while in Los Angeles. Love's debut lp, New Radar, dropped last week via Autumn Tone -- read about that,

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Brian Eno Interviewed On KPFA’s Ode to Gravity, February 1980

Go ahead and clear the next two hours. In 1980, Berkeley radio KPFA's "Ode to Gravity" host, Charles Amirkhanian, sat down with Brian Eno to discuss the various aspects of his recording career up to that point (Eno would have just been finishing his first collaboration with David Byrne). While hour one is entertaining in and of itself, what you really don't want to miss is the second hour. Recorded 32 years ago, Eno runs down a sort of linear history of the use the recording studio as a compositional tool -- including various audio examples -- beginning with Elvis . . .

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SIRIUS/XMU :: Aquarium Drunkard Show (Noon EST, Channel 35)

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.

Today, during the first hour, I aired the latest AD podcast, Transmission 6, which can be downloaded,

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The 31st Of February :: God Rest His Soul

An unreleased demo, prior to the 1989 Dreams boxset, The 31st Of February's "God Rest His Soul" features the nascent pairing of brothers Duane and Gregg Allman.   Recorded at TK Studios in Hialeah, FL, the song is culled from sessions that would include a number of early demos that were soon be fleshed out, and find prominence, in the group that would solidify . . .

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