Эпизоды
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Welcome back to Transmissions, your weekly conversational series from Aquarium Drunkard in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. This week on the show, a long awaited return visit from Lonnie Holley. The Atlanta artist joins us alongside his manager, Matt Arnett, son of William Arnett, the Southern art curator and collector who brought Holley to the attention of the art world in the 1980s.
In those days, Holley often worked directly with trash—taking discarded materials to forge his sculptures. Philip K. Dick has said “the symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum,” and in Lonnie’s case, that truth is made evident.
His art draws from what’s thrown out—a theme he returns to often—but also from personal tragedy: first artistic project was carving headstones for his sister's two children, who died in a house fire in Alabama in 1979. Since then, his found-object assemblages, paintings, and collages have endeared him to the fine art world—they have even been displayed in the Smithsonian and the White House—in part due to the patronage and care of Arnett’s father.
But the younger Arnett helped Holley get on the path he walks know, as an oracular sculpture of sound. Lonnie and Matt join us ahead of the March 21st release of Holley’s new album, Tonky. Crafted with Irish producer Jacknife Lee (R.E.M., U2, The Killers) and featuring guests like Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, harpist Mary Lattimore, rappers Billy Woods and Open Mike Eagle, spoken word from Saul Williams, and others, Tonky rattles with blues-punk-industrial art folk anthems. We discussed the new album, Holley’s poetic metaphysics, and his work with kindred spirit Richard Swift.
You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard. Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. -
This week on Transmissions, we welcome the phenomenal writer Lucy Sante to the show to discuss her latest book, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition. Poetic, slyly funny, and exceptionally moving, the book joins her other classics, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York and Maybe the People Would Be the Times, as a piece of art that straddles the line between memoir, arts criticism, and music writing.
We discuss those works, as well as Sante's recently published Six Sermons for Bob Dylan, which collects sermons the non-religious Sante crafted for a Dylan project that found Michael Shannon taking her words to the pulpit. Plus, we check in on her thoughts about transition, Dylan, fashion, the early days of music journalism, The Velvet Underground, A Complete Unknown, New York, and much more. And we've got a bonus component too: Scott Bunn of Recliner Notes stops by to discuss Sante's work and a recent look at the "guitar sculptures" of Yo La Tengo.
You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard. Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. -
Пропущенные эпизоды?
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Welcome back to Transmissions with Jason Woodbury. This week, Steve Lillywhite, a producer who's had as pivotal a role in shaping your host's musical taste as anyone. In this conversation, Lillywhite opens up about working with artists like Dave Matthews Band, U2, Phish, XTC, The La's, Marshall Crenshaw, The Killers, and more. From The Joshua Tree to Billy Breathes, from Before These Crowded Streets to Field Day, Lillywhite speaks about it all, the influence of dub, his production approach, and more.
Lillywhite is somebody we've wanted to have on this show very long time, and we were excited to ring him up. Big thanks to Grayson Haver Currin, the incredible critic and writer you are no doubt familiar with, for helping connect us to Steve.
You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. -
This week on Transmissions: Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the duo behind the label and concert series Jazz Is Dead.
Founded in 2017, Jazz Is Dead began releasing new work by jazz artists frequently sampled in rap and hip-hop in 2020, including releases from legendary players like Roy Ayers, Azymuth, Gary Bartz, Lonnie Liston Smith, Tony Allen, and more. On January 31st, the duo released JID022, featuring new music from 88-year-old Ghanian highlife and afrobeat master Ebo Taylor, and on April 4th, they will release JID023, featuring Brazilian vocalist Hyldon. Recorded in analog at Linear Labs, the Jazz is Dead series does more than pair younger players with established elders; it showcases the powerful link that connects musicians across decades.
As producers, musicians, podcasters, and much more, both Ali and Adrian are heavy hitters. Muhammad is of course known for his work with A Tribe Called Quest, Lucy Pearl, and The Midnight Hour, a duo with Younge. And of course Adrian is an accomplished musical force too, check out his work with The Delfonics, Souls of Mischief, Ghostface Killah, and Kendrick Lamar.
