Transmissions

Hello and welcome back to season two of All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with your host Tyler Wilcox, a longtime Aquarium Drunkard contributor and Neil Young fanatic. We’re spending some time this spring traveling deep into the Shakey-verse, talking with some great artists about their favorite Neil Young songs. On a recent episode, Brigid Mae Power and Wilcox went deep into Neil’s classic lament “Albuquerque”—both agreeing Neil nailed the stark, lonesome vibe of the American southwest in that song. If you’re going to try to evoke those kinds of landscapes, you don’t need to use a lot of words, right? Right. But also … wrong?  A few years after Neil wrote “Albuquerque,” he found himself on a long road trip from Taos, New Mexico, back to the west coast. And as he rolled through the desert, he wrote “Thrasher.” In contrast to “Albuquerque,” the lyrics of this song are rich and poetic, as images of ancient rivers, timeless gorges, crystal canyons and dinosaurs in shrines all float before the listener’s eyes. “Thrasher” unfolds like a stoned, rapturous daydream as Neil muses on lost friendships, the specter of mortality, and of course, that great Grand Canyon Rescue episode. First appearing on Rust Never Sleeps in 1979, it’s one of Young’s most satisfying songs.  And here to talk with us about “Thrasher” is James Jackson Toth, a terrific songwriter whose career matches Neil in terms of eclectic, exploratory and highly personalized vibes. He’s been a man of many monikers over the years; there are records under his own name, there are records under the ever-morphing Wooden Wand designation; there’s DUNZA, there’s James and the Giants, there’s One Eleven Heavy and more. Whatever you end up checking out, you’re guaranteed to be transported to strange, funny and powerful places. Toth has carved out his own singular niche over the years; like Neil, you can’t put him in one particular box.  And that similarity is no accident! As we talk about in our “Thrasher” ramble, James has a tattoo that asks that all-important question: “What would Neil Young do?” Always a good thing to ponder, whether you’re writing a song or buying groceries.   So! Without further ado, here’s James Jackson Toth on All One Song. 

Neil Young's "Albuquerque." A Ditch Era classic, it was recorded with the Santa Monica Flyers in 1973 and released on 1975's Tonight's the Night. Like the Southwestern town its named for, "Albuquerque" is stark, beautiful, and lonesome—leaving in its wake melancholy and a craving for fried eggs and country ham. Joining us to discuss the various landscapes of "Albuquerque" is Brigid Mae Power. Since her debut a little over a decade ago, the Galway-based singer songwriter has built up a visionary and cosmic discography. Tune in as we explore the contours of yet another number in the ever-rolling "All One Song" saga.

Hello again! Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Last summer, we spent a couple months talking to some of our favorite musicians, writers, and artists about their favorite Neil Young songs … and it was so much fun that we’re doing it all over again with a bunch more great guests. Put on your Rust-o-Vision glasses, Neil freaks … we’re going deep into the Shakey-verse one more time.  Our guest today selected what is the newest Neil Young song—as of this recording—that has made it out into the world: “Big Crime.” This angry, brutal and unsparing attack on ICE, Trump and the MAGAsphere was debuted last summer on the US leg of Neil’s tour with the Chrome Hearts. And he’s played it at every one of his shows since. “Big Crime” pulls no punches. Last year, the long-running trio Yo La Tengo kicked off their epic eight-night Hanukkah run at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City with a blistering version of “Big Crime,” likely becoming the first band to cover it. So of course, we’re honored to have Yo La Tengo guitarist and vocalist Ira Kaplan on All One Song today to talk about this new Neil song.  Yo La Tengo — do they need an introduction? In our opinion, they are simply the best American rock band of the last four decades. Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew have built up a consistently wonderful body of work. Like Neil, it’s a career filled with twists and turns, side quests and sideways moves. But it’s all purely Yo La Tengo, whether they’re breaking your heart with hushed ballads or stretching out on feedback-fueled jams. Their latest album, 2023’s This Stupid World, is yet another masterpiece. And of course, they have a long history with Neil Young … the b-side of their second single was a sweet cover of “For The Turnstiles.” 

Transmissions is back with a special episode: Tyler Wilcox in conversation with underground music lifers Thurston Moore and Kramer. On May 1, the duo release their new album together, They Came Like Swallows - Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza, out on Ethan Miller’s Silver Current Records, and ahead of their appearance this week at Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville, Wilcox caught up with them to discuss the new collaboration, their storied history together, and that time the Butthole Surfers freaked out Alex Chilton. Speaking of Big Ears, Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions will be there too, with our Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions morning show livestream. Broadcasting March 27, 28, and 29 from Old City Java and Wild Love Bakery 9-11 AM EST, we'll be discussing highlights from the previous evening, acts we plan on catching that day, as well as drop-ins from special guests. We hope you will tune in via Instagram and YouTube in collaboration between Aquarium Drunkard, Big Ears, and Talkhouse.

This week’s conversation with Cochemea Gastelum brings our season to a close. The saxophonist and bandleader joins us to discuss his beautiful LP Ancestros Futuros, out now on Daptone Records. Mining his Indigenous roots, soul jazz, and funk, it's a fantastic album, and it completes a trilogy that began with 2019’s All My Relations, continued with 2021’s Baca Sewa, and now concludes.  Cochemea’s resume is lengthy. He worked extensively with the late soul singer Sharon Jones as part of her Dap Kings ensemble and has played with the Budos Band, Antibalas, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress, Archie Shepp, Public Enemy, the Roots, David Byrne, and more. Genre-hopping comes naturally to the San Diego-raised saxophonist, but the cultural conversation that occurs on these records is especially unique, and it was a pleasure to have him join us to discuss it.  Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

The '90s were a strange time. From Gregorian chants to swing bands, you never knew what would make it onto the radio. But some of the strangest groups to improbably infiltrate the mainstream came from the post-Grateful Dead jam band scene. Our guest today is Mike Ayers, author of ⁠Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene that Followed. ⁠ The book, an oral history, is really a blast. It covers all the big players of the era: Phish, Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, but Ayers takes it to the next level by expanding the definition of "jam band" to include Medeski, Martin and Wood, Greyboy and the acid jazz scene, New Orleans funk band Galactic, and John Zorn and the Knitting Factory downtown NYC scene, and much more. This episode, guest host (and Transmissions audio editor) Andrew Horton, Jason P. Woodbury, and Ayers sit down to hash out the era in which even Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo embraced their jammiest free improv tendencies. What are the limits of the whole "jam band" thing really? Come along with us as we dig into Sharing in the Groove. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, a return guest: Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate and solo fame. He last joined the show part of a trio: in 2018, we taped with him, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, and Robyn Hitchcock live at the KXCI studio at Hotel Congress in Tucson Arizona. That talk also made it into the Transmissions feed again in 2020.  This time, Steve is with us to discuss the 40th anniversary reissue of The Dream Syndicate’s second album, 1984’s Medicine Show, which has been reissued in expanded form by Fire Records. Produced by Blue Öyster Cult and Clash associate Sandy Pearlman, the album found the Syndicate jumping from the smaller Slash indie label to A&M. But it also found Wynn shifting his songwriting approach into darker territory, embracing a kind of pulp fiction, hardboiled crime aesthetic that paired well with the group’s rangy, intense sound, which had been amplified and solidified during the tours that followed the band’s debut,  1982’s The Days of Wine and Roses.  Wynn is a tremendous conversationalist, and this convo opened us up to plenty of fascinating terrain, from record store lore to interactions with bands like R.E.M. and U2, as well as lots of behind the scenes info on Medicine Show. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to Transmissions. This week: Steve Von Till, of sludge legends Neurosis, the tribal ambient spin-off Tribes of Neurot, solo albums under this own name, and the psych folk project Harvestman. He runs the independent label, Neurot Recordings. And as if all that isn’t enough, he’s also a poet, and an educator—when he’s not playing music, he’s bringing knowledge to the next generation, working as a fourth grade teacher in North Idaho. If you’ve been listening to Transmissions for awhile, you know that we’re hardly dogmatic when it comes to genres, but we don’t often feature artists who could be classified as metal. But that’s part of what makes Von Till such an interesting guest—his own music certainly qualifies as “heavy,” but it’s shot through with influences from very much within the AD canon: krautrock, ambient, folk, haunted country rock. His latest is a solo LP, the piano and synth drenched Alone in a World of Wounds. It is full of songs that, to hear Von Till put it, work as expressions of his soul, his heart, mind, his “earthly being and the whatever unearthly bits…connect with it all.” In addition to his work with Neurosis and Harvestman, this talk focuses in on the connection between humans and their natural surroundings, his work with the indigenous suicide prevention campaign Firekeeper Alliance, and some reflections on how his early punk days made him peers with Green Day and Operation Ivy—not often bands you hear mentioned in relation to Von Till. We are pleased to share this conversation as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, a time to reflect on our place in relation to each other and to the land itself. We hope you enjoy it. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

This week on Transmissions, Kate Pierson, vocalist and keyboardist of The B-52s. Writing about the legendary Atlanta band, AD founder Justin Gage says, “The B-52’s 1979 debut album ushered in a practically fully formed sound/band. No one else was doing this…whatever ‘this’ was.” Indeed, The B-52s created a one-of-a-kind sound, blending punk, funk, and art-pop, and while they broke into the mainstream with ubiquitous radio hits, they never sacrificed their avant-garde edge. This fall, the band embarked on a co-headlining tour with Devo—we recorded this talk just before they departed on the jaunt—and last week, Kate Pierson released a cover of Patti Smith’s “People Have The Power!” featuring the Uniting Voices Chicago teen choir. Benefiting the choir and the anti-gun violence organization Sandy Hook Promise, the recording reifies Pierson’s radical bonafides.  Pierson joins us for a loose chat about her life in art, solo projects, and the band’s longtime association with Devo. Along the way, we get into their status as queer icons and reflected on the passing of Julee Cruise, the Twin Peaks vocalist who also served as a member of The B-52s. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

