A sit down with bassist and composer Melvin Gibbs. Emerging from the fertile New York art scene of the early '80s where he played with Defunkt, Gibbs has brought grace and heaviness to work with Arto Lindsey, John Zorn, Caetano Veloso, Bill Frisell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Sonny Sharrock, and dozens more jazz luminaries, in rock bands like Rollins Band and Harriet Tubman, and on records by dead prez and David Byrne. His latest project is an EP, 4 + 1 equals 5 for May 25 . which reflects on the m...
Jul 28, 2021•1 hr 2 min
This week on Transmissions: Anika. Best known for her work with Geoff Barrow and Mexico City's Exploded View, she returns with Change , an album of subtle electronic pop, driving bass lines, and lyrics that veer from quixotic to inspiring. Anika joined us for a discussion about her time as a journalist, the shifting state of reality, and crafting an album amidst a global pandemic.
Jul 21, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Today on the show, Brazilian singer/songwriter Rodrigo Amarante joins us to discuss his new album, Drama . A lush and enveloping listen, it blends gentle pop with cinematic flourishes. Reflecting on the confines of masculinity, his artistic relationships with Noah Georgeson, Devendra Banhart, Little Joy, Los Hermanos, and much more, this conversation presents Amarante in a reflective, riffy, and casual mode. "Art is supposed to pull the rug, do something to you," Amarante says. Join us for a lit...
Jul 14, 2021•1 hr 7 min
It’s a bonus episode for you as we head into the weekend. Today on the show we're joined by Ripley Johnson of Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips, and most recently, Rose City Band. Reviewing the latter’s excellent Earth Trip , an album of rural psychedelia, Aquarium Drunkard’s Tyler Wilcox praised Johnson’s zoned out guitar work, noting that his guitar “solos are always on point, often drifting into Garcia-like zones without ever slipping into pointless idolatry. He’s developed into a guitarist who rarely ...
Jul 08, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Today on the program: Tom Scharpling of The Best Show and Double Threat. He’s written a deeply funny and moving new book called It Never Ends , available now wherever you get books. It documents his early days writing and producing a DIY fanzine, working his way into TV writing with Monk , and establishing a lifelong friendship and comedy partnership with drummer Jon Wurster. It’s also a candid look at his struggles with mental health, and while some moments are harrowing, it’s ultimately an ins...
Jul 07, 2021•1 hr 14 min
This week on Transmissions, a heady conversation with Carlos Niño about spontaneous composition, the influence of hip-hop culture, his radio roots, and his latest, More Energy Fields, Current . "...Frequently, I would say I'm doing some version of supercomputing, where I'm completely free in the moment and I'm also bookmarking sections I know I want to get back to." From his days at dublab to his partnerships with artists like Laraaji and Iasos and much more, we're glad to have Niño on....
Jun 29, 2021•1 hr 7 min
This week on the show, Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance. His new album is called The Veiled Sea , out this week via Three Lobed Records. Six Organs records can often sound very different from each other—think quiet acoustic sketches or long, blown out psych epics—but this one is a whole new thing entirely, with wild glam inspired solos over wild riffs—plus there’s a Faust cover. Chasny stopped by to discuss the new album, his work with Comets on Fire, his trio with Sir Richard Bishop and C...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Welcome to a special bonus episode of Transmissions. Our guest this episode is musician and writer Jeffrey Silverstein. His new EP of gently cosmic guitar music is called Torii Gates , and he's the head the wonderful It’s So Easy (When You Know What You’re Doing) , a tribute to the late cult folk musician Ted Lucas, featuring AD favorites like John Andrews & the Yawns, Julianna Barwick and William Tyler, Barry Walker Jr., Amelia Courthouse, and more. He’s also a teacher and a runner, and we ...
Jun 18, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Our guest this week on the show is singer/songwriter John Grant. You might know him from his work with Midlake, the Czars, Sinéad O'Connor or Hercules and Love Affair. His new album is called Boy From Michigan . It's produced by Cate Le Bon and fascinating, Blade Runner synths pulsing underneath incredible melodies and vocal performances. Grant joined Jason P. Woodbury for a freewheeling and candid talk, this week on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions.
Jun 16, 2021•1 hr 12 min
Our guest this week is Cécile Schott, who records under the name Colleen. Since the early 2000s, she's generated soulful electronic and ambient music, utilizing vintage synths, drum machines, music boxes, and acoustic instruments. Her latest is called The Tunnel and the Clearing . It was recorded in Barcelona during the lockdown and followed a long period of illness and heartbreak for Schott. The resulting album is indeed melancholy, but also hopeful and staggeringly beautiful. She joined us fro...