We taped this conversation in January, in the hazy, strange weeks after the terrible fires that tore through the city of Los Angeles. That’s where our conversation starts—reflecting on history lost, and what it takes to preserve it, and also, why they don’t necessarily think of Jazz Is Dead as an archival or preservationist project in the first place.
You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. -
Welcome back to Transmissions from Aquarium Drunkard. We're kicking off our 10th season with host Jason Woodbury in conversation with Will Oldham, the man behind Bonnie “Prince” Billy, who appeared on the very first Transmissions interview back in 2016. This episode flips a gentle and honest bird to The Big Online Machine:
"Some people I think are fully integrated and are just ready to, if not officially upload their souls to the Metaverse, more or less do that. And those are people with whom we just don't engage and won't engage with in the future. And that makes it a little bit easier because we are tribalizing into those who are Metaverse citizens versus those who are citizens of the tactile universe, the experienceable universe with your full five senses and beyond."
Oldham’s latest album is called The Purple Bird, and it’s as close to a country or Americana crossover album as he’s ever made. Though he's far from a stranger to western sounds, this new one finds him working with songs that resulted from multi-songwriter sessions in Nashville, facilitated by the record’s producer, David Ferguson.
Not only is The Purple Bird one of the most collaborative records he’s ever made—it’s also perhaps his most topical. It’s all in here: death, life, sex, fear, guns, and nods to the divisions and stresses that plague so many of us in these strange days. But it’s a big hearted and hopeful listen, too. In this conversation, Woodbury asks Oldham how the album took shape, and digs into Will’s suspicions about online culture, the influence of artists like Phil Ochs and Steve Albini, his experiences in the studio with Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin, and why—all things considered—he would've worked with the late Phil Spector.
You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you’ll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. -
We’ve reached the end of the road for this season—season 9 concludes with this episode, a conversation with Matthew Houck, the leader of the avant-country band Phosphorescent. In April, Phosphorescent released Revelator, the band’s ninth album. It’s their debut for Verve Records, after a string of well-received albums on Dead Oceans. Joined by collaborators like Jim White of the Dirty Three—who you heard earlier this season—Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs, and his wife and songwriting partner Jo Schornikow, it finds Houck examining—what else?—the end of the world.
If one theme has run through the last few seasons of this show, it’s that of “apocalypse," or revelation. The veil, no matter how hard we try and keep it pinned down, keeps slipping away. Revelator finds Houck facing uncertain future, but also, leveling up. In its mournful ballads and genuinely hilarious odes to bathroom graffiti, you hear the voice of a songwriter probing the void:
“And we've ridden beyond where we could safely touch down
And we're out in the void, past where we could've had turned around
I tried my feet on the floor, tried to beat on the door
But it didn't even make a sound
Got my heart open wide
But the city been shut down”
But Revelator is no dour screed; it is in fact filled with hope and good humor. In this episode, he joins us to extoll the glory of “unnecessary” art, his work on Paul Schrader's new film Oh, Canada; and the multiple apocalypses afoot.
This year, we launched AD as a subscription service, and the support and generosity of our fans and listeners has been powerful to behold. Over at AD, you’ll find nearly 20 years of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
Transmissions will return in 2025. Take care of yourself, take care of those around you, and keep on wondering. We’ll be back—be well in the meantime. This season of Transmissions is concluded. -
Welcome to the penultimate episode of our ninth season, featuring Pat Irwin of Suss. You may remember him from last year’s Suss talk, with his bandmates Jonathan Gregg and Bob Holmes, but he’s back for a solo talk this time, which allowed us to dig into his wild life in music, from his time in the the late ‘70s New York No Wave scene with The Raybeats and 8-Eyed Spy, to his work with Southern freak icons The B-52s, and his long career crafting music for TV and animation, including shows like Rocko’s Modern Life and Bored to Death.
