Outré California. Broadcasting 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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Annahstasia is one of the most exciting singer/songwriters in the modern folk scene, blending the soul jazz of Terry Callier with Nick Drake’s hushed chamber folk, with her magnificent voice way out front in the mix, sometimes recalling the fullness of singers like Odetta or the jazzy sway of _Hejira_ -era Joni Mitchell. On this week’s show, she joins us to discuss the spaciousness and quietude…
Recorded at a converted German railway station with pristine sound quality, _Live 1974_ is an essential snapshot of Harmonia in their purest form. The legendary kosmische trio consisting of Neu!'s Michael Rother and Cluster's Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, the concert's free-flowing and elongated jams are improvisational and void of the studio material from their '74 studio debut…
Jackie West doesn't abandon the intimacy of _Close To The Mystery_ on _Silent Century_ —she simply gives it more air to breathe. Bigger guitars, wider arrangements, and a sharpened sense of purpose frame a conversation about evolution, instinct, and the strange life songs take on after they're finished.
The post Jackie West :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview first appeared on Aquarium Drunkard.
On her debut _Dark on a Sunny Day_ , Nashville songwriter Maisy Owen lets poison seep through the sweetness. Pristine country-folk songs bloom into quietly devastating portraits of unhealthy devotion, where the damage is easy to miss beneath the glitter.
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There's live Willie Nelson, and then there's 1975 Willie Nelson. Captured for the Texas TV series "Lone Star Cross Country Music Hour" just months before _Red Headed Stranger_ , this recently resurfaced set catches Willie & Family at their most intuitive: loose, conversational, and quietly radical.
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For her Lagniappe Session, Erin Durant turns to two touchstones: Judee Sill's “Jesus Was a Cross Maker” and Lucinda Williams' “Jackson.” Recorded between Topanga and Brooklyn with longtime collaborators Kyp Malone and Gabe Galvin, these performances move between close study and personal memory—stepping into Sill's world while reconnecting with the roads, literature, and landscapes of Durant's…
Fiona Apple was only 18 when she released _Tidal_ in 1996. Three decades on, her debut remains a bracing introduction to a songwriter whose literary gifts, compositional confidence, and emotional authority were already unmistakable.
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What began as an unhurried songwriting exchange between Greg Cartwright and Scott McMicken has steadily taken on a life of its own. With a second album, _Silver_ , on the horizon, the principals behind The Hypos reconvene with Aquarium Drunkard to discuss instinct, collaboration, recording in sheds and proper studios, and the peculiar freedom that comes from keeping expectations at bay.
The post…
Beth Orton's _The Ground Above_ is a free-flowing mixture of electronic funk, spirit walking jazz, and ambient folk. Only Orton can make music as affecting as this, showing off an an ear for the haunted and the heavy. Songwriting for Orton has always mirrored a sort of lucid dreaming—a therapeutic space where she can will herself to fly, but cannot control her monsters underground and the spirit…
In 1985, as digital dancehall was redrawing reggae's map, Jah Shaka and Aswad entered the studio to forge one of British dub's most singular statements—a devotional set of heavyweight rhythms, cavernous mixes, and Rastafarian sonics still resonating four decades on.
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Blue Note President, Was (Not Was) bassist, and legendary producer Don Was joins us to launch the new season of _Transmissions_ to talk about one of his very first recording projects: Ted Lucas’ _Impossible Love_ , an unheard album he cut with the cult Detroit songwriter in 1979, recently issued by Third Man Records.
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It only makes sense that one of Devo's fabled first concerts was a Halloween party. Now, add in the part about how it was opening for Sun Ra and that the band had duped the radio station promoters by advertising themselves as a Bad Company cover band: quintessential de-evolution lore. A modern day rarity preserved only in physical form and absent from streaming via reissue label Futurismo, the…
A deep, unhurried drift through 1970s Accra nightlife, where folk rhythms, electric organ, bright horns, and clinking glassware blur into one long, flowing current. Dr. K. Gyasi & His Noble Kings' _Sikyi Highlife_ moves with uncommon grace—earthy, urbane, and effortlessly sublime.
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This Heat ended up being called post-punk for lack of any better options, and though their music has many of the now-familiar hallmarks of that genre -- a heavy dub influence, a fascination with the streamlined metaphysics of German kosmische bands, particularly Can, and complex, heady concepts communicated via primeval methods-- it still stands apart, with something alien and unnamable at its…
Carrboro's Verity Den move further from the shoegaze-inflected songcraft of their earlier work on a new album of long-form improvisations, drifting from limpid guitar shimmer into engulfing storms of feedback somewhere between Stars of the Lid, Bardo Pond, and the dreamiest reaches of Sonic Youth.