This week, we present a conversation with writer, rock & roller, and esoteric scholar Gary Lachman, author of a new memoir, Touched By the Presence: From Blondie’s Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult. In it, Lachman charts his journey from a young New Jersey misfit immersed in comic books and paperback fiction to his days playing bass in Blondie as the band rose to stardom from the New York City punk underground. Blondie would go on to have a top-ten hit with his composition, “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear” penned about telepathic communication Lachman experienced with this then girlfriend, the film actress and rock writer Lisa Jane Persky.  From there, the book details his days with Iggy Pop, fronting his own band, The Know, and eventually, his immersion in consciousness studies and the occult, which has informed the dozens of books he’s written since, including The Return of Holy Russia, Maurice Nicoll: Forgotten Teacher of The Fourth Way, Dark Star Rising, and Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson, written about his mentor and primary esoteric inspiration.  Touched by the Presence is available now from Inner Traditions, and it was a treat to join Lachman to talk about the consciousness altering power of comic books, his time with Blondie and Iggy, and glean a little of his humor-filled and lowkey wisdom. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Though he departed this earthly realm in 1993, Afrofuturist and free jazz icon Sun Ra’s cosmic tones continue to echo through the spaceways. A composer, poet, and some might even say a prophet, Ra seemed to understand that his work would outlive him, staging:  “In some far off place, many light years in space, I’ll wait for you. Where human feet have never trod, where human eyes have never seen. I’ll build a world of abstract dreams and wait for you.”  This week on the show, we sit down with Sun Ra Arkestra guitarist DM Hotep, who, under the leadership of 101-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen, continues the work of Ra. When the Arkestra was called overseas in 2022, Allen was advised by doctors not to accompany the group. But music is a way of life and though he was required to stay stateside, Allen still wanted to play. So DM Hotep, aka David Middleton, reached out to the Philadelphia-based arts org Ars Nova Workshop to stage a series of concerts in Philadelphia. In May of 2025, a collection of these live performances from Solar Myth was released under the title Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons, which finds the saxophonist joined by Hotep and guests like Wolf Eyes, James Brandon Lewis, Yo La Tengo’s James McNew, and others. Including both Ra classics and new material, Ghost Horizons demonstrates how the currents of Ra’s philosophy and artistic ethic continue to the present day, pointing toward uncertain futures.  DM joined the Arkestra in 2000, meaning he didn’t play under Ra’s tutelage. Still, he provides keen insight into the Arkestra’s meta-mythic mission and cosmic scope. He joined us to discuss his tenure in the band, Ra’s ideas and concepts, his roots in funk and soul, and the driving force behind Ghost Horizons.  Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to Transmissions, a weekly interview podcast created and curated by Los Angeles online music magazine Aquarium Drunkard. This week on the show, host Jason P. Woodbury speaks with a living legend, and one of our all-time favorite vocalists and songsmiths: Emmylou Harris.  On November 7th, New West Records will re-release an expanded edition of her 1998 live album Spyboy, back in print after 27 years. Recorded in the wake 1995’s Wrecking Ball, an LP that redefined Harris for a whole new generation, Spyboy finds Harris and her band—Buddy Miller, Brady Blade and Daryl Johnson—on the road and stretching out into feverish new territory for the storied singer. Harris released her first album in 1970, and along the way, she’s collaborated with artists like country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and countless more. But as she settled into the ‘90s, she felt that country radio no longer made space for voices like hers—prompting a shift into a new direction with producer Daniel Lanois, who crafted a spectral, haunted sound for Wrecking Ball, placing her voice at the dreamy center. The resulting era introduced Harris to new ears—and we were thrilled to speak with her about it for this episode. Transmissions is created in partnership with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to Transmissions, a weekly podcast series from Aquarium Drunkard. This week on the show: Pam Grossman, host of The Witch Wave podcast and author of a new book, Magic Maker: The Enchanted Path to Creativity. This show, at its core, is about the relationship between magic and art. What do we mean by magic? Let’s turn to Grossman's book for a helpful take. She writes that magic is quote, “a way of shifting one’s entire mode of being in the direction of Creative Force and interacting with it…When magic is working properly, there is a feeling in the body of being activated. Power is raised. Ideas flow. Something outside of our egos is allowed entrance, and we respond to its visitation in kind.” We recently caught up with a jetlagged Grossman after she spoke at at the first ever Witch Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, making this one of the first podcasts in years that we've taped live and in person. So special thanks to Michael Krassner at Cibo for allowing us use of his space. We cover a lot of ground, from the work of visionary artists like Joanna Brouk and Laraaji to the witchy elements at play in the Fleetwood Mac discography, but most of all, we focus in on what happens when we get out our own way and let something flow through us. You might call it something else, but these days, we're calling it magic. Here's why, this week on Transmissions. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Subscribe to ⁠Fela Kuti: Fear No Man.⁠ In a world that’s on fire, what is the role of art? What can music actually…do? Can a song save a life? Change a law? Topple a president? Get you killed? In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad—creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton’s America—tells the story of one of the great political awakenings in music: how a classically trained 'colonial boy’ traveled to America, in search of Africa, only to return to Nigeria and transform his sound into a battering ram against the state—creating a new musical language of resistance called Afrobeat. For years, the world’s biggest stars made pilgrimages to Nigeria to experience Fela’s Shrine, the epicenter of his musical revolution. But when the mix of art and activism got too hot, the state pulled out its guns, and literally opened fire. Fela Kuti: Fear No Man is an uncategorizable mix of oral history, musicology, deep dive journalism, and cutting edge sound design that takes listeners deep inside Fela’s life, music, and legacy. Drawing from over 200 interviews with Fela Kuti’s family, friends, as well as scholars, activists, and luminaries like Burna Boy, Paul McCartney, Questlove, Santigold, and former President Barack Obama (just to name a few), Fela Kuti: Fear No Man journeys deep into the soul of Afrobeat to explore the transformative power of art and the role artists can play in this current moment of global unrest. An Audible Original presented by Audible and Higher Ground. Produced by Western Sound and Talkhouse. ©2025 Higher Ground, LLC (P)2025 Audible Originals, LLC.

This week on the show, the Portland-based group of Roman Norfleet, Harlan Silverman, and Kennedy Verrett, aka The Cosmic Tones Research Trio.  “Cosmic” is a term that has, thanks to critics and writers, become a little overused. Practically every indie rock band or country-based singer/songwriter with an effects pedal employs “cosmic” touches these days. But in the case of the Trio? Well, it’s actually earned. Inspired by the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, the experimental outer space jams of the Sun Ra Arkestra, and the spacious, meditative soundscapes of Laraaji, the Trio’s sound is one based in deep harmonic resonance and the idea that music can, in a very real sense, heal listeners. Your mileage may vary, of course, but listening to the deep and searching sounds of the group’s new self-titled album, out October 24 via Mississippi Records, we find ourselves contemplating notions of inner sound, of a kind of music that plays deep down, at the core of all there is.  In this conversation, we speak with the Tones about a variety of topics, including the influence of Sun Ra, the musings of Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan, whose book, The Mysticism of Sound and Music is a foundational text for the Trio, the group’s ecumenical approach to musical spirituality. “Cosmic” may be a loaded term these days, but as the Trio explains in this interview, we are each our own little cosmos; we hope the following conversation brings you into deeper engagement with the universal within you. It certainly did so for us. We’re brought to you by ⁠⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

This week on Transmissions, we’re toasting harvest season with John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of The Autumn Defense, who release their first album in a decade this week. It’s called Here and Nowhere, out October 10 on Yep Roc Records. You might know John and Pat from their work in Wilco; Stirratt is a founding member, and Sansone joined in 2004. But the duo’s work in the Autumn Defense stretches all the way back to 1999, when they formed the Laurel Canyon-style folk rock band in New Orleans.  Here and Nowhere features everything you like about the band; sterling vocals, beautiful ‘70s style orchestration, replete with shades of the baroque pop that Sansone plays on Baroque Down Palace, his radio show on WYXR. Think Todd Rundgren, Bread, Carole King, and even ELO at their most rustic. It’s a tender, funny, and warming record. We discuss the new record in the hour that follows, along with detours into other projects, some Wilco talk, and an extended reflection on the legacy of Big Star—a band that’s more than just influential to these two—as they actually play the Big Star catalog with drummer Jody Stephens live these days. Let's dive in with this all new episode of Tranmissions. We’re brought to you by ⁠Aquarium Drunkard⁠, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

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, and what earned it a spot on the Aquarium Drunkard mid-year review list, where we noted:  “Friendship’s second release for Merge Records is an unhurried, mostly quiet, slow burn of a record, sustained by Dan Wriggins’ delivery and vocal tone and the band’s splendid musical accompaniment that’s hard to keep off the stereo…[it] contains many immediate classics — “Betty Ford, “Free Association,” “Hollow Skulls,” “Love Vape,” “Resident Evil” — that are filled with lyrical gems that leave you conflicted as to which should get tattooed on your body. Breakout album alert!”  This week on the show, Wriggins joins us for a gentle ramble focused mostly on poetry, specifically, one of our shared favorite poets, the great James Tate. When Dan’s not putting out records with Friendship and under his own name, he writes poetry. His debut book of poems is called Prince of Grass, and was released in the summer of 2024. We get into it all, and more—this week on Transmissions. 

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, The Spur continues an unbroken streak of masterpieces for the Louisville-based artist.”  And, while Shelley, and her daughter and husband, Nathan Salsburg, who’s appeared on this show, have moved from Louisville to Michigan, that whole “unbroken streak of masterpieces” things continues with her new album, Real Warmth. Cut with producer Ben Whiteley, and guests like Doug Paisley and Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station, the new album is lively, rhythmic, and captivating, with intimate reflections paired alongside protest music of a sort.  She joins us here to discuss—plus, at the start of this one, we get a mini-check in from Nathan and their daughter. Cozy up for this reunion, you’re tuned into Transmissions.  If you dig this talk, please visit reader-supported Aquarium Drunkard for more. We’re supported by our subscribers and over on the site you can find 20 years worth of conversations, playlists, reviews, essays and more.

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 co-written by David Levithan, who you may know from works like Boy Meets Boy, Wide Awake, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, The Lover’s Dictionary, and others.  Taken together, the novel and the record represent a little bit of reality, and a little bit of fiction. Lekman really has worked as a wedding singer for most of his career—his first album, 2004’s When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog even features a song called "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)." But Songs For Other People’s Weddings is not about Lekman’s life per se—it’s about love and loss, heartbreak and hope, and ultimately, about the way music plays us through our lives.  We're so pleased to have Jens join me for this conversation. We discuss the new album, when weddings indicate to him a sense of if a couple is going to make it or not, his thoughtful blog, and what it was like to re-record some of his classics albums after sample clearances were unable to be obtained. Join in for this conversation about love, music, and art on Transmissions. If you dig this talk, please visit Aquarium Drunkard for more. We’re supported by our subscribers and over on the site you can find 20 years worth of conversations, playlists, reviews, essays and more. 

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Our guest this week is Marissa Nadler. Last month, she released her 10th album, New Radiations, via Sacred Bones Records.  Like much of her work, New Radiations exudes—like how we didn’t say “radiates” there?—a spooky, haunted feel. Following 2021’s full rock band outing The Path of the Clouds, the self-produced new album finds Nadler focusing on sparser, more solitary zones, her subtle finger-picking augmented by touches of electric guitar, pedal steel, organ, and synths by Milky Burgess and additional synths by longtime collaborator Randall Dunn.  “Psychic sensations (you know what you saw)/New radiations, have taken their toll on me,” Nadler sings on the title track, illuminating the strange darkness and fractured sense of reality that permeates the album.  In these songs, which feature spaceships, lonesome pilots, cosmic collisions, holograms, and references to Martin Scorsese, Nadler draws dark shapes into the light, creating a bewildering science fiction folk epic that’s as enticing as it is foreboding. This week, she joins us for a discussion about cinema, making art, working a day job, her connections to the world of heavy metal, and dish about her new forthcoming band. 

Welcome to the kick off of Transmissions' new season with your host, Jason P. Woodbury, after a wonderful summer mini-series from Tyler Wilcox, All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast. We first encountered this week’s guest, New Zealand songwriter, actor, and composer Bret McKenzie, as one half of the indie pop/comedy duo Flight of the Conchords in the mid-2000s. But did you know that before that, he was a member of one of New Zealand’s most popular reggae party bands? "Just for context, reggae music in New Zealand is kind of rock music in America or maybe even country," McKenzie says. "Outside Jamaica, New Zealand has the highest sales of Bob Marley records in the world. And it's the music you hear playing in the background when you're out." Since then, he’s gone onto composer for film and TV projects like The Simpsons, The Muppets, Spongebob Squarepants, and more, and in 2022, he released Songs Without Jokes via Sub Pop Records. Inspired by vintage Los Angeles pop, the record showcased McKenzie sans obvious jokes, but not without levity and good humor. His new album, Freak Out City came out on August 15. Bolstered by vintage electric piano and groovy and psychedelic touches, it finds McKenzie expanding his Nilsson-esque palette with touches of Steely Dan, JJ Cale, and Todd Rundgren. McKenzie joins us on Transmissions to discuss the rabbit holes of modern life, cutting the record with studio legends like Leland Sklar, the Conchords specific brand of comedy, and shares details about his proposed Emmet Otter reboot with Ed Helms. We’re brought to you by Aquarium Drunkard, an independent music media crew headed by Justin Gage. Over at Aquarium Drunkard, you’ll gain access to 20 years of music writing, playlist, essays, mixtapes, radio special, podcasts, videos and more.

Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. We’ve spent the summer talking with some great musicians and writers about the strange and wonderful Neil Young universe. And we’ve had a good time. But all good things must come to an end! After today’s episode, we are handing the keys back to Jason P. Woodbury, the host of Transmissions and editor of Aquarium Drunkard. — he’s got an incredible season of interviews coming your way as summer turns to fall. And hey, our final guest on All One Song is none other than Jason P. Woodbury! Jason is the guy who has been running a lot of the behind the scenes action for All One Song over the past couple months. Transmissions is a consistently fantastic listen, packed with insight, wit and wisdom. The fact that Jason juggles about 50 other cool projects, from his music as JPW to his expanding WASTOIDS empire, makes it even more impressive. We're already talking about more All One Song, but before that … we’ve got one more episode. All One Song has gone all over the place when it comes to Neil eras. But we haven’t delved too much into the 1980s. Jason is righting that wrong. He selected a tune from the generally un-loved 1987 LP with Crazy Horse, Life — “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks.” This aching ballad was played a lot in 1986 and 1987, briefly revived in the mid 1990s and then pretty much forgotten by its author. But maybe Neil will bring it back … just this past weekend, he just played “Long Walk Home” from Life for the first time since 1989 on his current North American tour. Anything can happen in Shakeyland!  Neil’s producer David Briggs called “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks” “a monster song—it should’ve been the ‘I Believe In You’ of the eighties for Crazy Horse—so pure, so simple. But they had no desire to make anything out of it, never played it good, never put anything special into it. It was a shame.” We’ll have to agree to disagree, David! Anyway, we use “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks” to drift back into a lot of different zones, from David Lynch to Michelob Lite. It’s always fun and provocative to chat with him. So without further ado, here’s Jason P. Woodbury on All One Song …  Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. All summer long, we’re talking to some of our favorite musicians and writers about their favorite Neil Young song. Or at least one of their favorite Neil Young songs. This week, our All One Song guest is Ethan Miller. Ethan has been a longtime fixture in the underground, first coming to my attention back in the early aughts as the co-founder of the psych noise pioneers Comets on Fire. But Ethan is nothing if not prolific — he’s played with an array of awesome bands over the years, from Howlin Rain to Feral Ohms to Odyssey Cult. Ethan was also one-fourth of Heron Oblivion with our previous guests Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley … and he’s one-third of the Orcutt Shelley Miller trio, with another previous guest Steve Shelley. It’s all a rich tapestry, right? At least when it comes to Neil Young. The upcoming — and totally amazing — Orcutt Shelley Miller record is being released on Ethan’s own label Silver Current, which is one the most reliable purveyors of sweet sounds both new and old. In recent years, Silver Current has brought us excellent, bootleg-styled archival hauls from Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500 and Earthless, alongside fresh tunes from Magic Fig, Julie Beth Napolin, Growing and many more. Suffice it to say, the Silver Current insignia is a true trademark of quality. For his All One Song appearance, Ethan selected a terrific mid-90s deep cut — “Music Arcade.” This ghostly solo acoustic number showed up on the otherwise Crazy Horse-fueled Broken Arrow in 1996. It’s an enigmatic meditation on loneliness that doesn’t offer the listener any easy answers, like a comet in the sky. Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

This week’s All One Song guest is the definition of a multi-hyphenate — your friend and ours, Jesse Jarnow. Jesse is an incredible writer, having penned such essential books as Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock, Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America,  Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the American Soul, and the forthcoming epic, The Invisible Hit Parade: A People’s History of Recorded Music. You’re probably going to recognize Jesse’s voice. He’s a longtime DJ over at WFMU, the world’s greatest free-form independent radio station, hosting the Frow Show every Tuesday night, bringing strange and wonderful sounds to the masses. He’s also a podcaster, writing and co-producing the amazing Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, which recently kicked off its 12th season. The Deadcast’s depth of research, insight and sweet vibes puts pretty much every other podcast to shame—including this one. Finally, Jesse is one-third of Sloppy Heads, a long-running Brooklyn-based band with two excellent albums, Useless Smile and Sometimes Just One Second under their belt. Now that we’ve gotten Jesse’s bona fides out of the way … which Neil Young song did he select to talk about with us on All One Song? Well, Jesse dug way down in the rust bucket for “Sedan Delivery,” a raucous number that first appeared on the classic 1979 Crazy Horse LP Rust Never Sleeps.  “Sedan Delivery”’s history stretches back several years, though — Neil and the Horse first tried it out during the Zuma sessions in 1975, giving it a somewhat lumbering lope. You can hear that version these days on Chrome Dreams. But with the subsequent dawning of punk, Neil and the crew injected this weird, semi-sci-fi with a dose of pure, demonic energy. Though it was hard to find in setlists for a little while there, by the mid-'90s, it became a mainstay in Crazy Horse’s live repertoire, giving the band a chance to gleefully drive 90 miles an hour down a dead-end street. Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week is going to be slightly different. This week, we’re talking about a song that was not written by Neil Young. Nevertheless, it’s a song that is very much a part of the Shakey multiverse: Danny Whitten’s “I Don’t Want To Talk About It,” which appeared on Crazy Horse’s debut LP in 1970. Danny Whitten, of course, was one of Neil’s key collaborators and musical soul mates before his untimely death in late 1972. A little while later that decade, Rod Stewart took “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” to the top of the charts. But it’s Whitten’s version that remains definitive. Here to guide us through the impossibly lonesome landscapes of “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” is singer-songwriter Rosali Middleman—or just Rosali if you prefer. She’s been a longtime fixture over at Aquarium Drunkard. But even though we've loved pretty much everything she’s done, she somehow seems to get better with each new album. Her latest release, Bite Down on Merge Records, may well be her best effort yet. And that’s saying something! It’s packed with exceptionally well-crafted songs that feel as if you’ve known them your whole life. An instant classic, as they say.   Bite Down is Rosali’s second album with the Omaha-based Mowed Sound, which features David Nance, James Schroeder and Kevin Donahue. As we speak here in August 2025, Rosali and Mowed Sound are touring the USA, and I strongly encourage you to go see them. They’re a terrific live act … and there are definitely plenty of Crazy Horse vibes, as we discuss. Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast. We’re spending the summer talking to some great musicians and writers about their one favorite Neil Young song. Or at least one of their favorite songs. Last week, our guest was Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth — and of course, the conversation went deep into Steve’s memories of Sonic Youth’s tour with Neil and Crazy Horse in 1991, when both bands were bringing incredible waves of feedback to the masses across North America. An exciting time! For Neil, the tour resulted in a fairly traditional live album, the classic double-disc Weld. But that wasn’t all. Inspired partly by what he heard Sonic Youth doing, Young also put together Arc, one of — if not the — most avant-garde pieces of music Young has ever created. Basically, it’s a 35-minute noise collage consisting of the elongated and improvised endings of various songs that he and the Horse played in early 91. It’s the sound of amplifiers pushed to their limits, of things falling apart in ragged, glorious fashion. It’s an expressway to yr skull, as Sonic Youth put it. Here this week to examine the mysteries and magic of Arc is Ilyas Ahmed. The Portland, OR-based musician has been making consistently fascinating music for well over two decades now, whether all on his own or in close collaboration with fellow travelers like Grouper, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Golden Retriever, Dania Shihab and many more. He also serves as guitarist in Grails, an awesomely uncategorizable collective that just put out one of the 2025’s best records — the appropriately named Miracle Music. No matter what Ilyas does, it’s always infused with a sense of curiosity, adventure and imagination. Our conversation about Arc goes in a bunch of different directions — it’s a rich text, as the academics like to say. So let’s get into it … Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to ⁠All One Song⁠, A Neil Young Podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard. We’re spending the summer talking to a few of our favorite artists and writers about their favorite Neil Young song. This week, we’ve got someone very special: Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth. Steve spent about 25 years behind the drum kit for Sonic Youth as the band radically redefined and reimagined rock and roll. He’s easily one of the greatest drummers of the past four decades, as heard on such classics as Sister, Daydream Nation, Washing Machine, Murray Street, and beyond. His style is explosive, sensitive and always imaginative. Steve is so much fun to listen to, in pretty much any context.   Since Sonic Youth called it quits, Steve has kept incredibly busy, not only managing the ever-expanding SY archives, but also playing with his former bandmates Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, Can vocalist Malcolm Mooney, Bush Tetras, Tape Hiss and the forthcoming Orcutt / Shelley / Miller LP coming out on Silver Current Records later this year. We've heard this one already and it is absolutely fantastic. Steve also currently is handling drumming duties for the killer Winged Wheel. For those of you seeing Neil at Bethel Woods in upstate New York on August 24 this year, be sure to get there a little early. Winged Wheel will be warming things up on a separate stage, which is sure to be amazing. Now, the topic has already come up in previous episodes — Sonic Youth’s early 1991 tour with Neil Young & Crazy Horse, which saw both bands bringing their ear-shredding, feedback-laced sound to arenas across North America. Steve goes deep into that never-to-be-repeated moment in time plenty over the course of our discussion. But we also talk plenty about Steve’s All One Song selection, "Vampire Blues." A song that just so happens to have inspired the name of Steve’s record label, too. "Vampire Blues" was released in the summer of 1974 on the classic Ditch LP On The Beach. A seedy, bluesy shuffle, it seems to be sung from the point of view of an oil tycoon of some sort; though it doesn’t really sound like it at first, this is one of Neil’s ecological songs. He barely ever played it live at first, but he’s revived it in the past decade or so; it showed up most recently in solo electric guise on the Coastal soundtrack. Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to All One Song, A Neil Young Podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard. We’re spending the summer talking to a few of our favorite artists and writers about their favorite Neil Young song.  This week, you’re getting two fantastic guests for the price of one: Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley. Meg first came to my attention thanks to her work with the innovative Philadelphia psych-folk collective Espers, and since then she’s created a pretty much flawless solo career — her most recent record, 2023’s Furling, is a perfect showcase for her pristine guitar work and beautiful vocals. Charlie Saufley co-produced that record with Meg and the duo also played in Heron Oblivion with Ethan Miller and Noel Von Harmonson — a group that only managed one studio record during their existence, but that’s ok. That one studio record was awesome. Charley also played in the Bay Area psychedelic rock group Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound; he’s a killer guitarist, and — like Meg — is a serious Neil head. That last fact should be apparent in the tune Meg and Charlie selected for their All One Song appearance: “Interstate.” This brilliantly moody number is a strong candidate for the best Neil Young song that barely anyone knows about. Though you probably know about it if you’re here. Neil debuted “Interstate” onstage in 1985 with the International Harvesters. But like so many of his strongest songs during that era, it was set aside for reasons that only Shakey can fathom. A few years later, producer David Briggs convinced him to cut the song with Crazy Horse during the Ragged Glory sessions. It’s an incredibly haunting performance, with skeletal acoustic guitars and high, lonesome Horse harmonies. But Neil still wasn’t feeling it —we guess “Farmer John” needed to be heard! Finally in 1996, that Ragged Glory performance was released on the Big Time CD single and as a vinyl only bonus track on Broken Arrow. These days, you can get it on the recent “Smell The Horse” edition of Ragged Glory. So yeah, it's a long, twisted story, as is the case with a lot of things in the Neil Young world. But “Interstate” deserves a place in the pantheon of Neil classics, regardless of its relative obscurity. It’s this kind of song that turns a casual fan into, well, an obsessive, promising that there’s always more buried treasure lurking in the Shakey archives. Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠⁠Qobuz⁠⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to All One Song, A Neil Young Podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. We're spending the summer talking to a few of our favorite artists and writers about their favorite Neil Young song.  Our guest this week is Jeff Parker, best known as the guitarist for the long-running Chicago post-rock group Tortoise. Jeff  has been on a serious hot streak of late. He’s released awesome, entirely solo records like Slight Freedom and Forfolks, along with great albums with the New Breed. He’s collabed with heavy hitters like Daniel Villareal and Makaya McKraven. He’s been an invaluable part of the Big Ego label’s session player roster, contributing to great records by Psychic Temple, Dave Easley and Maria Elena Silva. And Jeff is the leader of one of the most exciting improv groups working today — the ETA quartet, featuring Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson. Their second LP, The Way Out of Easy, was one of the very best records of 2024. Oh and did we mention that there’s a brand new Tortoise album on the way later this year? Jeff is a busy dude, to say the least. Now Jeff might not seem like the most obvious All One Song guest — his and Neil’s styles feel miles apart. At least at first! But as we get into in our conversation, Jeff has found some serious inspiration in Young’s unique approach to the acoustic guitar. And the acoustic guitar is central to the song he selected to talk about: “The Needle and the Damage Done.” This haunting solo number from 1972’s Harvest remains one of Neil’s signature tunes. It’s a song that even the most casual of fans knows by heart. But Jeff’s perspective on this warhorse opened it back up — and hopefully it’ll do the same for you.  Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠Qobuz⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠Qobuz⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

