News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Life
Culture & Art
Hobbies
News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Culture & Art
Hobbies
Dollar Diamonds :: Volume Two - Aquarium Drunkard
There’s a lot of great records out there that can still be had for very little money. You just have to crouch down and give them a chance. How is it possible that these 2-sided slices of the human spirit can exist among us, in some cases, for over 50 years and still only be $1? Welcome to Dollar Diamonds, Volume 2. This month: Johnny Rivers, Linda Hargrove, Garland Jeffreys, John Kay, Mac Davis, Diana Trask and more ...
Yesternow: Editor’s Note Volume Five - Aquarium Drunkard
Otoño. Autumn. Fall. In this installment: Mojave seeker Ken Layne's Desert Oracle. The return of PTA. Auteurs and the genesis, evolution and eventuality of a character. Karl Childers. The definitive history of Talking Heads. Richard Lloyd's near photographic memory, and more.
Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin :: Ghosted III - Aquarium Drunkard
On their third album, the trio of Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin continue to condense and refine their approach, with the rhythms as mesmeric, the riffs as repetitive and the tones as mysterious as ever. But Ghosted III also breaks up the pattern, with more songs, shorter tracks and delicate shifts in approach. Minimal jazz, avant-rock, experimental groove, modal funk -- whatever you want to call it, it’s mutating before our very ears, and growing stranger and more powerful with every installment.
Denis O’Donnell :: The Snow in Brooklyn - Aquarium Drunkard
Denis O’Donnell has been at the forefront of the Austin, Texas country movement since 2006. On his latest release, The Snow in Brooklyn, O’Donnell has recruited top notch jazz players and taken his songs to Bob Hoffnar and Andy Taub in NYC. Having roots in both Queens (O’Donnell’s grandfather owned an Irish pub under the elevated train) and Texas, O’Donnell is throwing his hat in the ring for both Austin and New York legend.
Transmissions :: Dan Wriggins (Friendship) - Aquarium Drunkard
Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, Dan Wriggins of the Philly band Friendship. Earlier this year, the band released its fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up. Fans of the roots-informed indie rock of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman—frequent collaborators with Friendship—will find plenty of busted and bruised glory in these songs, which fall on the shaggy end of the alt-country spectrum. But for us, it’s Wriggins’ wry and sly lyrics that really seal the deal. Take “All Over the World,” in which a landscaper experiences “the beating heart of God/ laying down a roll of sod.” That down in the dirt realness is what makes Caveman Wakes Up so captivating. He joins us to discuss.
WITCH :: Sogolo - Aquarium Drunkard
Where 2023's Zango emphasized the Zamrock band WITCH's fuzzy, blues-based roots, the reunited group's newest record takes a more experimental turn. The jittery, psychedelic sound of Sogolo defies the expectations of those who might have hoped for a more faithful reconstruction of the band's early days, opting instead to traverse the realms of reggae, freak-folk, desert blues and more. Frenzied percussion flourishes accentuate the unhinged guitar riffs of “Kamusale” and “Nadi,” while African folk rhythms guide later tunes like “Set Free” and “Nibani."
1981 :: A Post-Punk Compilation - Aquarium Drunkard
Long live the old, weird internet. Out of all the genres, post-punk has always felt like the hardest to pin down. What the hell was / is it? I’m not sure I could tell you. But I can tell you that the Musicophilia blog’s massive 1981 box set of mixes is perhaps the best representation of the wild burst of creativity that was happening in the underground at the time. While the original mp3 downloads of the box set have since been replaced at Musicophilia with streaming options, we have uploaded the original files for posterity ...
Ratboys :: Light Night Mountains All That - Aquarium Drunkard
By now, Ratboys is as reliable an institution in indie rock as Culver’s is for hamburgers, or as humid days at the lake are for bug bites. “Light Night Mountains All That,” the new single from the Chicago-based band, is the first music released since 2023’s phenomenal LP The Window, and represents a decade of creative duo Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan releasing music under the moniker.