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Freeform transmissions from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab. Airing every third Sunday of the month, RFAD on dublab features the pairing of Tyler Wilcox’s Doom and Gloom from the Tomb and Chad DePasquale’s New Happy Gathering. This month, Chad kicks things off with his quarterly survey of 2026 digs, both new + archival, and Tyler follows it up with an eclectic hour of ghostly summer jams.…
The central mystery of _Ballads_ is how an album of standards, recorded during one of the most radical periods in jazz history, feels every bit as profound as Coltrane's more adventurous work. In this installment of the Midnite Jazz column, we explore the mystery of John Coltrane’s _Ballads_ , its place in his discography, and the power of restraint.
The post John Coltrane Quartet :: Ballads…
Following their role in the celebrated outfit Wax Machine, _Lau_ is the sophomore offering from São Paulo-born musician Lau Ro. An enduring cycle of radiance, the windswept echoes of seminal Brazilian records like _Clube da Esquina_ ripple through the record; a collage as sunny as it is meditative. Like a therapeutic nature walk, the instrumental numbers mixed into the fray offer a cinematic…
On his first solo album, Total Blue member Anthony Calonico continues to mine the Los Angeles instrumental trio's refined, streamlined take on chilled-out lite jazz and pop ambience. But he also makes some moves, singing on several tracks with a slightly murmurous, no-big-deal felicity. As an exploration of introspective grooves and buttery inner-ear tones, _Spacious Heart_ unsurprisingly…
Tyler Wilcox has spent season two of All One Song conversing about Neil Young with musicians, writers, and artists. And now, we’ve reached the end of the road for this Neil journey, with a very special guest: Lee Ranaldo, dropping in to discuss “Down By The River.” Lee is a founding member of Sonic Youth. Ranaldo joins us to talk about a Neil classic, one that dips from murder ballad terror to…
Broadcasting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. Afro-funk, Caribbean grooves, French incantations, dub drift, radio ghosts, and Sly Stone.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
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This second album from Bitchin’ Bajas’ Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay is more composed and less improvised than its predecessor _Foreign Smokes_ , its ideas worked out not on the fly but over time as the two musicians honed their tunes in the live setting. These tracks pursue intricate, repeated riffs that are more regular, almost geometrical, than the ones on the debut album, which tended towards…
Let's run it back again. It's 2026 and Matt Valentine has returned to the AD orbit. Between a recent Lagniappe Session and the release of All One Song, we've been revisiting _Furniture Music For Evening Shuttles_ , a record at the very center of the Tower Recordings story.
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The year is half done, and to commemorate, we've rounded up nearly 140 selections that represent AD's favorites. As always, the list is unranked and unruly—archival and reissued releases shared in tandem with the latest arrivals. Let it blurb.
The post Aquarium Drunkard :: 2026 Midyear Review first appeared on Aquarium Drunkard.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe's later-career move into the realm of soundtracks and film scores is pretty logical. Over two decades since he began recording (under the name Lichens), Lowe has made sound that hints at imagery and traces wordless stories. But to say he makes cinematic music would be to sell Lowe short. After all, making music for movies is in some senses pretty simple; there is a set of…
Summer beckons. Released in July 1983, Virginia Astley’s _From Gardens Where We Feel Secure_ comes on like a hazy memory preserved on quarter-inch tape. Press play and listen as swallows bank overhead, church bells ring in the distance, and the whole countryside exhales at half-speed.
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For roughly a decade and over five albums, Leah Senior has been making airy, breathy, lightly syncopated folk music. Her songs are delicate but not slight, built on pristine runs of acoustic guitar and cooing, trilling vocals. In this fifth album, however, the Australian singer hints at a broader, more communal palette of sounds.
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Waking up convinced you remember a place you've never actually been. Broadcasting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
The post The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35) first appeared on Aquarium Drunkard.
Here to talk about “Berlin” with us today is someone we've been fans of for a long time now—the mighty Matt Valentine. MV has been making beautiful noise for over three decades now, from Tower Recordings to MV & EE (with his partner Erika Elder) to various solo excursions and collabs. For the past decade, Matt’s primary focus has been Wet Tuna, which also features Erika and bassist Jim…