Things have been very, very busy on the Suss front. This year, Irwin contributed guitars, keyboards, harmonium, and loops to Suss’ fifth album, Birds & Beasts. On top of that, Suss’ Bob Holmes, who also hosts the must-listen Ambient Country podcast, has launched Across the Horizon, a collaboration with Northern Spy Records that brings on board various like-minded artists drawn “from the wide landscape of instrumental music” (including Transmissions guests like Luke Schneider, Marisa Anderson, William Tyler and more) to curate a series of digital releases that will culminate next year in a double LP comp.
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent. -
Welcome back to Transmissions, we’re so glad to have you tuned into this show. This week, a talk taped earlier this summer with Martin Courtney of Real Estate.
Real Estate has been releasing great albums since the late 2000s. This year, they released their sixth LP, called Daniel. Produced in Nashville by Daniel Tashian, who produced Kacy Musgraves’ breakthrough Golden Hour, it’s a mellow, refined sound—deeply rooted in acoustic ‘90s rock textures and dappled with pedal steel. It’s a record about growing up, and accepting all that comes with accumulated time spent here on earth.
Reviewing the album for Aquarium Drunkard, Ian Grant of our Talkhouse labelmates The Jokermen podcast notes, “While critics have made a habit of harping on the (perceived) consistency of Real Estate’s sound, less acknowledged is Courtney’s evolution as a lyricist…approaching forty and a father several times over, his focus as a writer has grown far beyond the green aisles of his youth. Daniel finds the man in a contemplative state, concerned about the world and his place in it, questing after whatever degree of contentment any of us can hope for in a future of diminished horizons.”
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here’s to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Pat Irwin of ambient country band Suss. -
This week on the show, a double-header. First, Rosali Middleman, and then, her bandmate, collaborator, and the leader of Mowed Sound, David Nance. Together, they both play on Rosali’s fantastic 2024 album, Bite Down. Reviewing it for Aquarium Drunkard, Brent Sirota writes, “A great summer album needs hooks and choruses, big barroom rave-ups and bleary confessions of both love and doubt. Bite Down, with its weathered Americana, has all of this in spades. But more than that, a summer record must feel lived-in. There’s someone there, but there’s room for us as well. We feel the actual life of an artist overlapping with ours for a spell. Nobody today really does this better than Rosali Middleman. She makes intimate, confessional music feel communal. You can’t help but sing along.”
It’s true—and Bite Down, her second collaboration with Nance and the Mowed Sound crew, has proved to be more than just the album of the summer—apologies to Brat. It turns out it’s a great autumn album too. Of course Nance and Mowed Sound also have their own 2024 barnburner to consider: David Nance & Mowed Sound, released in February on Third Man Records, which takes the barband power of previous outings and adds a dash of distinguished polish. These talks were taped months apart—the Nance one was taped in April, Rosali’s installment was taped in September, but both are loose, riffy, and openhearted.
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Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, one of our favorite return guests: Mitch Horowitz. As scholar and historian of the occult, he's established himself as one of the most literate voices in the New Age field.
On previous episodes, Horowitz has discussed his books, like Uncertain Places and Daydream Believer—but he’s finally taking the plunge with a podcast of his own. It’s called Extraordinary Evidence | ESP Is Real, a “limited series on the history, struggles, and proofs of parapsychology and the science of studying the supernatural.” The first episode is out October 30th, a presentation of the Spectrevision Radio Network, the podcast division of Elijah Wood’s Spectrevision production company. It features music by Dean Hurley, another former Transmissions guest, known for his musical and sound design projects with David Lynch.
The podcast comes on top of Mitch’s recent work on your TV screen—this year, he starred alongside podcaster and UAP researcher Chrissy Newton in Discovery’s Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction, and on October 27th, you can see him in MGM+’s Beyond: UFOs and the Unknown.
How do UFOs and ESP connect? How did Horowitz approach creating his own podcast? And what do we have to learn from the skeptics who scoff at the mere mention of these topics? Mitch explores these questions and more on this week’s episode of Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions.