We hope you enjoyed the first episodes of Tyler Wilcox’s All One Song series, but we're back with, well, something different: it’s a bonus Transmissions conversation between Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury and musician, writer, and podcaster Stephen Coates, host of the Bureau of Lost Culture. This episode also appears today in the Bureau of Lost Culture feed and I can’t recommend checking that show out enough if you haven’t already. Dedicated to counter cultural explorations, the show has covered everything: Stonehenge, club culture, Victorian freak shows, mushrooms, ska, the Beats, teddy boys (and teddy girls) and much more. One of my favorite episodes—and one that spurred this conversation—features esoteric author Gary Lachman in conversation with the great writer and magician Alan Moore—though usually, it’s Stephen who steers the conversations along, quite masterfully, as he does here.  We recorded this a few months back, and we're excited to share it with you to tide you over ahead of next week’s brand new installment of All One Song, so without delay, let’s get it into it. All music in this episode by Prairiewolf. Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠Qobuz⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠Qobuz⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome back to All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast, presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. You may have noticed our awesome theme music. No, you’re not hearing some unreleased Neil Young and Crazy Horse rehearsal. You’re hearing Coca Leaves and Pearls, the Philadelphia-based Neil tribute band fronted by guitarist Chris Forsyth and featuring John Murray (guitar), Jordan Burgis (bass), and Joey Sullivan (drums). They’ve been playing primarily Ditch-era Neil tunes at various clubs around the northeast for the past few years, bringing a very Horse-y vibe to the chosen few (you can check out a tasty recording via Archive.org). They’re incredible—and Coca Leaves and Pearls was kind of enough to record some killer theme music for All One Song at Jeff Zeigler’s Uniform Studios. Now, Chris Forsyth is much more than just the leader of a great Neil Young tribute band, of course. Much more! For more than a decade, he’s been one of our favorite guitarists, blending Richard Thompson with Tom Verlaine, Robert Quine with John McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock with … well, Neil Young. His albums with the Solar Motel Band are modern day classics, and his recent work with the Basic trio has been insanely good. Chris is an extremely tasteful player, but he’s also willing to stretch beyond the barriers of tastefulness into the sublime. For his All One Song appearance, Chris selected “Lookout Joe,” which first appeared on Tonight’s the Night just about 50 years ago in the summer of 1975. It’s a darkly humorous tune that has all the hallmarks of Neil’s Ditch era—that seedy swagger, a druggy vibe, Ben Keith’s wild pedal steel and backing vocals, and some dangerous guitar work. “Lookout Joe” was recorded with the Stray Gators in late 1972 at Neil’s northern California barn, but it’s a million miles away from the country rock gloss of Harvest. As we get into in our conversation, “Lookout Joe” sees Neil taking on the changing and challenging times of the 1970s. A weird, dark era! It’s a deep cut, but it’s a deep cut that’s very much worth getting into.  Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? ⁠Qobuz⁠ is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give ⁠Qobuz⁠ a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

Welcome to the very first episode of All One Song: A Neil Young podcast, presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Join liner notes author, musician, and Shakey historian Tyler Wilcox and an array of great musicians and writers discussing their favorite Neil Young song, diving deep into Shakey lore and getting personal about this amazing body of work. It’s a series for Neil heads by Neil heads. Our first guest on All One Song should need no introduction for long time Aquarium Drunkard readers. But let’s give him one anyway! For the past 15 years or so, Steve Gunn has built up one of the strongest, most wide-ranging catalogs in independent music. He’s released classic albums on such labels as Three Lobed, Paradise of Bachelors, Matador and more. Steve is a singer-songwriter-guitarist triple threat with a powerful sense of adventure and imagination that’s always worth paying attention to, whether he’s collaborating with drummer John Truscinski in the Gunn-Truscinski Duo, creating beautiful soundscapes with David Moore, or playing all on his own. Steve’s latest album, Music For Writers, falls into the latter category. Coming out on August 15 on Three Lobed, this is his first completely solo instrumental record — he played all the instruments, building luminous, hypnotic pieces that encourage the listener to slow down and really listen. The songs here aren’t just ambient background sounds. They’re sonic meditations that take you to some other place.   The solo aspect of Music For Writers dovetails nicely with the Neil Young song that Steve chose for us to discuss: “Will To Love.” This is a unique one in Neil’s catalog and a song that’s prized by die-hard Shakey fans. Accompanied only by a crackling fire, Neil recorded the basic track at his ranch in the spring of 1976, somewhere in between his European tour with Crazy Horse and the ill-fated Stills-Young Band trip that summer. Then he put it aside, for a few months, only returning to it in December of 76, when he went into Indigo Studios in Malibu to overdub vocals, keyboards, guitars, drums, even vibes, aided and abetted by producer David Briggs. By the time it was released on American Stars n Bars in 1977, “Will To Love” was a ghostly, seven-minute piece of music that’s unlike almost anything else he’d done before or anything he’s done since. Let's dive in. Looking for a digital music platform that feels more like a record shop? Qobuz is the high quality music streaming & download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, offering unique editorial, exclusive artist interviews, expertly curated playlists, liner notes, and more. With Qobuz Club, subscribers can connect and share music discoveries with a community of fellow music lovers. And for those who like to own their music, the Qobuz Download Store lets you browse and download albums in Hi-Res and CD quality. Give Qobuz a try now with an extended 30-day free trial.

All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast is coming this summer from the people who bring you Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. In this deep dive audio experience, liner notes author, musician, and Shakey historian Tyler Wilcox (Pitchfork, Uncut, host of Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard’s Doom and Gloom from the Tomb on dublab) invites musicians/artists/writers to discuss…one single song by Neil Young. Join guests like Steve Gunn, Jeff Parker, Ilyas Ahmed, Meg Baird, Rosali, Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, author Jesse Jarnow, Ethan Miller (Howlin’ Rain, Comets on Fire), Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury, and Chris Forsyth, whose Coca Leaves and Pearls musical combo provide the show with original Young-inspired music.  “With this show, Tyler explores Neil’s work in ways that feel revelatory, as if each song is indeed just coming into existence. That’s what Young’s best music does— communicate the freshness of a single musical moment distilled down to its rawest form. With this show, Wilcox offers a glimpse into the history and lore with sensitivity and care.” —Jason P. Woodbury, host of Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions  Sponsored exclusively by hi-fi streaming service ⁠Qobuz,⁠ All One Song episodes will explore Shakey lore, lyrics, chords, gear, etc, offering historical context and context personal to each guest.  Like Neil famously decreed, “It’s all one song.” This summer, Tyler Wilcox takes you deep into that song with All One Song: A Neil Young Podcast from Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, coming June 25th in the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions feed. Listen wherever you get podcasts via the ⁠Talkhouse Podcast Network.⁠ 

We close out the 10th season of Transmissions with a special look under the hood with Justin Gage, who founded Aquarium Drunkard 20 years ago in 2005. Initially envisioned as just a place to share cultural recommendations with friends, Aquarium Drunkard blew up as the blog rush began. Suddenly, Gage found himself running a respected media outlet. 20 years later, he joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss how Aquarium Drunkard has stayed true to the maxim of only the good shit. In this frank back and forth, the two colleagues share how an ethos that puts music and deep engagement with it at the forefront feels like a counter-cultural endeavour in this day and age, and how they’ve managed to keep in touch with the love of art that initially inspired Aquarium Drunkard. 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 the show, something different: an extra-sized Transmission that’s been locked in the vault for years, a two-hour talk with singer/songwriter Damien Jurado.  Way back in 2022, host Jason P. Woodbury sat down with Jurado in the recording studio at Gold-Diggers in Los Angeles for a career spanning conversation, exploring the stories behind his oracular visions, his history, and his collaborators, including the late Richard Swift. The idea was that perhaps the talk would be chopped up for a mini-series, but the project never materialized—and instead this revealing talk was locked away on a hard drive, that is until now, as the time has come to share it via Transmissions. Woodbury been listening to Jurado’s music for about 25 years; first encountering his 2000 Sub Pop release Ghost of David, a haunted album of lo-fi folk songs. Years later, Jurado’s sound bloomed into psychedelia when he began collaborating with the late Richard Swift for 2010’s Saint Bartlett, which was followed by the Maraqopa Trilogy, a series of psychedelic epics. Jurado has been on a tear since—sharing a string of self-produced recordings that include 2021’s The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, 2022’s Reggae Film Star, and three albums in 2023, Sometimes You Hurt the Ones You Hate, Motorcycle Madness, and Passing The Giraffes. Recently, he’s expanded the view of these albums with a series of demo collections shared also by his own label, Maraqopa Records.   Jurado’s songs are worlds meant to be lived in, full of strange characters in dream states, caught between the static on flickering TV channels, and with this episode, the penultimate, which is a fancy word for “second to last” of our 10th season, we explore those worlds with the man himself. 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.

On the cover of Deerhoof’s new album, Noble and Godlike in Ruin, is an image of the band’s lineup—Satomi Matsuzaki, Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, and Greg Saunier—collaged together into one strange visage. Given that the album’s title is drawn directly from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this cobbled together assemblage makes sense, but it also doubles as a handy metaphor for Deerhoof’s identity as a band. Together, they equal more than the sum of their parts; working together in radical co-operation, they become  one art rock organism.  By the time most bands reach their third decade, they’ve settled into a groove, but Deerhoof seems custom built to resist static stasis or aesthetic complacency. Noble and Godlike in Ruin pulls from free jazz, prog rock, noise, and j-pop, resulting in a sound that is at once recognizable as Deerhoof, but nonetheless surprising, even to the band’s members themselves. Focusing in on sci-fi futurism and some of the most directly political songs of the band’s vast discography, it’s a triumphant work that illustrates what makes Deerhoof one of the most fascinating bands in all of indie rock.  This week on the show, Satomi Matsuzaki and Greg Saunier join Jason P. Woodbury for a winding discussion about the new album, the current political moment, haute cuisine, the function of art, and at the very end—some Star Trek discussion. 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.

