It’s 2021 and Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions podcast is back. Every Wednesday, your host Jason P. Woodbury sits down with a fascinating guest for a rolling conversation about art, process, and inspiration. To kick off our new season, we’re joined by Nels Cline . Known for his many varied solo projects, work in Wilco, and a long history of collaboration with artists like Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, and many more. His latest work, out now via the legendary ...
Jan 20, 2021•1 hr 19 min
Our guest this week is Patrick McDermott of North Americans. His latest is called Roped In and its blissed out guitar-scapes find him teaming up with cosmic pedal steel master Barry Walker Jr, William Tyler, and Mary Lattimore. He reached us from his place in Los Angeles to discuss pleasant zones, video games, and some particularly good lunches. A quick note: this is the final episode of our season. We're going to take a break but don't you sweat it, we'll be back early in 2021 with more strange...
Dec 23, 2020•59 min
This week, we're joined by returning guest Chris Schlarb of Psychic Temple and Big Ego, his studio in Long Beach. His latest is called Houses of the Holy, a four-sided double-album, featuring a different band on each side: Cherry Glazerr with garage pop, the Chicago Underground Trio with their jazz inflection, psych warriors the Dream Syndicate, and rapper and producer Xololanxinxo. Schlarb took some time out of his holiday season to speak with us about the creative ethos driving his work. Trans...
Dec 16, 2020•1 hr 7 min
This week on Transmissions, we welcome back a return guest : desert scribe and radio personality Ken Layne. He’s the editor of Desert Oracle , a pocket-sized field guide to the American Southwest and the host of Desert Oracle Radio , a weekly late-night broadcast out of Joshua Tree. With synthesist RedBlueBlackSilver in tow, Layne offers up tales of the paranormal, the odd, and the arcane. Layne illuminates these damned and or transcendent topics with good humor and dusty charm. This week, he re...
Dec 09, 2020•1 hr 26 min
This week on Transmissions, we're joined by sound healer, reiki practitioner, and avant-garde composer Devi Mambouka, better known as Masma Dream World. Her latest LP is called Play At Night , out on Northern Spy Records. It’s a blend of subterranean bass, spooky backwards masked poetry, and shifting, nocturnal soundscapes designed to entrance, inviting you to examine your “preconceived relationship with darkness, guiding you to step into it—to play in it.” Mambouka took some time out of a weeke...
Dec 02, 2020•1 hr 3 min
You’re tuned into Transmissions , where each week Aquarium Drunkard presents a strange conversation for these strange times. Today on the show we’re joined by Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Makers. The Markers’ new album 2020 is out now on Drag City. It’s a gloriously smeared burst of noise, raw riffs, and damaged country and folk songs. Ambrogio joined us to discuss the importance of good quarantine companion, living out west, and getting into music—really inhabiting it—before you are even sure what y...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Incoming transmission from... Yves Jarvis . The singer/songwriter/producer's latest is called Sundry Rock Song Stock , and it's a blur of soft-focus pop and shimmering melodic mirages. He joined us from the Tree Museum in Ontario to discuss his interest in progressive rock, creative approach, the disparate influence of Joni Mitchell, Bill Bruford, and Kanye. Plus, a check in with Vic Berger IV and Doug Lussenhop of Tim Heidecker 's Office Hours regarding their upcoming noise-show-slash-audio-vis...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 16 min
Transmissions…strange talks for these strange days. This week on the show, we’re joined by ambient hero William Basinski and his collaborator and engineer Preston Wendel. They’ve got two wildly divergent projects out this year. In July, they released To Feel Embraced a collection of saxophone-laden lounge and electronica under the name Sparkle Division. And on November 13th, they release William Basinski’s Lamentations , which assembles more than 40 years of archival tape loops and studies from ...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 10 min
Bonus episode! We put out episodes every Wednesday and we have already done so this week—a great chat with novelist and podcaster Hari Kunzru —but since this week being the week it has been, we’re in an energetic mood. So here we are. Our guest for this extra episode is John Darnielle. Since 1991, he’s released music under the Mountain Goats banner, in addition to writing a couple of great books, including Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester. He’s got two albums out this year—first, a lo-f...
Nov 08, 2020•53 min
This week on Transmissions, Hari Kunzru in conversation with host Jason P. Woodbury. Kunzru is a novelist and writer; his latest is called Red Pill . It’s about a writer who receives a fellowship in Germany, where he finds himself sucked into a spiral of reactionary thinking. His other 2020 project is a podcast called Into the Zone , from Puskin Industries. It’s a podcast about, well, to put it in reductive terms, the opposite of reactive thinking. Examining the liminal space between borders—vis...
