From the aeronautical title to the space chants and exotica flourishes, the irrepressible Estonia-born, Portugal-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Misha Panfilov has made To The Mesosphere and Beyond a winning and winding homage to early Sun Ra . . .
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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: a PSA regarding the free audiobook app, Libby, John Higgs' recently reissued tome on iconoclasts The KLF, Robyn Hitchcock's recent coming-of-age memoir, and Chuco Punk, a look into the El Paso, TX DIY punk scene . . .
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Ben Chasny's Six Organs of Admittance project has never settled into an easy, definable zone. But 2024 sees the Six Organs sonic universe expanding kaleidoscopically, even by his prodigious standards. For this return visit to Transmissions, Chasny discusses his trio of 2024 releases, working with ambient dub master Shackleton and noise experimenter Twig Harper, his experiences playing with David Tibet's apocalyptic avant-garde collective Current 93, and cultivating online community through the Six Organs Patreon. Plus: Mark Neeley on Pure Animation for Now People, a collaboration with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo . . .
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From the netherworld of Drag City comes Aerial M: The Peel Sessions, a monumental slab transmitted by David Pajo and recorded for Peely & Co back in 1998. It’s an unlikely and essential document of a previously undisclosed chapter of Pajo’s musical history. For those who ransack the guitarist’s catalog seeking that elusive post-Slint high – a full band treatment of ominous, thundering post-rock – here’s your fix . . .
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Nowhere is Bull’s stage prowess on better display than Still Valentine’s Day 1969, one of scant live recordings of Bull in full flight, finally available on vinyl from No Quarter almost 20 years after it was first unearthed. Recorded before a small crowd at The Matrix—a regular haunt of Jerry Garcia, Jefferson Airplane, Hunter S. Thompson, and even the Velvet Underground— Still Valentine’s Day 1969 plunges listeners into the echoing caverns of Bull’s imagination . . .
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Nala Sinephro is back with a new album on Warp Records, following her acclaimed ambient jazz debut Space 1.8, from 2021. A multi-instrumentalist virtuoso, Sinephro composed, produced, arranged and engineered the whole record from scratch evoking Pharoah Sanders' spiritual jazz and Jon Hassell's hypnotic electronica . . .
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Like the moving frames in one of the artist's films, So You Like Slippers? comes at you in cozy slices of guitar pop that rarely exceed two minutes. Slippers is the solo project of Los Angeles-based musician Madeline Babuka Black, also the drummer in French pop outfit Le Pain . . .
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Reissue label Wewantsounds just announced a remastered, worldwide release of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Coda, also known as the solo piano version of the 1983 soundtrack to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence plus two bonus tracks based on atmospheric synth pad lines. Acoustically reinterpreted, the multi-award winning and seemingly-grand compositions from the soundtrack are undressed, showcasing Sakamoto's fundamental skills as an instrumentalist and arranger . . .
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With the release of the Chocolate and Cheese (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) earlier this month, the inimitable duo of Gene and Dean dug deep into their archives (i.e. a contractor bag of old cassette tapes and DATs) to share “fifteen previously unreleased demos of classic and soon-to-be classic tracks,” alongside a remaster of the original C&C. The remasters are fine, as clear and crisp as one would expect – but the headline here is the new tunes . . .
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New Zealand musician Dean Roberts, beloved in the underground for his albums with Thela and White Winged Moth, passed away unexpectedly on August 10. As a tribute, his longtime friend and collaborator Matt Valentine offers up this personal remembrance . . .
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A few years back, Chris Forsyth hipped me to Robert Quine and Fred Maher's 1984 LP Basic, an instrumental album of guitar and drum machine rock that sounds like it's playing at the wrong speed. His new trio with baritone guitarist Nick Millevoi (whose recent Moon Pulses sounds like the record I wish U2 would make) and Mikel Patrick Avery on percussion and electronics more than winks at Basic with their debut, This is BASIC—at times its wonky, distortion saturated riffs recall that album for sure. But these guys are on their own trip . . .
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Back in April, we had the great pleasure of speaking with Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs, two of our longtime musical heroes. Our conversation coincided with the release of Gastr del Sol’s new archival compilation, We Have Dozens of Titles, available now from Drag City Records. Over 25 years after disbanding the project in 1998, Grubbs and O’Rourke have assembled a beautifully flowing collection of previously unreleased recordings, bookended by excerpts from the duo’s performance at the Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville . . .
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Jennifer Castle has been in communion with the cosmos for as long as we’ve been listening, and certainly for at least a little while longer than that. On “Lucky #8,” the lead single from her forthcoming new album, Camelot, she emerges as an ambassador for celestial divinity—leaping in song in celebration of its ability to liberate us of our existential dread, almost parental in its omniscient embrace . . .
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Welcome back to Transmissions, our weekly conversational offering. On today's show? Nashville’s own Rich Ruth, who joins us to discuss his jazz rock opus for Third Man Records, Water Still Flows . . .
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Try a little tenderness! Fuubutsushi’s Meridians invites the listener into a sound world where gentleness is a strength, where delicacy speaks volumes. A wonderful sprawl across two LPs, the album’s 15 tracks patiently unfold and unfurl, finding a remarkably fertile middle ground between the rich interplay of Bill Evans’ classic early 1960s trio and Chicago’s exploratory post-rock scene of the mid-1990s . . .
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