Raul Seixas :: Gita - Aquarium Drunkard
A direct product of the Paul Coelho-sponsored introduction to alternative religion and mind-altering drugs, Raul Seixas' Gita finds the Brazilian musician further embracing mysticism through a bigger infatuation with Aleister Crowley (the pre-chorus of "Sociedade Alternativa" is a direct translation of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law") and Eastern philosophy (Hindu book Bhavagad Gita) in what eventually became his best-selling album and first gold record.
The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35) - Aquarium Drunkard
Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. All songs tonight courtesy of the Lagniappe Sessions, all of which are available to download directly at AD. 34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
Guinga :: Delírio Carioca - Aquarium Drunkard
Guinga's Delírio Carioca offers an alternative history of MPB, like an anti-bossa nova: what if samba had not dissolved into cool jazz but rather formed a deep new assemblage with the orchestral soundtracks of Mancini and Morricone. What if instead of having slowed and reduced the drum ensembles of samba and translated them into a particular style of plucking and intonation, MPB had retained much of the quality of samba's parent-genre, choro—the frenetic percussive fills, the elaborate counterpoint, the counterintuitive progressions.
Sir Richard Bishop :: Hillbilly Ragas - Aquarium Drunkard
From the first shimmering sallies of “They Shall Take Up Serpents,” it’s clear that Sir Richard Bishop has returned from the locales of North Africa and the Middle East to once again explore the shadowy, verdant valleys of blues-folk Americana, the intricate, scale-slanted reveries of India. In abrupt, percussive volleys of strumming and picking, Bishop stakes out a claim on the mystic yearnings of Takoma-style picking, inspired, as the title implies, equally by Appalachia and the sub-continent.
Cochemea :: Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros - Aquarium Drunkard
Multi-instrumentalist Cochemea Gastelum wraps up his trilogy of albums exploring his tribal roots by looking ahead. Though he doesn’t jettison the non-Western traditions that informed his earlier two records entirely, his relies more on the present as a way to see into the realm of future days. Full of tribal rhythms pulled from pre-Colonial North and South American civilizations as well as urbane midcentury jazz and ‘70s soul, Ancestros Futuros creates a bold new world in which some things never change.
Primal Scream :: Echo Dek (Adrian Sherwood) - Aquarium Drunkard
In the fall of 1997 Primal Scream dropped the Adrian Sherwood produced dub companion disc, Echo Dek. Far from the superfluous cash grabs that comprised the majority of ‘remix’ collections of the era, Sherwood’s take feels both essential and independent of the source material. Inky and subterranean, the nine track set doubles down on Vanishing Point’s idée fixe stretching out deep into the void as Sherwood explores the hinterlands, adding and subtracting, while occasionally dubbing in disembodied vox from Gillespie and the voice of thunder, Prince Far I.
Bandcamping :: Autumn 2025 - Aquarium Drunkard
Here we go again, spiraling into another autumn. The best season? Yeah, maybe. The original Goth Queen Emily Brontë knew: “Every leaf speaks bliss to me / Fluttering from the autumn tree.” So as the days shorten and shadows lengthen, take some time to check out some recent/recommended tunes.
Transmissions :: Joan Shelley (2025) - Aquarium Drunkard
Welcome to Transmissions. This week, singer/songwriter Joan Shelley. Her haunted folk songs and crystal clear voice have long made her a favorite of the Aquarium Drunkard crew. Writing about her last one, 2022’s The Spur, Tyler Wilcox wrote: "At this point in her career, we would probably settle for a ‘pretty good’ album from Joan Shelley…But no, [she] continues an unbroken streak of masterpieces." Her latest is called Real Warmth, and it offers precisely what the title states. She joins us to discuss.