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, this week on the show, we're joined by three guests—though, not all at once.
In the first half of the show: Mark “Frosty” McNeill of dublab and the LA Phil to discuss a new compilation he helped produce, Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996; in the second-half of the show, Estevan and Alejandro Gutierrez, better known as Hermanos Gutiérrez just us to discuss their latest album of spacey guitar instrumentals, Sonido Cosmico.
Assembled by Light in the Attic Records in partnership with the Kyiv-based archival label, Shukai, Even the Forest Hums offers music rarely heard outside of its homeland—a genre diverse compilation of Ukrainian music recorded under the USSR’s reign and in the aftermath of its collapse, from post-punk to folk, from jazz rock to early electronic music, from downtempo hip-hop to oddball pop.
“Music has always pulled Ukrainians out of the abyss,” writes Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi in the liner notes. “When there is no hope for the future, there is still music. At such moments, the whole nation resonates under a groove. Music, breaking through the concrete of various colonial systems, is an incredible, often illogical, way to preserve dignity.” Mark “Frosty” McNeill takes us behind the scenes.
Brothers Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez grew up in two words, splitting time between their father’s native Switzerland and Ecuador, where their mother’s family hailed from. On past records, they’ve evoked the imaginal expanses of Spaghetti Westerns through a pan Latin/surf/psychedelic sound for guitar and lap steel.
Their latest is called Sonido Cósmico. Joined by producer Dan Auerbach, they flesh the surroundings out even more this go-round, dialing in a song that’s as suited for the desert expanses of Mars or the moon as much as any Sergio Leone film.
Estevan and Alejandro joined us to discuss setting their sights on the stars, channeling feminine energy via their abuela, and the intent that fueled committing their earliest musical efforts to vinyl.
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Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
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Welcome back to Transmissions—far out conversations for far out times. This week, we're joined by synthesist Jill Fraser. She's lived a remarkable life in music: mentored by Morton Subotnick, she went on work in film and television, with projects like 1974's sci-fi fantasy Zardoz and Paul Schrader's 1979 film Hardcore to her name, in addition to a litany of commercials featuring her inventive sound design. In the '80s, she found herself on the outskirts of LA's thriving punk scene, and now, she's released a new album, Earthly Pleasures, on the storied Drag City label.
A science fiction saga in sonic form, it finds Fraser working with tools like her 1978 Serge Modular, Prism Modular and Ableton Push 3 to reconfigure, expand, and transmute revival hymns of the 19th and early 20th centuries, asking the question: what might this music sound like to some extraterrestrial or robotic intelligence countless years in the future?
In this thoughtful conversation with host Jason P. Woodbury, Fraser opens up about her working relationship with composer Jack Nitzsche, her excitement about AI technology, and how the sci-fi trappings of Earthly Pleasures belie reflections about art, family, spirituality, and mortality. What did Jill think the first time she say Sean Connery's infamous Zardoz costume, close your eyes and drop into this transmission to find out.
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Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
This week on the show, we're pleased to present a conversation with Matt Sweeney. He’s lived a truly dazzling life in music. After coming up playing with the great band Chavez, he contributed to masterworks of indie rock—including records by Cat Power and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, with whom he crafted the monumental 2005 classic Superwolf, a classic in the Aquarium Drunkard canon. He's also worked as an in-demand session player, working on recordings for the likes of Cat Stevens, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and other legends.
Is Matt the only guy to play on both a Current 93 and Dixie Chicks project? We suspect so.
His new band is called The Hard Quartet, which finds him joined by Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and The Jicks, Emmett Kelly of The Cairo Gang, and Jim White of The Dirty Three.
Their self-titled debut is out this Friday, October 4th. To quote from Jennifer Kelly’s Aquarium Drunkard review of their self-titled album: “The term ‘supergroup’ gets thrown around a lot, and it often means nothing more than ‘these people have all been in other bands.’ But the Hard Quartet is a true super group, composed of four guys who have made their mark in music.”
