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Wednesday Knudsen :: Soft Focus – Volumes One And Two

Wednesday Knudson describes the glowing set of tracks on her new LP, Soft Focus, as “ambient.” That’s true, to an extent, but that genre is widely used as a label and has grown a messy head of hair lately. Recorded in spring of last year, right around the time most of us felt remotely safe popping our heads out of our pandemic quarters, the Soft Focus recordings capture a musician treating her terrestrial tones with a newfound appreciation . . .

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Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard On Dublab :: June 2022

Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard returns for four hours of freeform melodies and modulations this Sunday, June 19, airing this month from 7-11 PM Pacific, following a series of special Juneteenth broadcasts. Up first is New Happy Gathering with an hour of psychedelic dub, drum machine funk, outsider art-rock, subterranean techno-punk, and more. Then Range and Basin, featuring meditative drifts, far-out synth scapes, desert rock, and psych pop. Then, Doom and Gloom from the Tomb offers a mix of sunset sounds from the first half of 2022 . . .

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Wagner Tiso :: A Igreja Majestosa

Legendary composer and arranger Wagner Tiso is one of the most underrated figures in Brazilian music history. Tiso led the Clube da Esquina scene in the 1970s, and although his name is scarcely mentioned in international guides to the movement, his maximalist aesthetics and chamber music influences are deeply engraved in all of Clube da Esquina releases . . .

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I’ve Been Born a Million Times, But I Am Never Dead: Jim Sullivan (1972)

It was 1972, and Jim Sullivan needed a hit. The 32–year–old singer– songwriter had played around Southern California in any pub or bar that would have him, filling venues with an outsize presence limited to not only his tall stature but also his massive voice. He’d released U.F.O., a privately–pressed, spectral masterpiece in 1969, but the record’s psychedelic folk sound had failed to find an audience, even with a seasoned cast of Wrecking Crew players providing credible backing . . .

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Jeff Tweedy :: On Wilco’s Cruel Country

On Wilco's Cruel Country, Jeff Tweedy takes a dazed look around. He joins us to discuss why it felt important to cut the new album live, the influence of the Grateful Dead, and what it feels like to inhabit Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 20 years later . . .

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The Running Kind: David Cantwell on Merle Haggard

David Cantwell is a critic and journalist, and co-author (with Bill Friskics-Warren) of Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500 Greatest Singles. Last month, he released a revision of his book on Merle Haggard, which originally appeared in 2013. The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard is, as Cantwell writes in his introduction, “not a biography.” Instead, it’s his critical history of Haggard’s performing life and studio work. He joins Aquarium Drunkard to discuss . . .

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

Sunshine soul. 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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Shintaro Sakamoto :: Like A Fable

Fall once again, dear friends, into the warm waters of Shintaro Sakamoto’s musical universe. Ever the maestro of mellow groove, Like A Fable is Sakamoto’s first album in six years, the fourth in a string of idiosyncratic solo albums that include Love If Possible, Let’s Dance Raw, and How To Live With a Phantom, each propagating their own infectious mixture of sly funk, exotica, disco, and deft songcraft . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird's virtuosity is no secret. It's a disservice at this point to dip into adjectives of praise and find a new way to say as much. Bird's been around the well-regarded block, with a discography and collection of co-signs to prove it. It's tough to think of a time he wasn't simply out there, doing his talented thing - playing live, popping up on your tv screen, releasing attentive albums . . .

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Ladies & Gentlemen The Rolling Stones

Capturing the Stones in 1972 in the midst of the North American leg of the Exile On Main St. tour, Ladies & Gentlemen the Rolling Stones is a raucous document of the band at the top of their live game. Shot on 16mm, and initially presented in quadrasound, the Rollin Binzer directed film first saw its theatrical release in 1974 before virtually disappearing from the market for the next three decades . . .

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Transmissions :: Longform Editions

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, we're joined by Andrew Khedoori and Mark Gowing of Longform Editions. It’s tempting to think of Longform Editions as a “record label,” but Andrew and Mark think of it more as an online gallery for musical works.Mark and Andrew have a long history in the music industry and are lifelong record collectors. They joined us to discuss the way Longform works, how they crafted it as a sustainable project for both artists who contribute and themselves, the process of deep listening, and much more . . .

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Radio Is A Foreign Country :: Electro-Folk Sounds of North Sumatra (Mixtape)

Radio Is A Foreign Country is a not-for-profit radio platform and mixtape series that exposes listeners to obscure (and mostly vintage) regional folk and pop music from the global hinterlands, featuring cut-ups of international radio broadcasts (AM, FM, shortwave), field recordings, ethnographic film, vintage records and cassettes, and digital ephemera from the far reaches of the internet. For this special mixtape, the Radio Is A Foreign Country crew brings us a cross-section of North Sumatran electro folk . . .

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Simon Joyner :: Songs From A Stolen Guitar

Simon Joyner, who recently turned fifty, has been quietly making records for a small cult of dedicated fans since 1990. Hovering above the intersection of chaos and beauty, the Omaha-based songwriter’s vivid and imagery-rich songs occasionally recall Leonard Cohen at his most personal and apocalyptic, while always revealing Joyner’s affinity for the fearless, unpredictable sounds of the noise and experimental scene on which he cut his teeth . . .

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Badge Époque Ensemble :: “Zodiac”

On their new album, Clouds of Joy, Toronto’s Badge Époque Ensemble has swelled into a 13-headed hydra. In director Colin Medley’s rock doc style video for Badge’s latest single, “Zodiac”, the laid back left-handed stickman steps us through their history, briefly introducing each member like a jazz bandleader offering everyone a solo . . .

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Bill Laswell :: Dreams Of Freedom (Ambient Translations Of Bob Marley In Dub)

Bill Laswell's 1997 remix collection of the Bob Marley catalog. At eleven tracks, the set deftly works a seam that feels at once familiar yet pleasantly discordant. As an ambient exploration of dub, traces of Marley's original compositions float in and out, at times cresting, though more often submerged in atmosphere. As Laswell's paints the walls with sound, melodies appear and disappear. Spacious, impressionistic and meditative, Dreams proves the exception to the rule of the remix album---no small feat for a cottage industry with a history of sideways results . . .

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