Jun 09, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Music is never incidental in a movie made by our guest this week: director, collage artist, and music maker Jim Jarmusch. Music is part of his films’ DNA, a through line running through his characters’ black comedy gags and existential wanderings. There’s no stylistic template—everything from crazed blues to ambient drones have soundtracked Jarmusch’s films—but the director ties songs together with an unmatched patience and style. The soundtrack to one of those motion pictures—2014’s vampire yar...
Jun 02, 2021•1 hr 11 min
Guitarist, songwriter, and producer Sarah Louise joins us this week on the show to discuss her new album, Earth Bow . Though Louise is known for her 12-string folks fantasias, her work is wide ranging, evoking the soundscapes of Robert Fripp and the interlocked rhythms of electronic pop. Reviewing the album for AD, Josh Moss writes that while "Louise is an incredibly gifted guitar player... Earth Bow de-centers the guitar, rendering it an integral part of a lush musical environment, as detailed ...
May 26, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Welcome back. Our guest this week on the show is Wadada Leo Smith, trumpeter, music theorist, and composer. Over his many years, he’s pioneered his own musical notation system, helped popularize and contextualize Miles Davis’s electric period, and has played with a wide set of collaborators including Bill Frisell, Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Anthony Braxton, and many more. In December, he’s turning 80, and TUM Records is celebrating with a year-long slate of releases. Up first, on M...
May 19, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Our guest this week is guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson. One of the founding fathers of British folk rock, he's the author of a new book, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice (1967-1975). It chronicles the early days of his band, Fairport Convention, the launch of his solo career, run-ins with Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, a lost jam session with Led Zeppelin, and his collaborations with Linda Thompson, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, John Martyn. He joins Jason P. Woodbury to discuss it a...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Our guest on the show this week is J Mascis. Along with Lou Barlow and drummer Murph, he formed Dinosaur Jr in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1984. After their original run, which ended acrimoniously in 1989, Mascis continued on with Dinosaur Jr, the Fog, and plenty of other wiggy and interesting side projects. But in 2005, the original Dino Jr. lineup returned with a genuine comeback classic, Beyond . Since then, they’ve reliably put out a great album every couple of years. Plenty of bands come back...
May 05, 2021•58 min
This week on Transmissions, we're digging into the Aquarium Drunkard vault for a 2016 conversation with the late New Age pioneer, composer, author and creator Joanna Brouk. An edited and condensed version of this conversation was published in 2016, but we are happy to present it here in its uncut form. Brouk passed away April 28th, 2017. Her remarkable recordings can be heard on Numero Group’s Hearing Music , a double lp set assembled by producer Douglas Mcgowan, who's known for his work on Ligh...
Apr 28, 2021•51 min
As we've noted here before , Durham-based songwriter al Riggs keeps very busy. Their new album is called I Got a Big Electric Fan to Keep Me Cool While I Sleep . Though they bounce around genre-wise, this LP is rooted in country rock traditions and it features contributions from cosmic pedal steel guitarist Chuck Johnson , Patrick Haggerty of Lavender Country , and others. Riggs joined us for a discursive chat, exploring their relationship with country music and, of course, Robert Altman's faile...
Apr 21, 2021•1 hr 14 min
This week on the show, Chicago’s Angel Bat Dawid. A composer, clarinetist, poet, and vocalist, she’s one of the shining stars of the International Anthem label, where she’s issued some incredible records like Live, with her band Tha Brotherhood, as well as the Oracle and the Transition East single. She also plays with other groups, like Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble—she’s featured prominently on their incredible new album, NOW, which blends free jazz and hypnotic R&B. Angel joined us t...
Apr 14, 2021•1 hr 12 min
Pino Palladino and Blake Mills are two of the most dynamic studio wizards in music and they join us this week on Transmissions to discuss Notes With Attachments , their Impulse! Records-released collaborative long-player. Backed by a set of LA studio heavyweights like saxophonist Sam Gendel, drummer Chris Dave, organist Larry Golding, and others. Known for their individual collaborations with artists like Bob Dylan, D'Angelo, The Who, Fiona Apple, and Brittany Howard, these two go completely une...
Apr 07, 2021•52 min
This week on the show, we're joined by poet and music journalist Noah C. Lekas and Ethan Miller of Howlin' Rain and Comets on Fire. They've got a new collaboration featured on Sounds From the Shadow Factory , a 10" record from Blind Owl: a rock & roll adaptation of "Saturday Night Sage," the poem from Lekas' recent book of the same name . The two joined us for a discussion about spoken word, their paths in psychedelia, blue collar mysticism, and the current state of the counterculture. Headi...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 34 min
Our guest this week on Transmissions is Martin Courtney of Real Estate. On March 26th, the long-running New Jersey group releases its new EP, Half a Human , which embraces the jammier side of the band and continues the stylistic explorations of 2020's The Main Thing . We discussed record stores, adjusting to life without live music, Twin Peaks , and Courtney's 2015 solo album Many Moons —and its forthcoming follow up. We hope you enjoy this conversation. If you do, consider sharing it with a fri...
