Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis joins us to discuss his riveting new album Apple Cores: "I just operate within my natural being...I'm the person who, the things that people have told me were wrong about my playing, I leaned into harder . . .
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Employing synths, drum machine, and a heavily processed clarinet, Group Listening come into their own as agents of playfully askew dance music, launching into a pulsing beat that is quickly augmented by ascending beams of synth and modulated reed tones. A slinky, ribbiting bass line sneaks in, loosely trailed by a cascading synth arpeggio, and a breathy off beat of clarinet emerges as a counter rhythm. The synths begin a dizzyingly layered upward spiral and are then pared back leading, ultimately, to the bass drop . . .
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A long overdue LP reissue captures drummer Roy Haynes adapting to the disruptions of the ‘70s with his usual alacrity and aplomb. Hip Ensemble finds Haynes dipping into fusion, free jazz and funk, all with his characteristic confidence and vibrant unpredictability. It’s both a snapshot of a particular era and a testament to a classic sound . . .
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The Disneysical indie folk Ichiko Aoba composes, centered on classical guitar arpeggios and whispered vocals, calls to mind both the halfway-to-classical minimalisms of the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, who she has collaborated with, but also the ambient music boxes of Masakatsu Takagi and the idyllic soundtracks to Zelda games and Studio Ghibli films . . .
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Tarzana, California, August 2016. Several months after the release of A Moon Shaped Pool, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood went minimal with a Roland CR-78 drum machine in the hills of the San Fernando Valley. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the field recording finds the pair stripping things back as day turns to night, working up renditions of Pool’s “The Numbers” and “Present Tense.” All vibe. Campfire glow aplenty . . .
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Italian composer and saxophonist Laura Agnusdei ventures boldly into the mystifying unknown with a rousing, futurist blend of noise, ambience, and spiritual jazz on her latest album, Flowers Are Blooming in Antarctica. Inspired by radical written works like James Bridle’s Ways of Being, Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, and J.G. Ballard’s cautionary tales of dystopian climate-fiction, Agnusdei envisions new worlds through sound, ones brimming with menacing synthetic vistas and quietly poetic discord . . .
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An 80-minute live album is inherently demanding, whether from the most lucrative bands of all time or polyphonic instrumental chamber-folk ensembles. Led by guitarist and composer Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Philadelphia’s Hour falls into the latter category, wielding hardscrabble mosaics of gentle guitar licks, glowing winds and strings, and personnel ranging from a quartet to a baker’s dozen. Their latest release, Subminiature, collects bits of recent performances, equally highlighting all of their studio LPs and featuring most of the membership from Ease the Work, their 2024 release . . .
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At times, Juleen Compton’s The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean feels like a French New Wave version of A Hard Day’s Night or the lesser-known Arch Hall Jr. vehicle, Wild Guitar, refracted through the lens of an episode of The Twilight Zone. The strange blend of Merseybeat pop music, Americana naturalism, and La Nouvelle Vague aesthetics gives the film a surreal undercurrent. Coupled with a storyline that dabbles in mysticism and folk prophecies, The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean is nothing if not an oddity of 1960s American independent films, made all the odder by the fact . . .
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With the Drive-By Truckers, Patterson Hood examines the region he’s called home for most of his life, adding the much-needed edge of his liberal politics to the Southern rock genre. When he moved to Oregon, though, Hood began looking back on his Southern adolescence in a new lens, writing his most personal album yet, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams. Ahead of his third solo release (his first in 13 years), we sat down with Hood, discussing Muscle Shoals, fiction writing, and Vic Chestnutt . . .
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Jules Reidy made their name as an experimental guitarist, a frequent collaborator with fellow Aussie Oren Ambarchi, as well as musicians from their current home base of Berlin. For this album, they're joined by cellist Judith Hamann, the bassist Andreas Dzialocha and drummer Sara Neirdorf using instrumental samples — Reidy’s own and others — as raw materials and manipulating them electronically. Yet while the process was abstract and exacting, the music made from it is accessible. Ghost/Spirit is, for Reidy, an unusually song-structured set of compositions, building airy, eerie sonic textures out of guitar, altered instruments and voice . . .
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Steal my body home. 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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Check out a fantastic documentary that follows Fela Anikulapo Kuti and his huge band/entourage (70+ people!) on their first trip across the European continent in 1981. Things look gray and grimy outside, but once Africa 80 is onstage the world snaps into full, vibrant color, a radical sight/sound the likes of which most of the world had never seen nor heard before . . .
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For All Cylinders, Montreal-based Yves Jarvis (fka Un Blonde) placed bedroom auteurism behind him and went for simpler tunes. The result is a multi-genre odyssey. Where once was a loose attempt at art gospel or chopped-up soul, now there is a conscious, sincere engagement with the classics Jarvis clearly adores—Paul McCartney, Love, Stevie Wonder, and Prince . . .
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Welcome back to Transmissions from Aquarium Drunkard, we're kicking off our 10th season with host Jason Woodbury in conversation with Will Oldham, the man behind Bonnie “Prince” Billy, who appeared on the very first Transmissions interview back in 2016. He returns to Transmissions to unpack and discuss his new country album, The Purple Bird, uploading souls to the Metaverse, guns, and why he'd work with Phil Spector . . .
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Since Ezra Feinberg’s return to making and releasing music at the close of the last decade, he’s been on an unbelievable run. Feinberg’s contributions to our ongoing series of Lagniappe Sessions square the circle of his sound, offering up covers of the shimmering folk-pop vocal group The Roches, on the one hand, and minimalist composer and Philip Glass Ensemble stalwart Jon Gibson, on the other. Feinberg’s gift has always been to endow minimalist process and ambient expansion with a real emotional weight, so the balance here between lovelorn romanticism and new music abstraction seems particularly . . .
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