Via Luaka Bop, fire reissue of the ultra-rare 1975 record, When Do We Get Paid, by teenage family gospel band the Staple Jr. Singers.
1999, CD only, Blood And Fire dub compilation. 18 tracks. Scientist, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, King Tubby and Prince Jammy all represent along with a host of others. All killer, no filler.
In 1976 Lowell George and Little Feat hooked up with Akiko Yano to record her debut full-length, Japanese Girl, on the west coast at Hollywood Sound Studios. The flipside was laid down back in Tokyo with Haruomi Hosono, Tatsuo Hayashi and Moonriders’ Keiichi Suzuki.
Of all the UK acts to tinker with the temperamental alchemy of jazz-rock in the early 70s, none slapped harder Ian Carr and Nucleus. Despite all the aesthetic trappings of an acid-folk gem on the cover, Belladonna lives in the venn between by Miles Davis’ dark, post-Bitches Brew fusion and the heady prog jamming of Soft Machine and Islands-era King Crimson.
A 2013 compilation wrangling 7 tracks from the unreleased cassette archives of Detroit musician Dwight Sykes. Originally recorded in his home studio, L.U.S.T. Productions between 1980-1990. Step into the life zone…
Take a journey into the imagination of a Library Music master. Far View gathers 15 diverse tracks from Belgian composer Joel Vandroogenbroeck, recorded during the 1980s. It’s a kaleidoscopic trip, with hints of Fourth World strangeness, ambient beauty, esoteric funk, swirling psych, oddball exotica … you know, the good stuff! Cinema for the ear.
Panamá 77, the debut album by Panamá-born, Chicago-based drummer and DJ Daniel Villarreal, arrives right on time—emitting earthy and humid spiritual jazz. Freewheeling and unmoored by genre…
A moody, late-night electronic zoner, Barcelona’s John Talabot and Stockholm’s Axel Boman’s 2017 collaboration continues to unfurl in 2022 at its own mercurial pace….
Outré California. 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
On their debut EP, New England Trio, Kioea (pronounced KEY-O-E-AH) present a fresh take on instrumental, “world-music-inflected”, psychedelia. Informed by a wide spectrum of influences including indie, ambient, as well as artists like Erkin Koray and Sir Victor Uwaifo, Kioea’s sound is simultaneously modern and vintage.
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 installment: the roots of the enigmatic Elephant 6 Collective, Sinéad O’Connor, utopianism, a Kim Gordon edited compendium of music essays, and more…
Today on Transmissions, London-based jazz and beat artist Ben Marc. He’s known for his work with Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke and with Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and Shabaka Hutchings of Sons of Kemet. His new album is called Glass Effect and it’s a blend of classical, electronic music, and deeply felt spiritual jazz. He joined us to discuss his work with the Sun Ra Arkestra, Astake, working with Jonny Greenwood and his bandmate Tom Skinner’s work in Radiohead side project The Smile.
Last year around Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday, we celebrated with a megamix of various renditions of “One Too Many Mornings.” Since there’s no such thing as too many “One Too Many Mornings,” here’s a sequel of sorts for Bob’s 81st — 24 different covers of the classic tune from a wide variety of artists, spanning the decades. Just as Bob never quite settled on a stock arrangement for this one, the interpretations here vary wildly, from gentle folk to raucous garage rock to soaring orchestral pop. Like the song says: “You’re right from your side and I’m right from mine …”
Wandering through the freakier terrains of psych folk, math fusion and afrobeat/chimurenga, if earlier Cambriana sounded anglophilic in its attempt at ‘universality’, now – as international indie seems itself closer and closer to MPB – Cambriana sounds more Brazilian than ever.
Panamá 77, the debut album by Panamá-born, Chicago-based drummer and DJ Daniel Villarreal, arrives right on time—emitting earthy and humid spiritual jazz. Freewheeling and unmoored by genre, Villarreal and his cast of collaborators, all of whom helped compose the tracks they play on, revel in an improvisatory spirit which transcends the overdub and post-production elements of the recording process, resulting in something that feels truly organic and alive.
With the help of pedal steel player Kurt Newman, Badge Époque drummer Jay Anderson, and producer Sandro Perri, Senior fleshed out fingerstyle instrumentals into a beaming ray of sunshine sound. He pays tribute to the late Harry Dean Stanton, plays one for Doc Dunn himself (present in name and spirit, even if not on these sessions), and stretches out for a blissfully meditative journey on 11-minute closer, “There’s Nothing I Like More Than Anything Else.”
Michael Coomers’ Lace Curtains returns in 2022 with a new collection, Just Like In a Movie. You may recall Coomers from Harlem, that rubber band ball of a band whose infectious, washed-out sound evoked The Clean’s Boodle Boodle Boodle, yet felt at right at home within the mid-to-late ’00s garage scene.
When improvisor Bill MacKay spoke with Aquarium Drunkard before, he evoked the dim of the movie house in his work. “Cinema’s always been important, and music that has that cinematic edge to it especially interests me. I think a lot of the things that have hit me really heavily have some of those filmlike qualities to them.” Now American Dreams Records releases Movie House | Sala de Cine, a book of poems from Bill MacKay. The noted Chicago musician wrote in English and then translated each to Spanish, with editorial assistance from Luis Jorge Boone. Today, AD presents “Oddly colored sunsets.”
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
Toulouse based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Julien Gasc, returns in September with the release of his fourth solo album, Re Eff. “Qui est cette femme qui danse tout autour de mon corps?” inquires Gasc on “Amour Velours”, the first taste from the forthcoming lp.
Sharon Van Etten’s sixth full-length, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, is, like much of the music being released this year, a pandemic album, reflecting a long, contemplative couple of years that Van Etten spent in Los Angeles with her family. But even during lockdown, she wasn’t alone. Band members and fellow musicians reached out to her. Collaboration flourished.