Nov 04, 2020•1 hr 7 min
Incoming transmission from Joe Wong. He's an incredibly busy guy: he hosts the Trap Set, a weekly interview podcast he’s helmed since 2015, where he sits down with artists like Mix Master Mike, Sharon Van Etten, Jim Keltner, Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo, among many others. He also makes music for film in TV—you’ve probably heard his work on Master of None, Russian Doll, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before , and Midnight Gospel. Joe has long played music with artists...
Oct 28, 2020•59 min
Incoming transmission from...Joe Pera and James Wallace, who’s better known as Skyway Man. The two worked together on season two of Joe’s TV show, Joe Pera Talks With You on Adult Swim. Describing “what happens” on the show doesn’t really do it justice. Nothing too out of the ordinary occurs—characters go on hikes, they stay up late watching videos on the internet, they deal with the passing of loved ones. But it’s how the show unfolds—gently, unhurriedly—that makes it such remarkable viewing. I...
Oct 21, 2020•1 hr 21 min
The release of the new career-spanning collection Transmissions: The Music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland continues a wave of new appreciation for the pioneering folk, electronic, and experimental composer's celestial and enveloping songs. Offering a holistic look at Glenn-Copeland's diverse songbook—ranging from early folk-jazz stunners to electronic devotionals and breakbeat-inclusive pop—the compilation also features a new song, "River Dreams," one of the many songs he says was "downloaded" via th...
Oct 14, 2020•1 hr 15 min
Incoming transmission from...Sam Prekop. For more than 25 years, he's released music with the Sea and Cake and on his own. With the band, he's responsible for guitarwork and providing signature vocals, cool, aloof, and melodically clear. But his last few solo albums have found him focusing less on pop song craft and more on analog synthesizers and ambient textures. His latest for Thrill Jockey records is called Comma and on it he blends serene soundscapes with twitching electronic rhythms. Trans...
Oct 07, 2020•58 min
Our guest this week is legendary guitarist Bill Frisell. In the 1980s, he served as ECM Records’ in-house guitarist, and he’s been hard at it ever since: partnering with John Zorn for a long series of unclassifiable records, playing alongside Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Vic Chesnutt, and many more, all while making his own records, which blur the lines between jazz, avant-garde, country, surf, blues, and gospel. His latest is called Valentine . It’s out no...
Sep 30, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Our guest this week is Jerry David DeCicca. Perhaps you know him best from Black Swans, or maybe some of the great albums he's produced by so called "outsider" songwriters like Ed Askew, Larry Jon Wilson, and Chris Gantry, among others. Since 2014, he's been putting out great records under his own name. His latest is called The Unlikely Optimist And His Domestic Adventures . Jerry describes it as “an anti-Hallmark ode to positivity." Who couldn’t use some positivity this year? In advance of its ...
Sep 23, 2020•1 hr 19 min
Our guest this week on Transmissions is Jerry Williams Jr., but if you know your musical cult heroes, you probably know him by the name Swamp Dogg. Since the early '50s, he's lived as a true record man—writing songs, producing artists, self-releasing music, and putting out major label flops that have gone on to achieve lost classic status. He’s always walked the line between R&B and country, making a joke of the music industry’s intentional segregating of white and black audiences. He manage...
Sep 16, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Our guest this week is Chris Forsyth, guitarist, bandleader, composer, and DIY lifer. His studio albums evoke the punk psychedelia of Television, balancing ‘70s rock grooves the loose, exploratory feel of the Dead. But as good as his studio LPs are, it might be live recordings that best showcase his sound. His latest is called First Flight . On it, he’s joined by guitarist Dave Harrington, drummer Ryan Jewell, and bassist Spencer Zahn on stage at Nublu in New York City on September 20th, 2019. W...
Sep 09, 2020•1 hr 2 min
This week on Transmissions, we're joined by songwriter, Dr. Dog drummer, and noted Twitter personality Eric Slick. His new album of classic pop songcraft is called Wiseacre. Best known for his work with Dr. Dog and his wife, songwriter Natalie Prass, Wiseacre was inspired by the golden-hued melodies of Harry Nilsson, Haruomi Hosono, and a general '70s gloss. It's a deeply personal record, one that explores contentment and domesticity, as well as unpacking no small amount of personal weirdness an...
Sep 02, 2020•34 min
On Mama You Can Bet , her new album under her Jyoti alias, Georgia Anne Muldrow embraces her jazz roots. Born and raised in Los Angeles, her parents were immersed in the city’s jazz community. Her father Ronald Muldrow worked with Eddie Harris; Rickie Byars-Beckwith , her mother, worked with Pharoah Sanders. And there’s the matter of her spiritual lineage: the Jyoti name was bestowed upon her by Alice Coltrane at her ashram. “I’ve had many experiences in that woman’s force field, and I’ve never ...
