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The DIY Multiverse of Charles Joseph Smith

A classically trained pianist, electronic composer, uninhibited dancer, avant-garde experimentalist and Chicago underground scene fixture, Dr. Charles Joseph Smith lives and works in many worlds. A three-disc set containing just a smidgen of his voluminous DIY output gives a panoramic look at the variety and scale of his work while hinting at the vast expanses waiting to be discovered . . .

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Road to Ruin: A Decade of John Martyn – Bless the Weather

As John Martyn’s Bless the Weather drifts toward its close, “Glistening Glyndebourne” quietly detonates the boundaries of British folk. What begins as haze — echo, fingerpicked fragments, drifting piano — gradually reveals something stranger and more radical: Martyn using effects, repetition, and rhythm to transform the guitar into an entirely new instrument. In retrospect, the track feels less like an outlier than a doorway into the restless, genre-warping work that would define the next decade of his career . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Resavoir & Matt Gold

Trumpeter/composer/producer Will Miller (AKA Resavoir) and guitarist Matt Gold released the collab LP Horizon almost exactly a year ago. The album was an expertly rendered love letter to the música popular brasileira world, its 10 tracks breezy, beautiful and deep. Horizon is lush without feeling overdone, intricate but never fussy, favoring groove and melody above all else. These two musicians may call Chicago home, but the sounds they make transport the listener directly to a Brazilian beach. Now, Miller and Gold are offering up a pair of bonus tracks for their debut Lagniappe Session together — gorgeous covers . . .

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Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: May 2026

Vintage Maestro phase shifter pedal with three colored phase controls (green, yellow, red) and power switch; input/output jacks on front.

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 leads things off with some interstellar jazz/psych/etc instrumentals, equal parts breezy, funky and crunchy. Chad follows up with an hour’s worth of hallucinogenic psych & weirdo freakbeat-pop. Sunday, 4-6pm PT.

Doom & Gloom From The Tomb with Tyler Wilcox: Steve Hiett – Girls in the Grass ++ Mulatu Astatke – Asmarina (My Asmara) ++ Miles Davis – Little High People ++ Sonny Sharrock – Who Does She Hope To Be? ++ Pell Mell – Week of Fire ++ Träden – Kung Karlsson (King Karlsson) ++ Yuzo Iwata – Daylight Moon II ++ Object Hours – Mare Chiaro ++ Alan Licht & Steve Shelley – Ending ++ Bob Dylan – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Instrumental) ++ Sun Ra And His Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra – Springtime Again

New Happy Gathering with Chad DePasquale: Miles Davis – Honky Tonk ++ C.K. Mann & His Carousel 7 – Yeaba ++ Tina – Maronde ++ Chantal Goya – À la sortie de ma classe ++ The Kynds – So If Someone Sends You Flowers Babe ++ Estelle Levitt – All I Dream ++ Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood – Tired of Waiting for You ++ Slapp Happy – Blue Flower ++ Margo Guryan – I Ought to Stay Away from You ++ Harumi – Hurry Up Now ++ Blue Eyed Soul – Are You Listening ++ Myriam Frances – Author of Beauty ++ The Monks – Love Came Tumblin’ Down ++ The Rising Storm – Bright Lit Blue Skies ++ The Kinks – Dancing in the Street ++ Skeeter Davis & NRBQ – Things To You ++ The Walker Brothers – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore ++ Jim Woehrle & Michael Yonkers – Lovely Lady Companion

Kevin Morby :: Little Wide Open

Kevin Morby’s Little Wide Open trades restless drift for hard-earned steadiness, mapping middle-American domesticity, memory, and partnership into widescreen soft-rock forms that feel less revivalist than quietly lived-in. Aaron Dessner’s production keeps the frame clean and open, letting the songs arrive with the unforced inevitability of classic Petty or heartland-era FM transmission . . .

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“Who the Fuck Is That?” :: Kathleen Edwards Reconsiders Failer

27 years after her debut, Kathleen Edwards revisits Failer and early songs she barely recognizes, tracing the strange path back through musician-producers, a covers project born of the algorithm, and relearning how to believe what you sing . . .

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Ruby of Thanks :: In Another World

Resurrected by Woodsist for a fresh and full-fledged release, In Another World is the lovely debut record from Ruby of Thanks, nom de plume of Kingston, NY-based musician and jack-of-all-trades Andy Weaver. With unique and breezy percussion provided by drummer Otto Hauser, these are eight harmonious folk ballads subtly layered with a rush of a languid art-pop atmosphere. With a synergy in line with the auxiliary worlds of a Little Wings or John Andrews, Weaver's songcraft is adjacently warm and melancholic in its thematic exploration . . .