Cate Le Bon :: When You Make Things, You Let Go - Aquarium Drunkard
Cate Le Bon is an elusive talent, adept at evoking emotional states without fully explicating them, suggesting resonances with other times and places without ever unpacking them. Her latest album, Michelangelo Dying, for instance, has very little to do with the renaissance artist, mentioned in a fragment of “Love Unrehearsed,” and whatever that connection is, Le Bon is uninterested in revealing it. But even so, the piece conveys a fluid, complicated relationship with love and art and longing, one revealed in bits of startling sonic clarity, but also hidden in suggestion, implication and mood.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Phi-Psonics - Aquarium Drunkard
Earlier this spring, spiritual jazz collective Phi-Psonics released their sprawling, fantastic third album Expanding to One. Led by upright bassist bassist Seth Ford-Young, for their inaugural Lagniappe Session, the collective delivers a pair of Duke Ellington compositions (including "Fleurette Africaine" from the seminal Ellington/Mingus/Roach triumph Money Jungle), early sixties Sun Ra, and "River Man" from Nick Drake's debut album.
Greg Freeman :: Burnover - Aquarium Drunkard
This second album from Greg Freeman finds northern New England’s hard, un-Instagram-able side, the parking lots of dollar stores, the sooty remnants of burnt-out forests, the single gnarly trees left by farmers for shade as they clear cut the land. Burnover's songs follow knotty, Americana rhythms spiked with drumbeats, stabbed through with sharp-edged guitars. They’re banged up but defiant about it, blistered with feedback and vibrating with reedy, pleading choruses.
Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: September 2025 - Aquarium Drunkard
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, Tyler gets things going with an hour’s worth of recent/recommended pastoral ambient sounds, and Chad follows it up with his quarterly survey of recent 2025 digs, both new + archival. Sunday, 4-6pm PT.
Secos & Molhados :: S/T 1973 - Aquarium Drunkard
In 1971, before Bowie brought to life Ziggy Stardust and Marc Bolan appeared glittered up on live TV, before the New York Dolls shocked virility out of rock and Kiss neurotically inserted it back in, Brazil had already invented its own kind of glam rock, with its own painted masks, satin clothes, and made-up personae. Except their version had bass lines as deeply spacious as King Tubby’s, guitar riffs as gently mesmerizing as Zeppelin’s, and the weirdest nods to the flutes, whistles and chants of old Iberic pagan festivals.
Lagniappe Sessions :: Jeffrey Alexander - Aquarium Drunkard
It's easy to imagine Philly's Jeffrey Alexander never leaving the recording studio. In addition to his work with The Heavy Lidders and Dire Wolves, he also releases spaced out, heady tunes under his own name. His latest Bandcamp drop is The Snailhook Tapes Vol 4, and to celebrate its release, he's back with another Lagniappe Session, offering supremely stoned and drifting takes on classics by Harry Nilsson, Horace Silver and Salome Bey, The Smiths, and Mike Williams. Liquid drips of guitar, percussion, and Alexander's craggy Neil Young-ish folk abound—wade into these murky waters for a refreshing feeling indeed.
Joseph Decosimo :: Fiery Gizzard - Aquarium Drunkard
Joseph Decosimo learned the old-time fiddle and banjo at the feet of the masters, studying with the Kentucky master Clyde Davenport from an early age and earning a PhD in traditional music from the University of North Carolina. Well-connected among traditionalists, Decosimo also taps into some non-old-time-y talents for this record, the jazz guitarist Matthew O’Connell, Andy Stack of Wye Oak and Helado Negro on bass and Beirut’s Kelly Pratt on horns. The result, Fiery Gizzard, is a full, rich, vibrant music that feels aligned with history but not confined by it.
Mal Waldron :: Candy Girl - Aquarium Drunkard
A rare 1975 Mal Waldron session with the Lafayette Afro Rock Band finally gets a proper reissue, clarifying some of the album’s many mysteries and deepening its still-ambiguous message. Playing electric piano, the always laconic Waldron gives lots of space to the funk band, space that’s not taken up in the traditional sense. Instead, the songs explore relentless repetition and intense stasis, forming ruts so deep they become portals to different worlds, or at least altered frames of reference.