Mar 24, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Description: Our guest this week on the show is Shahzad Ismaily, whose recorded with, well, he’s recorded with a lot of people, from Moses Sumney and Sam Amidon to Beth Orton , Martha Wainwright, Yoko Ono , Bonnie Prince Billy , Jolie Holland, and many, many more. With his buddies Ches Smith and Marc Ribot, he’s a member of the punk jazz outfit Ceramic Dog , and last year he released Visitations with Leo Abrahams on his own label, Figureight Records. We hope you enjoy this conversation. If you d...
Mar 17, 2021•1 hr 4 min
This week on Transmissions: Detroit’s own Warren Defever of Third Man Records and the experimental pop group His Name is Alive. Since the mid-80s, HNIA has released over a hundred records, EPs, and projects on labels like 4AD, Rykodisc, Time STEREO, and Unsung Hunger. Recently Warren has been exploring way back in the archives, sharing some of the work that caught the ear of Ivo-Watts Russell, who eventually signed His Name Is Alive in the ‘90s. A new boxset collects it all, A Silver Thread: Hom...
Mar 10, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Our guest this week is Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, the the Search for the Next American Music , and Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records . She's also a critic at the New Yorker. She joined us from her place in upstate New York to discuss balancing comfort listening and new sounds, Bob Dylan’s Christian era, Harry Smith, musical mysticism, and much more....
Mar 03, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Legendary music writer Peter Guralnick joins us this week on Transmissions. He's been writing about the blues, rock & roll, soul, and R&B since the late 1960s. His latest book is called Looking To Get Lost: Adventures in Music & Writing . It is a book about the creativity that fueled artists like Johnny Cash, Robert Johnson, Ray Charles, Dick Curless, and Howlin' Wolf, who Guralnick says viewed his music as an expression "not just of personal freedom but of personal difference ." He ...
Feb 24, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Northern California mysticism with Fletcher Tucker. His latest album of ritualistic folk music is called Unlit Trail . Like the previous, Cold Spring , it's a record that settles deep into the sacred nature of existence. It's an lp designed to welcome the listener "into a liminal state, beyond ordinary awareness," and into the unknown. Tucker joined us to discuss Star Trek, animism, family and the deep history of his instruments and home in Big Sur, California.
Feb 17, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Hope you're enjoying the new season of Aquarium Drunkard's Transmissions. Here's a good one from the archives, a favorite of Timothy Showalter of Strand of Oaks a roundtable talk with three lifers: Howe Gelb, Robyn Hitchcock, and Steve Wynn. The three share similar paths through scenes and the industry, their paths are shared but divergent, and there’s a spiritual unity at work even in their differences. With his band Giant Sand, Howe Gelb pens strange, dusty songs about love and the desert. Bot...
Feb 13, 2021•46 min
On her second lp, the newly released Urban Driftwood , Virginia-based guitarist Yasmin Williams creates expansive acoustic music. Playing guitar, kalimba, percussion, and kora, she pulls from disparate musical strands—including the smooth jazz she heard growing up—into music that feels spiritually connected to New Age music, Windham Hill guitar, and the work of contemporaries like Daniel Bachman (who calls her "a guitarist for a new century"), William Tyler, and Marisa Anderson, both whom she's ...
Feb 10, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Tamara Lindeman joins us this week on Transmissions for a conversation about Ignorance , her lush and sweeping new album as The Weather Station. Lindeman is the kind of songwriter who dares to write about big topics, like identity and global climate change, but the new album finds her exploring those concepts over deeply rhythmic jazz and pop-influenced compositions. It's out Friday, February 5 on Fat Possum Records. Lindeman joined us from her home in Ontario, to discuss the pandemic, the infor...
Feb 03, 2021•1 hr 7 min
This week we're happy to welcome Margo Price to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions for a talk about the music industry, her creative partnership with husband Jeremy Ivey, her online radio show, forays into the cannabis business, and her latest rock and seventies pop inspired lp, That's How Rumors Get Started . Bold and strident, it's a record that finds her blurring genres, like many of her country heroes, people like John Prine, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. Plus, she fills us in on some of ...
Jan 27, 2021•1 hr 6 min