Do you ever connect with an old friend and find that, despite however many years it's been, you pick up right where you left off, as if no time has passed at all? That’s sort of what happened between today’s guest, Dean Wareham and producer Kramer in the making of Dean’s new album, That’s the Price of Loving Me. You know Dean from his work with Luna and Dean and Britta, his duo with his wife Britta Phillips, but when Kramer and Dean last teamed up, it was for the recording of Dean’s old band Galaxie 500’s final album, 1990’s This Is Our Music.  Intro-ing his own interview with Dean for Aquarium Drunkard, writer Tyler Wilcox says, “All these decades later, Kramer’s skill for elegant arrangements (not to mention his keyboard skills) bring something special to the proceedings, giving Dean’s musings on politics, friendship, mortality, Gibson guitars and airborne toxic events a sparkling backdrop.” This week on Transmissions, Dean joins us for a spirited discussion about the new album, movie matinees, guitars, his work with director Noah Baumbach, the influence of Lou Reed—and Dean’s experiences meeting him—and what happens when you, what happens when you embrace the magic of the un-intended.  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 the show, the great Yuka Honda. She’s a New York musician. In the 1990s, she emerged from the fertile New York music underground with Cibo Matto alongside groups like the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, and Luscious Jackson. She’s collaborated with an extensive roster of musicians, including John Zorn,David Byrne, Yoko Ono, Sean Ono Lennon, and her husband, guitarist Nels Cline.  Earlier this year, we taped the conversation you’re about to hear. Some of it ran as text in the Across the Horizon zine that was available at Big Ears Music Fest. What is Across the Horizon? Well, it’s a collaborative series from Bob Holmes of Suss and Northern Spy Records gathering together like-minded artists drawn “from the wide landscape of instrumental music” (including Luke Schneider, Marisa Anderson, William Tyler and more) to curate a series of digital releases that will culminate in a double LP compilation of stellar sonic explorations on August 13th.  Under her Eucademix banner, Yuka has explored experimental electronics via two semi recent Farm Psychedelia EPs and her Across The Horizon contribution “A Long Slow Blink Before The Answer.”  In this conversation, we get into food, art, language, and much more. 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, a return appearance from William Tyler. As a guitarist and sideman, William has worked with the Silver Jews, Lambchop, and other forward leaning acts, balancing a deep understanding of tradition with experimental energy. His own records have found him drifting from Takoma School style finger picking to a zone that hovers in-between krautrock and country; in recent years, he’s expanded even further, with incredible beat driven collaborations with Four Tet and the fried psychedelia of his full band Secret Stratosphere project.  His latest work is called Time Indefinite, out this week via Psychic Hotline. It’s a strange and meditative record, and it’s a new high water mark for Tyler. On this episode of the show, we toss out the script in favor of following Tyler’s thoughts; like the indefinite time his new album references, linearity isn’t always the focus in this talk. And while we touch on more than a few heavy topics, including addiction, climate change, and the sad state of satirical art, this one is an entry in our "hangout episodes" series, the DAW rolling along just for good measure.  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.

That's right, we've got The Dude hisself: Jeff Bridges. This week on Transmissions, he joins us to discuss his new archival record, Slow Magic, 1977-1978. Listening to the record sounds like eavesdropping on the coolest Hollywood party you’ve never been invited to: Bridges and co. sound like they are blowing off steam more than making a proper record, their wild music sound, as Bridges’ frequent musical collaborator Keefus Ciancia put it, “like The Band playing at CBGB With The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” There are members of Oingo Boingo on hand, and Burgess Meredith delivering some bewildering and beautiful spoken word. Sourced from an old cassette tape, it was released on Record Store Day by our friends at Light in the Attic, featuring a great set of liner notes by the fantastic writer Sam Sweet, and it’s a blast.  Film, music, art, Buddhism—in this conversation, we cover it all and get into some fascinating countercultural tangents, touching on Buckminster Fuller, John Lilly, Ram Dass, Captain Beefheart, and more. It’s a fascinating talk and Slow Magic is a tremendous listen, so press play and abide. 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, a return guest, the great comedian, writer, actor, and podcaster Joe Pera. Joe first appeared here on Transmissions in 2020 alongside his friend and collaborator James Wallace aka Skyway Man, and we've wanted to have him back ever since. This talk is a blast, covering everything from the beauty of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport to representations of Catholicism in science fiction to Joe’s experience seeing the late Mitch Hedberg live. Pera’s TV show, Joe Pera Talks With You, ran for three seasons on Adult Swim between 2018-2021. Quiet and restrained but deeply funny, the show’s gentle slice of life stories and meditative pace made it an utterly unique project. Joe’s latest work includes the 2023 stand up special Slow and Steady and Drifting Off With Joe Pera, a podcast designed specifically to help lull listeners to sleep. In addition to standard episodes covering topics like pre-bedtime drinks, wind, New York City ghosts, and soup, there are extended 8-hour versions of episodes as well, allowing for maximum slumbertime engagement. Close your eyes and settle in: here’s an episode of Transmissions you might be able to doze off to.  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 and we’re going to start this week’s show with a reading from Jennifer Kelly’s review of the new Mekons album, Horror.  “Things are very bad, but then again, they always have been. That’s Horror’s argument in a nutshell, the 26th album from the legendary Mekons, a Leeds-born gaggle of instigators of punk rock anarchists that has been doing business for half a century now. It’s a bracing thesis, enough to make you pull the covers off your head and stop moaning for a minute, because however insane and stupid and evil life becomes, it’s oddly comforting to think that it’s been this way for centuries...Though exacting and sometimes specific, [Horror] runs absolutely free of footnotes. Instead, its tales of ambition, colonialism, murder and pillage come wrapped in a bumptious swagger of rock ‘n roll noise—dipping into dub, country, punk, new wave and desolate torch singing to make its point." This week on the show, Jon Langford and Sally Timms of Mekons. They join us for one of the most directly political talks we’ve taped here for this show, as well as how current events shaped Horror, the gee-whiz space race imagination of America in the mid century, Judge Dredd, and much more. 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. 

Call it “brain fog,” call it “attention economy burnout,” call it the dregs of late capitalism: however you label it, Tamara Lindeman has been feeling it. With “Neon Signs,” our favorite song from her 2025 album as The Weather Station, Humanhood—out now on Fat Possum Records—she gives names and shapes to the sense of dread so many of us feel permeating our daily existence.  “I’ve gotten used to feeling like I’m crazy—or just lazy,” she sings in her signature flinty voice at the start of the song, articulating the ennui of being stuck in a cosmic rut. Unending conflict, climate anxiety, and the always-on buzz of the internet—all of it has rendered so many of us inert. But the pulsing piano, swirling flutes and strings, and insistent beat do powerful work here, adding forward motion to Lindeman’s existential angst. A protest song of a stripe, “Neon Signs” feels like a spiritual update of The Who’s “We Don’t Get Fooled Again”—a cautionary tale wrapped up in defiance. Untangling the politics of want and need, of trust and fear, of lust and genuine connection, Lindeman wanders a glittering landscape in which every flashing light demands notice and every notification could single doom. Is cutting through all that noise possible? “Neon Signs” doesn’t make it clear, but Lindeman tips her hand in favor of the possibility of human flourishing in spite of it all—if only we can get honest with ourselves: “I swear to god I saw real love once/But nothing needs you so badly as a lie, so lonely, drifting, unmoored from real life/if nobody believes it all it can do is die.” This week on Transmissions, she joins host Jason Woodbury to discuss Humanhood—the album, sure, but also the concept of what makes us human. We're so pleased to share this talk with you.

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. 

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. 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, 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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

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. 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, 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. 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, 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

Sometimes, background music moves to the foreground. That’s the case with today’s guests, guitarist Zac Sokolow, bassist Jake Faulkner, and drummer Nicholas Baker. Together, they form LA LOM, short for the Los Angeles League of Musicians. In 2019, they were hired to bring suitably vibey music to the lobby of the historic Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Employing a rotating cast of guest players, they filled the air with twangy cumbias, boleros, chicha, and reverberating Bakersfield-style twang. Eventually people began taking notice, as vivid performances clips began to go viral.  On this week’s all new episode of Transmissions, the trio joins us to discuss their self-titled debut album. Though La Lom first came to prominence for its covers, the new outing presents all original material, which ranges from Latin shuffles to cinematic noir soundscapes and soulful ballads. Released by legendary jazz label Verve, it represents the start of a new chapter for La Lom. Fresh off the road from opening for Vampire Weekend, Zac, Jake, and Nicholas join us for a conversation about the music past and present, the allure of late night radio, covering Selena, and so much more. 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. Head to Aquarium Drunkard and subscribe, where you can also read an abridged and edited transcript of this conversation. 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, our weekly conversation podcast. This week on the show, we’re joined by Brian and Michael D’Addario, AKA, The Lemon Digs. Their latest slice of toothsome guitar pop is called A Dream Is All We Know. Writing about it in our mid-year favorite albums of 2024 (so far) list, we noted: “A dash of Badfinger, lots of Beach Boys, Todd Rundgren, and Sparks and you’re on the track. As always, The Lemon Twigs come arms full of records you can compare their work to, but what makes Brian and Michael D’Addario’s latest shine is its emotionality and hard-earned optimism, all of which lends resonance to the jangle and charm.” Rumbling out of Long Island, the Lemon Twigs were just as sharp, funny, and quick as I expected them to be. We got into all sorts of stuff, exploring their relationship with their mentor, Jonathan Rado of Foxygen, their collaborations and run-ins with the great Todd Rundgren and Sean Lennon, and unpack how their undeniable songs actually get written.  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. Head to Aquarium Drunkard and subscribe, where you can also read an abridged and edited transcript of this conversation. 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 a far-ranging episode of Transmissions: guitarist, folklorist, and all-around-top-notch thinker Daniel Bachman.  A songwriter and composer from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Bachman first began releasing records under the name Sacred Harp, before adopting his own name for a series of finger-picked classics like 2012's Seven Pines and 2015’s River, which Aquarium Drunkard’s Tyler Wilcox called “a solo acoustic tour de force that can easily stand proud next to John Fahey’s Days America or Jack Rose’s Kensington Blues. It’s that good.”  In the years since, Bachman’s music has grown more and more experimental, and also, it’s become more directly informed by climate change. His latest, for the fine folks at Longform Edition, who’ve appeared on this very podcast, is called Quaker Run Wildfire (10​/​24​/​23​–​11​/​17​/​23) for Fiddle and Guitar. A 25-minute piece of drone, guitar, fiddle, and field recordings, it was inspired and directly confronts the devastating wildfire that tore through the Middle Appalachians. “How additional global heating at the cost of extractive industry will impact future climate breakdown in the region remains unknown. One thing however is certain… a new fire regime has arrived,” Bachman writes.  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. Head to Aquarium Drunkard and subscribe, where you can also read an abridged and edited transcript of this conversation. 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 program, we are pleased to welcome guest host Zara Hedderman and singer/songwriter Chris Cohen to the show to a generous, expansive, and genuine conversation. Cohen’s new record is called Paint a Room. His fourth solo album—perhaps you know his work with Deerhoof, The Curtains, Cryptacize, Ariel Pink, Cass Mccombs, and Weyes Blood and more—it finds Cohen pairing with musical heavyweights like Jeff Parker and Josh Johnson, laying a sheen of ‘70s breeziness over top of Cohen’s remarkable compositions.  In this wide-ranging chat, they discuss the new album, years spent working in record stores, Transcendental Meditation, The Grateful Dead, and much more. It’s an open and tender conversation, full of funny moments and deep insight. 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. Head to Aquarium Drunkard and subscribe, where you can also read an abridged and edited transcript of this conversation. 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, we welcome one of our favorite musicians to the show: Mark Lightcap of Acetone and the Dick Slessig Combo. Back in 2017, author Sam Sweet released a great book about Acetone called Hadley Lee Lightcap, accompanied by a stellar Light in the Attic anthology compilation,1992-2001. Writing about it, Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury said: Though Acetone were label-mates with the Verve at Virgin subsidiary Vernon Yard, recorded for Neil Young’s Vapor Records, and attracted high-profile fans like J. Spaceman and Hope Sandoval, nothing about 1992-2001 indicates a band bound for the spotlight. The trio’s music, a heady mix of surf, country, exotica, hillbilly spirituals, and slow-motion indie rock, pulled from thrift store LPs and adhered to its own logic. Hadley, Lightcap, and Lee listened to music deeply, searching for elements beneath the surface. The band uncovered psychedelic qualities in unlikely places, turning up lysergic textures in mood music, Tiki kitsch, and Charlie Rich records.  Coupled with the foundational influences of the Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, Steve Reich, and Al Green, this strange blend takes time to reveal itself. Acetone’s music requires patience. Lee’s voice seems to float out of the speakers, his bass locked into meandering grooves with Hadley’s meditative drums and Lightcap’s tremolo and reverb-drenched guitar. Like its contemporaries, Low, Souled American, and Mercury Rev, Acetone created music that deconstructed and protracted rock & roll templates. We’ve kept on the Lightcap beat ever since. Back in the early days of the pandemic, we covered his other band, the Dick Slessig Combo, and their mystic, mantric 40+ minute version of Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman." Last year, New West Records reissued Acetone’s discography, featuring illuminating liner notes by J. Spaceman of Spiritualized/Spaceman 3 and Drew Daniel of Matmos/The Soft Pink Truth. The occasion prompted a great conversation with Mark that we published in written form last year. This week on the show, he joins us for a loose talk from his backyard in LA. From “beautiful music” to his run-ins with Oasis, this conversation takes plenty of fascinating turns. There’s plenty to read about Acetone and Dick Slessig over at Aquarium Drunkard. Subscribe today for access to all the good stuff, as well as nearly 20 years of music journalism, essays, interviews, sessions, video and radio shows and more.  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. 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