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

Las cúpulas. Via satellite, transmuting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

SIRIUS 888: Intro ++ Anika – No One’s There (Dub) ++ Lifetones – Good Side ++ New Age Steppers – Fade Away ++ Liquid Liquid – Groupmegroup ++ Lewsberg – The Corner ++ This Heat – Paper Hats ++ Blurt – My Mother Was a Friend of an Enemy of the People ++ The Fall – Psykick Dance Hall ++ The Raincoats – No Side To Fall In ++ Delta 5 – Colour ++ Anika – Masters of War (Dub) ++ A Certain Ratio – Knife Slits Water ++ Vivien Goldman – Private Armies Dub ++ Caberet Voltaire – Yashar ++ Blur – I Got Law (Demo) ++ Sleaford Mods – Tarantula Deadly Cargo ++ King Krule – Dum Surfer ++ Esplendor Geométrico – Moscú Está Helado ++ Rob Jo Star Band – I Call On One’s Muse ++ Throbbing Gristle – 20 Jazz Funk Greats ++ The Durutti Column – Sketch For Summer ++ Tony Price – Heavy Jasmine ++ Echo Upstairs – Cavalgo Marinho ++ Kennlisch – Kennlisch ++ Antena – Camino Del Sol ++ Kirschstein – Ach, Du Grobe Nachtmusik ++ Movietone – Sun Drawing ++ Elisa Waut – Russia ++ The Durutti Column – Otis ++ Contraviento Uruguay – Desencanto

Masayoshi Takanaka :: All of Me

Masayoshi Takanaka’s All of Me, originally issued in 1979, gathers material from the guitarist’s early solo run into a remarkably fluid sequence. Reissued for 2026 Japan Record Store Day and newly remastered at Abbey Road, the collection still moves with startling ease: polished AOR, tropical fusion, bossa drift, and instrumental pop unfolding in long, sunlit lines . . .

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Contraviento :: Desencanto (1983)

Via their 1983 album Tercia, Uruguay’s Contraviento drift quietly through “Desencanto,” where guitar, woodwinds, and voice dissolve into an unhurried acoustic haze. Harmonic movement stays restrained and peripheral, allowing the track to hover in an open-ended hush. Delicate and unforced, it passes through almost weightlessly, more akin to something briefly overheard than performed. Perfect . . .

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All One Song :: Matthew Specktor on “T-Bone”

Released in 1981 on Re*ac*tor, “T-Bone” is perhaps the most boneheaded, monomaniacal tune in Neil Young’s entire discography, a grinding, nine-minute three-chord Crazy Horse jam that features only these words to guide us: “Got mashed potatoes, ain't got no T-bone.” Our guest today is far from boneheaded, however. ⁠Matthew Specktor⁠ is a novelist, a memoirist, a critic, a screenwriter, an editor and much more . . .

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Cedric IM Brooks & The Light of Saba

Emblazoned with the conquering lion draped over the band’s moniker somewhere between menace and repose, The Light of Saba is a rootsy and righteous blend of reggae, nyabinghi rhythms, and free jazz rolled up and sparked by the flames of Rastafari mysticism. Recorded in 1974, the album is the nexus of the musical and spiritual philosophies of Jamaica’s own heavyweight saxophone colossus, Cedric IM Brooks. Over the course of his career, Brooks divined a sound that combined Jamaican musical traditions and jazz that stood on its own ground amid the full bloom of reggae and dub in the . . .

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This Heat :: Made Available: John Peel Sessions

“I get asked to play more music like This Heat, but to my knowledge there is no other music like This Heat” - John Peel

For 37 years, John Peel worked as a conduit, pulling unheard voices out of the static and setting them loose across the BBC dial. In 1977, one of those voices was This Heat, formed just a year earlier in a Camberwell rehearsal space. Frayed at the edges, with clipped rhythms pushed straight to broadcast, they didn’t sound like a band adapting to a Maida Vale studio so much as one ignoring the usual expectations of . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: The Sleeves

Built from repetition, negative space, and instinctive interplay, there’s something fitting about The Sleeves taking on CAN. Coupled with the twisted wild card of their cover of early-’00s British girl group Sugababes, this Lagniappe Session feels less like a set of covers than a slow dissection, with Jack Cooper and Tara Cunningham pulling the songs apart until only fragments remain . . .

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Setting :: S/T

Three years and as many live albums have passed since Setting’s debut album. In that time, the trio of Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, and Joe Westerlund have sharply fine-tuned their form of exploratory electronic Appalachian drone music, and their new, self-titled album finds them on a heightened plane. The chemistry built between these three players over the last few years comes alive here in an even richer hue of their cosmic arboreal vision . . .

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