Sweeney's a great conversationalist, and this talk gets into the new record, the philosophy of bass playing, the band's Monkees-like identity, the return of his web series Guitar Moves and much more.
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Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
If you’ve been listening to Transmissions for a while, you've noticed how often host Jason P. Woodbury brings up “time” when talking about music. And while he's certainly apt to talk about music in spiritual or "out there" terms, songs are in some ways literal time machines: they can take you back to your own past or in the case of traditional music, preserve some essential “nowness” of the human experience. Songsmith Jake Xerxes Fussell grew up understanding this intimately. As the son of folklorist, photographer, and artist Fred C. Fussell, he spent time on the road with his father, documenting the sound and feel of blues singers, indigenous fiddlers, and performers whose songbooks reached back generations.
The younger Fussell carries on curatorial work through his records, applying his alternately smooth and grainy voice to traditional vernacular ballads. His latest collection is called When I’m Called. Produced by James Elkington, it finds the Durham-based songwriter joined by a cast of collaborators including Blake Mills, Joan Shelley, and Joe Westerlund of Bon Iver. Though it's comprised of traditional blues and folk, as is Fussell’s trademark, it isn’t a work of historicity so much as a document of how songs live; how they can be preserved, and how they can find new life.
In this conversation, Fussell explains, and touches on The Beastie Boys and his time with one of our documentary heroes, Les Blank.
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Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
This week on Transmissions, we're sitting down with a genuine legend: Joe Boyd, author of And The Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music, out September 24 from ZE Books. On the front cover of the book Brian Eno—a venerated saint in the Aquarium Drunkard canon—declares: “I doubt I’ll ever read a better account of the history and sociology of popular music than this one.”
Joe Boyd’s career is the stuff of myth. As a producer, he’s worked with a murder’s row of collaborators, including Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., Richard and Linda Thompson, Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, 10,00 Maniacs, and many more.
In 2006, Boyd released a memoir, White Bicycles – Making Music in the 1960s, which documented his time in the studio during that decade, but And the Roots of Rhythm Remain casts an even wider net, exploring the overlap of musical cultures and the complicated, human negotiations that undergird creative synthesis.
As you’ll hear in the early part of our talk, Joe played a pivotal role Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury's music writing journey. In 2008, Woodbury reviewed a Nick Drake box set for the sorely missed Tiny Mix Tapes. The piece also included an email interview with Boyd, whose responses were insightful and in-depth—an experience that inspired Woodbury to chase after interviews. So this conversation picks up the thread some decade and a half later, detailing not only Boyd's new book, but also his experiences with Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, Vashti Bunyan, and many more adventures.
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
This week on Transmissions, the return of Leah Toth, aka Amelia Courthouse. She was last here on the podcast in its earlier, more feral incarnation—and by feral we mean "updated with elss regularity"—but back in 2018 she reviewed Shinya Fukumori Trio’s incredible ECM release For 2 Akis. We've wanted to have Leah back on ever since, and this now we've got a great excuse to do so: the release of her incredible new album under the Amelia Courthouse name, broken things. Blending Protestant solemnity with dream pop bliss with extended, meditative ambient music and skeletal folk, she’s created a work of gentle and imperfect holiness.
In her return Transmission, Toth dicusses making gorgeous music with imperfect equipment, rescuing old songs from the archives of her husband and collaborator James Toth aka Wooden Wand, the sound worlds of David Lynch, and the experience of communal worship singing.
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
From early mystic folk inclinations to more fried and psychedelic work, 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 Chasny's prodigious standards.
First was Time Is Glass, an album that documented his return to Humboldt County; then Jinxed By Being, a collaboration with ambient dub master Shackleton, and on September 27th, Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix), which finds Chasny's 2022 album Companion Rises completely reimagined and re-created by sound artist Twig Harper. The results are unlike anything you've ever heard in the Six Organs catalog—though it's all part of the design, Chasny says.