There are heavy hitters, and then there's The Dirty Three. A trio comprising violinist Warren Ellis, guitarist Mick Turner, and drummer Jim White, these Australian independent rock legends recently returned with their first album in 12 year, the aptly titled Love Changes Everything. Though they are perhaps best known for their work with artists like Nick Cave (Warren is a foundational Bad Seeds member and works with Cave in a variety of other contexts), Cat Power, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Bill Callahan, and Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, a very particular magic happens when they gather together. It's on full display on the new record, which does everything you hope a D3 record will: it rocks, it drifts, and it ventures boldly toward the unknown. That magic comes down to...well, as you'll learn in this episode, it's very tricky to pin down where magic—or love for that matter—comes from, and it only grows more elusive the more you try to name it. This week on Transmissions, The Dirty Three explore their history, reflect on the life and work of Steve Albini, and recall their days opening for The Beastie Boys. 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. 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, Joe Pernice of The Pernice Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys, and Chappaquiddick Skyline—as well as books, records, and other projects under his own name.  Since the early 2000s, Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury have placed Joe on their personal Mount Rushmore of criminally underrated singer-songwriters. There have always been genres associated with Pernice's work—chamber pop, y’allternative, retro pop, power pop, indie—but it all comes back to those songs: literate, catchy, sly, funny, and often heartbreaking. We published a talk with Pernice last year on the occasion of The Pernice Brothers’ 1998 album Overcome By Happiness receiving deluxe reissue treatment from New West Records. But with a brand new Pernice Brothers album, Who Will You Believe, still fresh in record stores, we figured it would be a blast to have him on to talk for the podcast. And we were right—chatting with Joe was a total blast, and you’re going to enjoy this wide ranging talk about everything from David Berman to the internet to mortality.  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. 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, guitarist Phil Manzanera, who joins us to discuss his latest project, a memoir called Revolución to Roxy. Writing about his childhood in revolutionary Cuba, his lifelong fascination with music, and his collaborations and run-ins with people like Brian Eno, David Gilmour, Robert Wyatt, and more, Manzera reveals his Zelig-like status as one of art-rock’s most creatively pivotal figures.  On albums like Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets (celebrating 50 years in 2024) and Quiet Sun's Mainstream, Manzanera's guitars sound otherworldly and overheated; his further work proves as fascinating and it was a real pleasure to have him with us this week on Transmissions.  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. 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

Near the start of his recently released book World Within a Song, Jeff Tweedy admits there’s probably some parallel timeline where this one is his first, not third, book. It is, after all, dedicated to a subject he’s “thought about the most by far: other people’s songs.”  Through a series of comical stories and humble reflections, the Wilco leader puts together a playlist with the book. It’s a wide ranging one at that, covering the spectral, alt-country slow-core combo Souled American to gospel purity of The Staples Singers to the abrasive rapture of Suicide. Songs, Tweedy insists, teach us how to be human, how, to quote Tweedy ”universally vast the experience of listening to almost anything with intent and openness can be. And most importantly, how songs absorb and enhance our own experiences and store our memories.”  Tweedy has penned plenty of songs that fit that bill for me personally, and that’s why I’m so glad to welcome him to this week’s installment of Transmissions. This year, Wilco celebrated a milestone: 20 years of the band’s current lineup: founding members Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen, and drummer Glenn Kotche. They aren’t commemorating with a rest. They’re staging another installment of their Solid Sound Festival, June 28-30th at MASS MoCA In North Adams, MA. And they’ve got a new EP on the way too, Hot Sun Cool Shroud, out June 28 via their dBpm label, which they’ll debut at the festival.   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. 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, our weekly series of illuminating interviews and contextual conversations. This week on the show, guitarist and composer Julian Lage.  A child prodigy in his youth, Lage has commanded attention for decades for his guitar prowess—he performed at the GRAMMYs at the tender age of 12—and he’s accompanied a truly staggering roster of artists over the years, including John Zorn, Nels Cline, Bill Frisell, Yoko Ono, Gary Burton, and more. But on his latest album, the Blue Note release Speak To Me, Lage often presents himself as something of a singer/songwriter—minus the singing, that is. Joined by a five-piece band and producer Joe Henry, Lage careens from jittery free jazz to classic West Coast pop, maintaining a careful flow that feels generous but considered, diverse but not haphazard.   This week on Transmissions, he discusses connecting to his musical center, cutting himself some slack, and how Henry helped him know when songs were "done enough." Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Jeff Tweedy of Wilco joins us for a wide ranging conversation about Solid Sound, his books, and his Jim O’Rourke side project Loose Fur. 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

Incoming transmission. On this episode of our weekly podcast, singer/songwriter Leyla McCalla joins us to discuss the new sonic terrain of her latest album, Sun Without The Heat. Though her earlier work with groups like the Carolina Chocolate Drops and on her own was often classified as Americana, this album finds her shifting into a blurrier, more dynamic zone, where Afrobeat, Tropicalismo, post-rock, and sleek funk all share space. Inspired by Afrofuturistic ecological writings, the natural world, and her own experiences, it’s a record that showcases an artist stepping into a new position, that of an interpreter of alternate sonic histories, an art-pop imagineer casting brand new shapes.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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 Join us next week for a conversation with guitarist Julian Lage.

Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, direct from his desert studio on the US/Mexico border south of Tucson: synth music pioneer Steve Roach.  As a kid in Costa Mesa, he became entranced with motorsports, prog rock, and kosmische musik by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, and other Berlin school fusionists. In 1984, he released his landmark third album, Structures from Silence. Record stores filed it in the new age section, where it sold like hotcakes. But as far as Roach was concerned, it was simply his take on the electronic music that fascinated him, with a humanistic touch: it's pace mimicked the pulse of human breath. Roach has maintained a steady flow of music ever since. This year, Roach and his longtime label Projekt released a 40th anniversary version of Structures. It was quickly followed by Reflections in Repose, a live set performed,  composed and recorded in Baja Arizona in late 2023. Add to that production on Serena Gabriel’s The Saffron Sky and a three-night stint at Hotel Congress in Tucson, May 29th, 30th, and 31st, where he’ll be joined by fellow synth lifers Robert Rich and Michael Stearns, and you can see why it's a miracle he time to join us for this episode, dedicated to discussing his creative process, learning to go with your own flow, and his lifelong sonic journey.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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 Join us next week for a conversation with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, who joins to discuss the Solid Sound festival, his literary work, and his vast songbook.

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, we’re sitting down with Damon McMahon, best known as the man behind the mysterious and compelling Amen Dunes musical project. Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury first spoke to McMahon way back in 2012, when he was touring in support of the second Amen Dunes album, 2011’s Through Donkey Jaw. Then, they checked in again in 2018, when he released the tremendous Freedom. Amen Dunes’ sound has shifted and morphed all along the way, though some constants have remained—particularly, his mantra-like vocals. Even when it’s hard to clearly understand exactly what he’s saying, McMahon has a way of making his lyrics felt, as if the shape and sound of the words in and of themselves has some occulted meaning.  McMahon’s latest is called Death Jokes. It was released on May 10th by Sub Pop Records and it’s a dense, layered gem. Built on beats, piano—a new instrument for McMahon—and stacked with samples of artists like Lenny Bruce and J Dilla, it’s a difficult record to grok at first. It doesn't reveal itself quickly. In a media landscape that often asks us to rush through our experience of music, Death Jokes asks us to stop, to listen again, and to listen deeper. It reveals more as you sit with it.  In that way it’s a profoundly counter cultural album; it bucks against the mode of our day. This conversation follows suit, examining the way the digital age has tried to reduce human experience down to clean binaries. It’s a conversation about spirituality, about the root of music, about the subconscious, and much more. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Synth legend Steve Roach. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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

Hauntology. Perhaps the phrase alone is enough to convince you we've wandered into the realm of pretension. But we've got to use it anyway, because this week on the podcast we're speaking with one of the main people associated with that term: Jim Jupp, co-founder of Ghost Box Records, which has mined TV soundtracks, vintage electronics, psychedelia, pop, and supernatural folklore for decades, issuing music by Broadcast, Pye Corner Audio, The Advisory Circle, and Jupp's own band, The Belbury Poly. Last year, The Belbury Poly released The Path. Borrowing the soundtrack work of Roy Budd and Roger Webb as a starting point, Jupp and crew cook up a heady blend of sound, indulging loping, flute-led jazz passages, delay-soaked kosmische soundscapes, and bombastic bursts of wah-wah and fuzz guitar and funk drums. And over it all is novelist and poet Justin Hopper, who adds quixotic and evocative narration to the record. This week on Transmissions, Jupp joins us to discuss his storied label, plumbing the nostalgic depths, the evocative spaces of The Twilight Zone, fairy lore, extraterrestrial, and yes, "hauntology." Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Amen Dunes joins us to discuss Death Jokes. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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

Though he’s known for his fiery, raging performances with groups like Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, and Shabaka and The Ancestors, Shabaka Hutchings eases into a contemplative zone with his debut solo album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace.  Released on Impulse! Records and recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey—where John Coltrane cut A Love Supreme and many other jazz classics were committed to tape—the album finds Hutchings setting down his sax in favor of a variety of flutes and pondering questions about what it means to be, what it means to do, and how one gives themselves over to energizing forces. Joined by guests including Saul Williams, Euclid, Esperanza Spalding, Floating Points, Laraaji, poet Anum Iyapo, Carlos Nino, and fellow flute devotee André 3000, Hutchings drifts into a gentle, new age-inspired zone, blending spiritual jazz expression with ambient sensibilities.  “What does it mean to have music of spiritual substance?“What does it mean to be spiritual? What is spirit?” This week on Transmissions, Shabaka Hutchings joins us to discuss that force, his shift toward the flute, the influence of Outkast, and connecting with his father on a creative level.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? The Belbury Poly. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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