Mulatu Astatke :: Mulatu Plays Mulatu - Aquarium Drunkard
Born in Ethiopia but trained in the cosmopolitan west—London, New York and Boston where he studied at Berklee—Mulatu Astatke found a serpentine, shimmery groove that combined the exotic sounds of Addis Ababa with the swagger and swing of Latin jazz and American funk and soul. Now in his eighties, Astatke recorded Mulatu Plays Mulatu with LA-based producer and ethnomusicologist Dexter Story and contemporary artists including Carlos Niño and Kibrom Birhane.
O Bruxo :: Hermeto Pascoal (1936-2025) - Aquarium Drunkard
In Brazil, Hermeto Pascoal was affectionately nicknamed "O Bruxo" (The Wizard) for his druidic appearance, marked by the long albino beard, and his ability to turn into musical instruments any mundane objects he came into contact with, as if he could suddenly extract from pipes, forks, birds, pigs, kids' toys, dentists' drills, his own belly, or the landscapes of a river or cave their innermost hidden harmonics.
Transmissions :: Jens Lekman - Aquarium Drunkard
This week on the show, Jason P. Woodbury speaks with Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman. Woodbury has been listening to Jens for just about 20 years—introduced by the 2005 compilation, Oh You're So Silent Jens. Though the comp features songs ingeniously constructed using samples, it was Lekman’s voice that made Woodbury such a fan. Not just his deep, sonorous croon; we mean "voice" in the writing sense: Lekman has a signature ability to sound funny and sad at the same time, or wounded yet somehow simultaneously hopeful. Jens has a new album out now called Songs for Other People’s Weddings, and it arrives complete with a novel of the same name by David Levithan. He joins us to discuss.
Jorge Ben :: A Tábua de Esmeralda - Aquarium Drunkard
In the middle of the heaviest years of a military dictatorship, Ben Jorge wanted, in his own words, to "bring peace of mind and tranquility" to Brazilians. He wanted happiness and imagination, visions of utopia, the quickening of the heart. A Tábua de Esmeralda espoused this ideal of absolute joy through its sweet and comic gestures, making reference at the same time to saints and soccer clubs, Medieval magicians and cartoon characters, as if they all belonged to the same semantic realm, a realm that was kept safely protected by artists like Ben as the surface of life was overtaken by political violence.
Gruff Rhys :: Dim Probs - Aquarium Drunkard
As breezily inviting as the flying carpet ride that the cover's marker sketch would convey, the ninth record from Gruff Rhys breathes easily between acoustic strummers and orchestral, electro-acoustic rhythms. The fourth long player sung in the musician's native Welsh and joined by veteran collaborators Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline on backing vocals, Dim Probs utilizes the Rhys playbook in crafting shambolic pop songs that serve as an antidote for inherently grim overtones.
The Cords :: S/T - Aquarium Drunkard
No question, the Cords’ self-titled debut, coming after a scant run of singles, is a nearly flawless set of female-forward jangle pop, as fresh and tuneful and faintly sardonic as any long-player from Glasgow’s 1980s heyday. Sharp, biting guitar licks slash through sun-through-raindrops melodies. Ebullient harmonies waft around lyrics edged with disdain.
Guru Guru :: Känguru - Aquarium Drunkard
The quirky cover of Guru Guru’s Känguru – a mama and her joey adrift on the ice, with curious speech and thought bubbles – tells you all you need to know about this Krautrock heavy hitter. Their message is simple: our music is weird and fun and inscrutable. Känguru feels less a product of its circumstances and more like a beam from some kosmische asteroid: four songs of heady, rapturous, meandering rock. They’re jammy but structured, punctuated by climaxes and build-ups, vibe shifts and open space. But it’s about the journey, not the destination: get on the ice floe and float along, man…
Whitney K :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview - Aquarium Drunkard
Bubble the new LP from Whitney K, like their previous releases, has a hypnotic and languid manner that belies percolating depth, humor and force. Sonically, it's is their boldest and coherent to date, adventurous but unhurried, segueing smoothly between choogling acoustics and scalded electricity. Ahead of this week’s release of Bubble, AD caught up with Konner Whitney, the group’s center if not its leader, as he prepared for an extensive tour.