For this return visit to Transmissions, Chasny joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss his trio of 2024 releases, his experiences playing with David Tibet's apocalyptic avant-garde collective Current 93, his vision for the DIY recording zine Head Voice, the sounds of spiritualism, and cultivating online community through the Six Organs Patreon.
Plus: Animator Mark Neeley drops in for a quick chat about Pure Animation for Now People, his new minute-long, hand drawn collaboration with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
Welcome back to Transmissions, our weekly conversational offering. On today's show? Nashville’s own Rich Ruth.
Opening his review of Ruth’s latest, the Third Man Records LP Water Still Flows, Aquarium Drunkard’s Brent Sirota states: “We don’t even have a name for what has been going on in instrumental music lately. There’s plainly some kind of new fusion afoot…[but] it doesn’t really sound like old-school fusion. There’s electrified jazz there, to be sure, but now it sits alongside krautrock, kosmische, psychedelia, minimalism, and ambient.”
Like many, Ruth began making meditative music during the pandemic, resulting in his tremendous 2022 record, I Survived, It’s Over. But with Water Still Flows, Ruth embraces grandiose riffs alongside his placid total soundscapes. The result is a record that feels heavy, while still possessing the calming center that defined earlier work. Sirota cites groups like Dirty Three and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, outfits given to transcendent abandon, and he’s right on the money.
We caught up with Rich and discuss. Our conversation takes more than a few interesting turns—who ever thought we'd end up discussing Creed, and yet here we are—but one thing’s for sure: the freedom Rich Ruth and his collaborators exhibit is contagious—as is his charm.
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This week, we have an exceedingly rare interview with Jason Martin, of California dream pop band Starflyer 59. Fermented in the nascent Riverside dream pop underground alongside his brother Ronnie Martin of Joy Electric in the early '90s, Martin's band SF59 released its debut album, Silver, 30 years ago in 1994 on the fledgling Tooth & Nail label. His latest, Lust for Gold, finds him winking knowingly at the title of his 1995 album Gold, a record routinely cited as one of the best shoegaze albums of all-time.
Incorporating elements of the band’s feedback-drenched early sound, the new album finds the years catching up with a guy who has been singing about being old since he was in his early 20s. From the band’s monochromatic album covers to Martin’s notoriously sparse interviews—check out the one we did at Aquarium Drunkard for an example—he’s always preferred to let the music do the talking.
But this talk finds him settling in for a longform chat about his history, his songwriting practice, how familial connections bind his musical projects, and much, much more. Joined by guest co-host/interlocuteur Andrew Horton, this conversation is the most revealing interview to date with Jason Martin of Starflyer 59.
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard -
This week on Transmissions, return guest Yasmin Williams. On October 4th, she releases Acadia via Nonesuch Records. It's her long awaited follow up to 2021's Urban Driftwood, and like that record, it's beautiful—a showcase for a one-of-a-kind artist. And while the focus remains Williams' fluid and lyrical guitarwork, she's joined by a roster of ringers to help fill out the corners: Aoife O'Donovan, Dom Flemons, Kaki King, William Tyler, and Darklingside and Rich Ruth, whose vocal and synthesizer contributions can be heard on the recently released first single, "Virga."
Williams first came back on the show way back in the lockdown days, but life has changed greatly for her since then. She discusses some of those changes, and opens up about her desire to create with Acadia something of a refuge from the chaos of the world. Even though the record finds her joined by an expanded cast, it feels even more personal. In carving out enough space for herself, Williams has opened more than enough for the listener too. Ahead of her fall tour dates with Brittany Howard and Michael Kiwanuka and an appearance at London's Pitchfork Music Fest in November, Williams joins host Jason P. Woodbury for a rousing conversation.
Aquarium Drunkard is supported by our subscribers. Head over and peruse our site, where you’ll find nearly 20 years of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard.
Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists keep 100% of their royalties and earnings. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/aquariumdrunkard - Показать больше