Hello, welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions.  On Saturday, April 20th, Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions returned to the esoteric grounds of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles for a living taping with guest host Will Sheff (Okkervil River) in conversation author Sean Howe, discussing Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s, book on High Times founder, provocateur, and trickster Thomas King Forçade as part of PRS' Earth Day celebration Plantstock. I am such a big fan of PRS, where we recorded a live talk with Matt Marble on the esoteric influences of Arthur Russell last fall. It’s a place that invites inquiry, rewards curiosity, and enjoys the beauty of the unknown.  Which makes it a perfect setting for this talk. Howe’s Agents of Chaos is a time machine that transports the reader directly to the chaotic, funky-smelling center of the paranoid 1970s. The result of almost a decade of sleuthing, Howe’s fascinating book details the true story of Thomas King Forçade, mysterious founder of High Times Magazine, cannabis kingpin, el supremo of the Underground Press Syndicate, Yippie agitator, known drug smuggler, and possible CIA spook. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Shabaka Hutchings. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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: Camae Ayewa, better known as Moor Mother. As one-half of the Black Quantum Futurism collective, a creative project she founded with Rasheedah Philips, Ayewa has focused her considerable energies on “the manipulation of space-time in order to see into possible futures, and/or collapse space-time into a desired future in order to bring about that future’s reality.” As the front-person of the incendiary jazz punk group Irreversible Entanglements, she’s let it rip on a series of albums released by International Anthem & Don Giovanni Records. Last year’s Protect Your Light found the band moving to the legendary Impulse! Records.   Along the way, she’s released records under the Moor Mother banner, like 2021’s Black Encyclopedia of the Air and 2022’s Jazz Codes. Her latest is The Great Bailout, a record that functions at times like a sonic horror movie, while also possessing tremendous passages of beauty. Joined by guests like Lonnie Holley, Kyle Kidd, and Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty—past Transmissions guest Angel Bat Dawid delivers an absolutely breathtaking clarinet solo out ‘South Sea”—the album finds Moor Mother transmuting jazz, noise, rock, folk, gospel, classical music—melting down genres in a poetic churn. Moor Mother plays history and time like a science fiction story, bending temporal moments in a psychedelic flurry. This conversation flows in similar way. Join us to jump through timelines, ponder the Mandela Effect, and untangle histories with Moor Mother on Transmissions. Just announced: Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions Live! at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, feat. Will Sheff (Okkervil River) in conversation author Sean Howe, discussing his book on High Times founder Thomas King Forçade. Secure your tickets now. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Moor Mother. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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, author, producer, archivist, and musician Pat Thomas. In the late '80s, he helped take the Paisley Underground overground with his label Heyday Records. Later, he helped bring out reissues by artists like Judee Sill, Sandy Bull, PiL, and more. And as if all that wasn't enough, he's the author of a number of essential counterculture histories, including 2012's Listen, Whitey! The Sights & Sounds of Black Power 1965–1975, 2017's Did It! Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary, and most recently, 2023's Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg. As you'll hear at the top of this episode, he was also the first guest we ever asked to be on Transmissions, only host Jason P. Woodbury hadn't quite got the hang of properly recording interviews. While that ill-fated talk was lost to time, this one isn't. Tune in for more on Ginsberg, the forthcoming Judee Sill documentary Lost Angel, and much more on this all new episode of Transmissions. Just announced: Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions Live! at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, feat. Will Sheff (Okkervil River) in conversation author Sean Howe, discussing his book on High Times founder Thomas King Forçade. Secure your tickets now. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Moor Mother. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine. 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, Aquarium Drunkard founder Justin Gage joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss big changes coming to Aquarium Drunkard: AD is transitioning to a membership-based model subscription model on April 8th.  Transmissions has a very smart audience and one that’s tapped in—so we likely don’t need to explain to you how much the online landscape has changed, but this decision wasn’t reached lightly, and this conversation will shine some light on the reasons behind our moves. Aquarium Drunkard is coming up on its 20th anniversary; and it’s a trusted oasis for music lovers, a place driven by the passion for sharing music both new and old; insightful reviews, extensive interviews, exclusive sessions, esoteric mixtapes, dusty bootlegs, curated radio shows, wide-ranging podcast conversations. It’s a place that celebrates creativity and eclecticism, and (importantly) a place that isn’t beholden to editorial calendars or flavor-of-the-month topics. Whatever appears here is part of that very basic ethos: Only the good shit. Transmissions will remain free for all and available in your podcast feed, but as Aquarium Drunkard nears its 20th anniversary, we are proud to embark on this next chapter. With your support, we can keep this remarkable project rolling along. Tune in for more detail. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Reissue producer, author, and experimental musician Pat Thomas. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our members. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by subscribing to our online music magazine.

Incoming transmission from Roger Eno. This week on the show, he joins us for a freewheeling, friendly chat about art, place, and Dune (1984). Eno began his recording life in 1983, when he joined his brother Brian and Daniel Lanois at the latter’s studio in Hamilton, Ontario, to cut one of our favorite albums of all-time, Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. Imbued with country and western ambiance, it suggests the vastness of space and man’s ventures into it. Not only that, but it serves as one of the foundational documents of the "ambient country" subgenre that practically forms its own corner of the Aquarium Drunkard sonic universe.  Eno got started on solo work after that, with Voices, and he’s continued to record ever since, both in collaboration with his brother Brian, like on 2020’s Mixing Colours, on his own, and with a diverse cast of artists including David Gilmore, The Orb, Jah Wobble, Youth, and Channel Light Vessel, his group with Bill Nelson, Kate St. John, and previous Transmissions guest Laraaji. His latest and second album for Deutsche Grammophon is The Skies, They Shift Like Chords. Eno joined host Jason P. Woodbury early this year to discuss that record, and a lot more: psycho-geography, space travel, and what he can recall about his work on the soundtrack with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois on the soundtrack for David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The sleeper has awakened. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? An interview with Aquarium Drunkard founder Justin Gage.  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 we're welcoming Elizabeth Nelson of The Paranoid Style to the show for a conversation about music, writing, ZZ Top, and her new album, The Interrogator. Packed with pub rock charm, punk verve, and rootsy, wide-eyed songwriting, the album finds Nelson and her collaborators, including partner Timothy Bracy and Peter Holsapple of The dB's, cranking the amps in service of sharp, literary rock & roll. Sitting down with host Jason P. Woodbury, Nelson explores her dual roles as a writer and artist, details her unique and optimistic approach to posting on X (formerly Twitter), and generally indulges in music geek back-and-forth. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Join us next week for a conversation with Roger Eno. 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 so pleased to welcome John Lurie. Perhaps you know him from his work in films like Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Paris Texas, or The Last Temptation of Christ; or maybe you know him better for his music—groups like The Lounge Lizards, his trailblazing avant-garde jazz unit, or his fictional bluesman persona Marvin Pontiac, or the John Lurie National Orchestra. Or maybe you know him from his pioneering and singular television shows, 1991’s surreal nature program Fishing With John, or the more recent Painting With John, which ran on HBO from 2021-2023.  This week, he joins host Jason P. Woodbury for a freewheeling chat, his book, The History of Bones: A Memoir, his Hollywood adventures, and Music From Painting With John, which drops via Royal Potato Family on March 15th. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Join us next week for a conversation with Elizabeth Nelson of The Paranoid Style.

This week on the show, a conversation with pianist, composer, bandleader, and writer, Vijay Iyer. He’s been at it since 1995, recording for labels like Savoy, Pi, and ECM, and he’s collaborated with a diverse and inspiring roster along the way including Amiri Baraka, Matana Roberts, Das Racist, previous Transmissions guest Wadada Leo Smith, and many more. His records have incorporated electronic music and spoken word, chamber jazz reverence and loose, free falling blues.  Last year, in collaboration with vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shazhad Ismaily, he released Love in Exile on the Verve label. Writing about the album for our 2023 Year in Review, we called it “A spectral meeting of the minds. This haunting and luminous se…locates a nexus between ambient, jazz, and classical, all while feeling entirely conjured in the moment—because it was.”  Now he’s back with a new ECM release, Compassion, and in another trio, reuniting with his bandmates on 2021’s stirring Uneasy, bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Produced by Manfred Eicher, it’s a stunning listen start to finish, from its meditative and expansive title track to the dug down groove of “Ghostrumental,” a startling showcase for may Han Oh’s thoughtful melodicism, to the thoughtfully chosen covers of Roscoe Mitchell’s “Nonaah” and Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed,” everything about Compassion demonstrates the intentional focus of Iyer and his collaborators. He joins host Jason P. Woodbury to speak about it, reflect on the post-pandemic nebulousness in the air, discuss his mentors Greg Tate and Baraka, and much more.  For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Join us next week for a conversation with John Lurie.

This week on the show: a conversation with Laetitia Sadier. As the main vocalist of Stereolab, her spacey voice shines as the human core in that project’s motorik and dense avant-pop, a blend of electronic music, krautrock, space age lounge sounds, and much more.  Outside of that legendary band, Sadier has been an active force on her own. She’s appeared in a variety of contexts on albums by Common, Tyler the Creator, Atlas Sound, and Deerhoof. In 1996, she formed Monade, a solo vehicle, and in 2010, she released her debut under her own name, The Trip, on Drag City. Her latest is called Rooting for Love and it’s out now. Joined by members of the Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble and a multiple voice choir, these minimalist tapestries, Brazilian glide, and propulsive ambient funk yearn for a kind of gnosis—sacred knowing. We don’t often make a habit of quoting directly from album descriptions, but we can’t resist sharing this bit: On Rooting for Love, “Laetitia issues a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth: we’re urged to finally evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation.” Sadier joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss, among other things, discussion about taking care of our collective body; the planet itself, the radical potentiality of “love,” what it felt like to reunite Stereolab in 2019, her engagement with hip-hop, and reflections on working with The Trip producer Richard Swift. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Join us next week for a conversation with pianist Vijay Iyer.

Incoming transmission from Hopeton Overton Brown, better known as Scientist. As a protege of dub pioneer King Tubby, Scientist represents dub’s third generation—at least that’s how his 1981 collaboration with Tubby and Prince Jammy, First Second, and Third Generation, puts it. Originating in Kingston, Hopeton earned his nickname from Bunny Lee due to his highly complex mixing skills, who famously opined, "Damn, this little boy must be a scientist.”  These days he’s living in Los Angeles, where he joined host Jason P. Woodbury for this all-new episode. Prepare to cover a lot of ground, as we move from his origins at Channel One and Tuff Gong to divine messages, run-ins with Lee "Scratch" Perry, aliens and angels, simulation theory, his suspicions about modern cannabis strains, the digital vs analog debate, and much more. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Join us next week for a conversation with Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab.

For the last decade-and-a-half, Ty Segall has reliably cranked out records that show off his range, ping-ponging from scuzzed out glam rock to chiming folk ballads. With his latest, Three Bells, he dips his toes into prog territory, tapping into King Crimson-like zones while detailing the exploration of inner zones. It's a personal record, but in typical Ty fashion, it evokes grandiose and grotesque drama to accompany its revelatory insights. This week on Transmissions, he joins us to discuss creating projects with his wife, Den​é​e Segall, his dogs, the influence of T Rex, how to maintain collaborative relationships, and his songwriting practice. Plus, Aquarium Drunkard contributor Jennifer Kelly stops by to riff on Ty's discography and wide-ranging scope. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Join us next week for a conversation with dub legend Scientist.

This week on the show, return guests Jason Stern and Don Fleming of the Lou Reed Archive join us to discuss Lou's 2007 ambient album Hudson River Wind Meditations, recently reissued by Light in the Attic, and share a bevy of Lou stories and insights. Plus, resident Lou fanatic Tyler Wilcox of Doom and Gloom from the Tomb drops by to discuss Lou's kung fu fascinations, love of comics, mindfulness, and a few of his favorite Lou pieces at Aquarium Drunkard, including: Lou Reed: The King of New York (In Conversation With Will Hermes) Sad Song :: Lou Reed’s Berlin At 50 Lou Reed :: Transformer | Transformed For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Join us next week for a conversation with Ty Segall.

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. We're kicking off our 2024 season with two very special guests: Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy, discussing their love of and tribute to R.E.M.’s Murmur, which they are taking on tour in February. You no doubt know Shannon from his movies and shows, including some of our favorites like Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Midnight Special, The Shape of Water, and Boardwalk Empire. In his essential read Every Man For Himself and God Against All, director Werner Herzog calls Shannon “the most gifted actor of his generation.”  As for Narducy, you’ve heard him with Superchunk, Bob Mould, Split Single, and many other projects. Together, they’ve staged tributes to T. Rex, The Smiths, Lou Reed, and Neil Young and more, and now, they turn their attention to R.E.M. It was a pleasure to speak with these two about the Athens, Georgia legends, along with detours into topics like Lou Reed, Sunny Day Real Estate, and best of all, Michael’s run in with Bob Dylan.  If you dig Transmissions and want to chip in so we can make it check out Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. We rely on your support to pay contributors and keep bringing you independent music journalism, mixtapes, reviews, and podcasts. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. 