A Big Ego Baker’s Dozen - Aquarium Drunkard
Over the past several years, founder Chris Schlarb has made Big Ego into a community-driven, artist-centric (and remarkably affordable) hub, the likes of which are lamentably few and far between. The label’s output is packed with gems, many of which bring together a murderer’s row of Los Angeles-area musicians to create records that are deeply imaginative, carefully crafted and utterly unique. Here, we’ve gathered a baker’s dozen of recommended listens — just a small sampling of what the Big Ego universe has in store.
Seu Jorge :: The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions (20th anniversary) - Aquarium Drunkard
Twenty years after its release, Seu Jorge's The Life Aquatic Sessions continues to age gracefully. The beautiful sevenths and ninths chords, the breezy romanticism of the Portuguese language, and Jorge's balmy croon transmute Bowie's grandiose productions into a tropical oasis of pianissimo revelations. These alterations don't distract from the source material as much as they enhance it, revealing the universality of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust era. What was written as British glam-rock anthems work just as well as Brazilian samba numbers, and vice versa.
Haruomi Hosono :: Tropical Dandy - Aquarium Drunkard
Haruomi Hosono’s second solo effort, Tropical Dandy, now released as a standalone album for the first time in the U.S., shows the bassist and bandleader moving on from his folk-rock beginnings. A complex, eccentric and deeply committed commentary on exotica, sonic simulacra and tropical vibes, it’s full of contradictory constructions and proud artificialities that tap into something deeper than the merely real.
Julien Gasc :: Perles, coraux & requins - Aquarium Drunkard
Following a brisk but rewarding detour with last year's instrumental offering Grand Jardin, French multi-instrumentalist Julien Gasc makes a triumphant return with his fifth full length Perles, coraux & requins. Recorded and produced by Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) and featuring musicians like Stereolab's Tim Gane, Gasc's signature knack for songwriting lies in the airiness of chanson pop traditions, transmuted with twisting, layered compositions. Like fresh air after a dip in the saltwater, these compositions demonstrate a remarkable musician (still) at the top of their game.
Transmissions :: Marissa Nadler - Aquarium Drunkard
Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Our guest this week is Marissa Anderson. Last month, she released her 10th album, New Radiations, via Sacred Bones Records. She joins us to discuss cinema, working life, and her relationship with heavy music.
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Winter McQuinn - Aquarium Drunkard
Fittingly, I happened upon Winter McQuinn and his associated Melbourne scene right around the time I was visiting Australia in 2023 and have kept rapt attention since. McQuinn’s third album Where Are We Now? is set to drop later this month, via the Sydney based Third Eye Stimuli Records, and with it his first Lagniappe Session. Here, McQuinn works up a full band arrangement of the autumnal 2017 Anna St. Louis chestnut "Fire," before digging into Charles Brown's "On The Corner" and Roger Miller's 1973 adventure in animation courtesy of Robin Hood's "Oo-De-Lally."
World Standard :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview - Aquarium Drunkard
This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the debut album from World Standard, the avant-pop moniker of wunderkind musician Soichiro Suzuki. Also an accomplished and passionate music writer (including the Mondo Music series on exotica and lounge music), Suzuki joined us from his home in Japan for a wide-ranging conversation about his varied musical and writing career, now spanning four decades. Among the topics discussed include formative influences like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, deriving inspiration from David Lynch and Twin Peaks, his long running collaboration with Hauromi Hosono, creating music for tinnitus sufferers, giving talks and lectures on The Beatles in Japan, dissecting pop music with Jim O'Rourke and much more.