Aug 26, 2020•1 hr 5 min
Our guest this week practically invented kosmische guitar. As a member of Neu! , Harmonia, and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk , Michael Rother's fluid, emotive playing helped define the sound of krautrock, as the music came up out of Germany's avant-garde underground in the late '60s and headed for the cosmos in the '70s. In 2019, he released of Solo , a multi-disc boxed set that documented the first part of his solo career and on September 4th, the Forst-based guitarist and composer follows ...
Aug 19, 2020•1 hr 10 min
Our guest this week is Colin Dickey, author of The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession With The Unexplained . Bigfoot, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, phantom islands like Atlantis and Lemuria…the paranormal haunts our collective imagination. In his new book, Dickey smartly explores the lore woven into these topics, and along the way, he describes the way occult literature, pulp magazines, pop culture, and media myth-making influences and shapes our perception of th...
Aug 12, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Since the late '90s, Phil Elverum has remained at work on one of the strangest and most beautiful discographies in independent rock. As The Microphones, he created genre-defining records like 2001's The Glow Pt. 2 , which has been hailed by critics like Heather Phares, who praised its "kaleidoscopic sounds...pastoral folky ballads, playful symphonic pop, and gusts of white noise," and Elverum's "strangely hymnal lyrics." In 2003, he abandoned the name The Microphones and embarked upon a series o...
Aug 05, 2020•1 hr 8 min
This week on Transmissions, we’re joined by songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Jenn Wasner . She had planned on spending a fair amount of 2020 on the road playing guitar, keys, and singing with Bon Iver, but instead she’s spending it in a manner probably familiar to readers: watching TV and drinking coffee, thinking about the potential end of the world. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t kept busy: this week, her duo with Andy Stack, Wye Oak, releases its new EP No Horizon , a collabo...
Jul 29, 2020•1 hr 14 min
Lots of records evoke a place. But Mossy Kilcher’s 1977 lost folk gem Northwind Calling does more than that: it welcomes the listener into the spirit of her treasured place of origin, Alaska. Born to homesteading parents who’d fled Switzerland during World War II, Mossy was raised near Homer, Alaska, and her beguiling songs are filled with references to the land, paired with field recordings she made there. At 76, Mossy is experiencing a late career rediscovery following Tompkins Square Records ...
Jul 22, 2020•39 min
Our guest this week is Johnathan Ford of Unwed Sailor. For more than two decades, he’s led the post-rock band Unwed Sailor. In that time, Ford has steered the band—an ever-evolving collective that’s included members of Pedro the Lion, Fleet Foxes, Danielson Famile and more—through a searching string of albums, incorporating the influence of ambient music, shoegaze, new age, math rock, and drone into its body of work, which constitutes one of the great under-recognized discographies in all of ind...
Jul 15, 2020•50 min
Welcome back to another episode of Transmissions podcast, our weekly talk show. Our guest today is Don Bryant. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Bryant was one of the premier songwriters at Hi Records, where he wrote material for Al Green, O.V. Wright, Syl Johnson, and his wife, Ann Peebles. He released Precious Soul under his own name in 1969, but mostly kept behind the scenes, baring a few gospel records he released along the way, but in 2016, he returned to making records under his own name with Do...
Jul 08, 2020•41 min
Our guest this week: Joe Casey of Protomartyr. One of the most exciting rock bands of the last decade, the Detroit-based post punk band will release its fifth album, Ultimate Success Today via Domino Records July 17th. The word prophetic isn't a stretch. With its references to disease, institutional brutality, and gross inequality—symptoms of “a cosmic grief, beyond all comprehension”—the new record matches the apocalyptic mood of the US, and much of the world, in 2020. But it also speaks to the...
Jul 01, 2020•45 min
We're back. This week, we’re featuring Jesse Locke’s interview with Jack Cooper of Modern Nature. The band’s new mini-album, Annual , is the follow up to the band’s debut, 2019’s How to Live . Inspired by the group’s time on the road in support of that album, this new one demonstrates the way live performance and improvisation has informed Cooper’s continually more expansive approach to Modern Nature. Drifting, seasonal, and often focused on the subtle saxophone work of Jeff Tobias of Sunwatcher...
Jun 24, 2020•43 min
Welcome to another episode of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast, our weekly interview series. Our guest this week is Lisa E. Harris, whose new album with Nicole Mitchell is called EarthSeed . It was recorded live at Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago and features the Black Earth Ensemble—an all-star collection of Chicago improvisers and free jazz artists—backing up the two composers. Presented alongside a gallery of artist Cauleen Smith’s Human_3.o Reading List, EarthSeed w...
Jun 17, 2020•1 hr 9 min
