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Transmissions :: Awake, My Soul

Describing the sound of Sacred Harp singing can be difficult. Arcane, otherworldly, and overwhelming, it’s a unique a cappella form of shape note Christian hymn singing that was born in England in the 18th century, but took root in the American south. It’s not something you listen to so much something as experience. This week on Transmissions, co-director Matt Hinton discusses his documentary on the subject, Awake, My Soul . . .

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Dog Days of Aquarium Drunkard III

No season inspires ritual listening quite like late summer. As the days flatten into heat haze and evenings linger just a little longer, familiar records reveal unexpected contours. As August stretches on, the Aquarium Drunkard crew returns with another installment of our annual Dog Days roundup: a stack of old favorites, forgotten treasures, new discoveries, and seasonal obsessions . . .

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Twenty Years Inside The Eraser

Listening with the hindsight of twenty years, The Eraser has lost none of its curved-glass cut and glimmer. Yorke was still riding high on a generational songwriting run and, with Nigel Godrich's help, what obstacles remained between idea and execution had been removed . . .

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Diversions :: Spiral Galaxy’s “Cosmic” Influences

The world of Spiral Galaxy extends far beyond music. To mark the release of II, Plastic Crimewave and Sara Gossett look to visionary illustrators, forgotten kosmische explorers, classic album design, and psychedelic cinema, mapping a few of the inspirations behind their singular collaboration . . .

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Big Black :: Two Moonlins And Mother

Before Pharoah Sanders, before Blazing Saddles, before Muhammad Ali's training camp, there was "Two Moonlins And Mother." Big Black's compact boogaloo gem distills a lifetime of rhythm into three minutes of humid, percussive heat . . .

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

Broadcasting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

Slow dissolve. Kosmische drift. ECM-adjacent. Synth meditations. Folk reveries. Keith Jarrett. Harmonia. Eno. Ashra. Gaussian Curve. Chet Baker. Sybille Baier. CAN. Fellow travelers.

SIRIUS 895: Intro ++ Keith Jarrett – Spirits 6 ++ Aqueduct Ensemble – Borrowed Sax Test ++ Rich Ruth – Taken Back ++ Ezra Feinberg – Ovation ++ Kim Åge Furuhaug – Astogjol ++ Nico Georis – Hot Slots (excerpt) ++ Joys Union Group Cloud Paint ++ Bichin Bajas – Quakenbrück (Version) ++ Lena Platonos – Bloody Shadows From Afar ++ Joel Vandroogenbroeck – Fairy Tale ++ Mark Isham – Raffles In Rio ++ Michael Garrison – To The Other End Of The Sky ++ Harmonia & Brian Eno – Welcome ++ Ashra – Oasis ++ Gaussian Curve – Talk To The Church ++ Between – Devotion ++ Saskia – You Left Your Soul Behind ++ Absent Music – Le Rêve De CJ ++ The Durutti Column – Otis ++ Deux Filles – Drinking At A Stream ++ Brian Eno, Möbius, Roedelius – The Belldog ++ Radiohead – Daydreaming ++ Vincent Gallo – I Wrote This Song For The Girl Paris Hilton ++ Chet Baker – The Touch Of Your Lips ++ Sybylle Baier – Softly ++ Brian Eno – By This River ++ Roberto Musci – Claudia, Wilhelm R And Me++ CAN – Oscura Primavera ++ Amon Düül II – Wie Der Wind Ende Einer Strasse

Vin Gordon with Lee Perry and The Upsetters :: Musical Bones

Recorded at the height of the Black Ark with Lee "Scratch" Perry at the controls and The Upsetters firing on all cylinders, Musical Bones gave legendary trombonist Vin Gordon the rare opportunity to step out of the backline and into the spotlight. Originally released in 1975 as a UK white-label pressing of just 300 copies, it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, becoming one of reggae's great collector's grails . . .

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Charlie Hunter Quartet :: Natty Dread

The Charlie Hunter Quartet's track-by-track cover of Bob Marley's 1974 classic Natty Dread probably shouldn't work, but somehow the sublimely talented soul jazz guitarist and his group pull it off. Rather than staying faithful to the sound of Marley's reggae standard, Hunter captures the joy and exuberance of the music. Mixing in salsa, jazz-funk, high-life and blues, Hunter's quartet turn what might have been a polite tribute into an explosive celebration. It should be on every summer playlist . . .

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Transmissions :: Erin Osmon

This week on the show, we welcome Nashville-based music journalist, critic and author Erin Osmon, to discuss her tremendous book, W⁠on't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America⁠, which chronicles how heartland rock, typified by artists like Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, and more, brought a populist, Americana-inspired sound to the airwaves of the radio and MTV . . .

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The Visitors :: My Good Friends

Issued in 1977, My Good Friends captures a moment when eastern Nigeria's musicians folded highlife, funk, soul, and psychedelia into something restless and idiosyncratic. The results are gloriously untidy. While the contemporary story of Nigerian popular music is often told through towering figures like Fela Kuti, William Onyeabor, and King Sunny Adé, records like this reveal a parallel current—one built on synthesis rather than singularity . . .

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The Box Set: An Appreciation, Vol. 3

The initial standard for a compact disc was 74 minutes. Legend has it the length was decided upon in order to fit all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony onto a single disc. In terms of format, the arrival and adoption of the CD in 1983 changed not only how we listen to recorded music, but how it’s presented as an art form. No longer beholden to the 22 minute confines of a “12 side, artists began experimenting with the medium… as did labels. Welcome to the third installment of The Box Set: An Appreciation . . .

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Echo Upstairs :: Estranhos Lugares Para os Olhos

For years, Brazilian shoegaze has felt like a borrowed climate. Estranhos Lugares Para os Olhos suggests otherwise, recasting the genre's familiar wall of sound in tropical hues. Echo Upstairs doesn't abandon shoegaze's dream-state—it changes the weather . . .

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Choose Life: The Trainspotting Soundtrack at 30

Thirty years on, the Trainspotting soundtrack remains one of the defining musical documents of the 1990s. Equal parts mixtape, time capsule, and gateway drug, it introduced a generation to Iggy Pop, Underworld, Lou Reed, and a world of records just beyond the mainstream . . .

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The Babe Rainbow :: Acid and Honey

Hovering and almost ethereally weightless, Acid and Honey delivers the kind of saltwater-soaked psychedelia as only crafted by Byron Bay's The Babe Rainbow. With velvety warm basslines and drum machine rhythms, the band's seventh album continues down a recent path of ebullient reggae, R&B explorations and and a dose of warm, synth-coated waves. Meditative and explorative, such freshly applied studio textures reveal an assortment of dazzling mellow subtleties and coastal ambiance that register as the band's finest golden hour . . .

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Ryuichi Sakamoto :: Beauty

Guided by an adherence to a philosophy of "outernationalism", Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto's overlooked 1989 record Beauty concluded a pivotal decade of transnational works and collaborations. An audio patchwork tapestry that defies "world music" in its modern conventions, Sakamoto corralled countless collaborators for the sessions (a few including Brian Wilson, Sly Dunbar, Robert Wyatt, Senegalese vocalist Youssou N'Dour, and Arto Lindsay). A self-proclaimed cultural map including Okinawan folk songs and a Rolling Stones cover, Beauty is a spectacle to behold, reaching beyond any regional boundaries . . .

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