Welcome back to Transmissions. This week on the show, which brings our 2023 season to a close, we are joined by Matt Werth of RVNG to discuss the life and multi-dimensional sound worlds of Pauline Anna Strom. This month, the label released Echoes, Spaces, Lines, which collects the first three albums from the Bay Area synthesist and composer, including Trans-Millenia Consort, Plot Zero, and Spectre, as well as Oceans of Time, an unreleased record included in the box set for the first time.  An energy worker, reptile enthusiast, and imagination specialist, Anna Strom’s work continues to gleam after her passing in 2020. Home to releases by Sensations Fix, Craig Leon, Holly Herndon, K Leimer, just to name a few favorites, among many more, RVNG is one of the most exciting reissue slash new music labels going, and it was a real treat to connect with Werth to discuss his time with Pauline and her unique and singular musical path.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. This episode concludes our 2023 season, but never fear, we’ll be back early in the new year with more strange conversations for our strange times. Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. 

This week on the show, Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury joins Penelope Spheeris, director of The Decline of Western Civilization trilogy, The Beverly Hillbillies, Little Rascals, Suburbia, and Wayne’s World. Spheeris is the host of Peter and the Acid King, a true crime podcast set in the Los Angeles punk scene of the early ‘80s concerning the unsolved murder of Peter Ivers. A pop culture wunderkind, Ivers was many things at once: an all-star harmonica player who played alongside Little Walter, a pal of Van Dyke Parks who opened for Fleetwood Mac, and a songwriter who wrote music for David Lynch's Eraserhead and artists like Diana Ross and The Pointer Sisters. In the early '80s, he found found notoriety as host of New Wave Theatre, which showcased Bad Religion, Circle Jerks, 45 Grave and the Angry Samoans. Peter and the Acid King explores that epochal cultural era and its violent end. Working with investigator and co-creator Alan Sacks, Spheeris narrates with 10-part series, which is just about to finish its run, with world weary charm and sly understatement, as well as her signature attitude. If you dig our show and want to support the work we do at Aquarium Drunkard, pledge your support on Patreon and help keep the servers humming.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Matt Werth of RVNG joins us to discuss the music of Pauline Anna Strom. 

This week on Transmissions: Conner Habib. He's the author of the Pen/Faulkner award longlisted horror novel, Hawk Mountain, and the host of the weekly podcast Against Everyone with Conner Habib. Informed by his practice of Anthroposophy and Christian mysticism, AEWCH focuses on the esoteric and ventures into strange and unusual places, touching frequently on Habib's spiritual views while also exploring his views on sex work, his interest in art and literature, punk rock ethos, and his singular conversational style.  This last September, Habib devoted a whole month to exploring the mystic possibilities of music with guests like Bonnie Prince Billy and Nina Persson of the Cardigans, and he’s featured guests like Ian McKaye, Stephen Malkmus, and Ted Leo, so we pick up where that series left off and dive into the musical, occult, and conversational deep end. Next week on Transmissions? Penelope Sheeris—director of The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization series, Wayne’s World, and host of Peter and the Acid King, a podcast dedicated to the mysterious life and death of Peter Ivers.

Make yourself comfortable and relax, on this all-new episode of Transmissions, we’re focusing on the fantastic tunes crafted by John Caroll Kirby. You’ve heard a lot about him in our previous episode with Eddie Chacon. John’s music exemplifies the current zone where jazz, fusion, new age, soul, R&B, and electronic composition all mingle; in addition to Eddie, he’s worked with artists like Blood Orange, Solange, Frank Ocean, and many more. But it’s his own records, including this year’s Blowout, that demonstrate his compositional chops. Like many of his records, the native Angeleno recorded it far from home, in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. Travel is a constant for him—see his incredible web series Kirby’s Gold, a travelouge that finds him trying on his best Huell Howser with musicians all around the globe. This week on the show we discuss getting out into the world and much more. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Conner Habib of the essential culture and philosophy podcast Against Everyone joins us for a rollicking conversation. We hope you’ll join—until then, this Transmission is concluded. 

Welcome back to Transmissions. This week on the program, we’re joined by electronic musician Moby and Lindsay Hicks. Together, they run Little Walnut, a production company responsible for documentaries like Punk Rock Vegan, music videos, and Moby Pod—a podcast dedicated to offering unique perspectives on music, animal activism, climate change, and beyond.  This conversation with host Jason P. Woodbury demonstrates the way Moby and Hicks are brave and open in ways that aren’t common in our culture, rejecting the easy cynicism and guardedness that seems to rule the day. And while this talk does get a little bleak at times, it’s also a very funny conversation concerning our changing landscape, science fiction, music, and full of quips and jokes. We hope you enjoy it. Thanks so much for spending time with us on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. We know you have a lot of listening options out there on the world wide web, so we are honored you’d carve out the space for us. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? John Carroll Kirby. Be well in the meantime, this Transmission is concluded.  For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. 

You know Buck from Big Thief and his solo albums, like this year’s Haunted Mountain. Full of near-death experiences and tender but insistent roots-inspired songwriting, it’s an album that finds inspiration in the mysterious Mount Shasta, long a site of high strangeness—and a place that plays a pivotal role in Buck's own origin story. Cut live to 2”-inch tape, it’s a personal and open-hearted record and we're so glad to have Buck here with us, hanging out and discussing Judee Sill, Bob Dylan–but not his work with Bob Dylan, thanks to one of those pesky NDAs, the autonomy preserving creative practices of Adrianne Lenker and Big Thief, working with fellow Texan Jolie Holland—who’s also got her own Haunted Mountain album—and the power of reciprocity.  Speaking of reciprocity, Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions is brought to you by Aquarium Drunkard’s Patreon community. Join us over there and help support independent media.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.  Next week on Transmissions: electronic musician Moby and his podcast co-host Lindsay Hicks. Be well in the meantime, this Transmission is concluded.

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Here's hoping your autumnal drift toward Halloween is rolling along nicely. This week on the show, we’re chatting once again with Mitch Horowitz, occult scholar, practitioner, and historian. We’ve had Mitch on a number of times—once a year or so for the last few years. What can we say? We just love listening to the guy riff. His latest is book is Modern Occultism: History, Theory, and Practice. A sprawling secret history in the same vein as his 2009 book Occult America (The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped our Nation), the book explores how wisdom and philosophies gleaned from the Hermetica, gnostic gospels, Kabbalah, and other esoteric systems made its way from ancient and often fragmented pasts to profoundly inform the modern age, illuminating how it fueled secret societies and motivated renegade thinkers.  Our talk? Well, it’s all over the place. We discuss many of the figures who appear in the book, like the dubious but charming Carlos Castaneda, Anthroposophy founder Rudolph Steiner, and Theosophy’s grand dame H.P. Blavatsky, featured here alongside figures like Aleister Crowley, Carl Jung, Anton LaVey, and Jack Parsons, the pioneering father of modern rocketry—who was also a practicing magician, one-time Marxist, and famously died at 37 in a fiery explosion. Beyond that, we get into notions of radical self-reliance via Ayn Rand and comics artist Steve Ditko, UFOs, and the necessary path of following one's own innate proclivities. Arthur Miller once said something along the lines of, “An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.” Perhaps that's at the core of this chat: in our hyper-individualized moment, with so many of the old ways breaking down around us, how we can think about the communal and the individual in less binary or dualistic terms? Horowitz is a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM, so think of this as one of those Transmissions episodes that leans into that feel. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.  Next week on Transmissions? Next week on the show, Buck Meek. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. 

We were introduced to the music of Maria Elena Silva via 2021’s Eros, which featured collaborations with previous Transmissions guests Jeff Parker of Tortoise and was produced by Chris Schlarb. Writing about Eros, AD stalwart Tyler Wilcox said: “Maria Elena Silva’s voice rarely rises above a whisper on the remarkable EROS — but don’t mistake this one for a lullaby-type album. The intensity level is kept at a superhumanly high level throughout. Whether Silva is singing in English or Spanish, whether she’s floating ghostlike through a jazz standard or delivering her own spellbinding originals, you’ll be hanging on every syllable…" Silva is back with a new one, the recently released Dulce. Here, she’s joined by Schlarb once again, as well as Transmissions alumni Marc Ribot, who brings a raw, questing intensity to her new songs, which swell with rock & roll gusto and a newfound display of bravado. At the core of the record are the drums of Scott Dean Taylor, who matches Maria’s humanistic phrasing with nuance and a palpable charge. You might think of PJ Harvey when you listen to a number like “Love, If It Is So,” but it equally brings to mind Mark Hollis of Talk Talk or Mary Margaret O'Hara at her most free. This conversation focuses on that notion—freedom—and we're glad to share it with you today.  For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. 

Welcome back to Transmissions. We're still buzzing from this last weekend, which saw a live taping of Transmissions at The Philosophical Research Society, the Los Angeles campus founded in 1934 by esoteric scholar Manly Palmer Hall, featuring Jason P. Woodbury's talk with Matt Marble, an artist, author, audio producer and director of the American Museum of Paramusicology, best known for his podcasts, including Secret Sound, an exploration of the metaphysical history of American music, and the interview show The Hidden Present. He’s the author of Buddhist Bubblegum: Esotericism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell, and that’s what we gathered at PRS to discuss. Hall founded PRS with a dedication “to the ensoulment of all arts, sciences, and crafts,” and we hope you find this talk as ensouling as we did.  Special thanks to our friends and PRS, especially Alex McDonald and AV director Sara Alessandrini, who you’ll hear us refer to throughout the episode, for their help making this happen. And we want to thank Steve Knutson of Audika Records for getting the word out, and of course a warm thanks to everyone who turned up for the show, both in person and via Zoom, to be a part of this special presentation.   Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on the show, Maria Elena Silva on her remarkable new album, Dulce. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by our patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. 

This is the last episode of the podcast! We start with comments from Sunburned members reflecting on the impact of press coverage and ensuing exposure on the band. This shifts to general comments about how they’ve navigated – and oftentimes defied – external expectations. This section closes on the role humor has played in the band. Then we shift to comments and stories shared by friends, collaborators, and fans of Sunburned Hand of the Man, including thoughts from Thurston Moore, Ethan Miller, Neal Campbell, and more! We close out the episode and the podcast with a final thought from each of the band members interviewed for this project.  The “pocket documentary” created by Troels Mads is called Behind a Hill. You can watch the section focused on Sunburned here. The full documentary is here and features chapters devoted to the wider Western Mass music scene, including Dredd Foole, MV&EE, JowJow (also feat. Shannon Ketch), Tarp (feat. Conrad Capistran), Feathers, Asa Irons, and Big Blood. This is the the Dredd Foole Archival Series Kris Prince is working on for Corbett Vs. Dempsey (promo film here). Here’s a short video of the dynamite action described by Ethan Miller. For some modern content, here’s a recent interview with Rob Thomas over at Primitive Man Soundz. And for more John Moloney, you can check out his conversation with Lou & Adelle Barlow on second episode of the Raw Impressions podcast.  We hope to add a couple of bonus episodes down the road, so be sure to subscribe for updates. Thanks for listening! Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode:  Time Goes Way Back - Wallpaper Blues Exploding Head Flick - That Which Is One Dimensional Man - That Which Is Prism Mirror Lens - Headless Born Clever - Headless Virgin Swirl - Chinese Perfume Chiseled - April 4, 2006 - 1 - Chiseled …Music - Hypnotape End of the Endless - Headdress Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this and previous week’s episodes! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

This week on Transmissions, we welcome returning guest Cécile Schott, aka Colleen. Her latest album, Le Jour Et La Nuit Du Réel—the day and night of reality—was tracked using a minimalistic setup, a Moog Grandmother and two delays: a Roland RE-201 Space Echo and a Moogerfooger Analog Delay. But for Schott, this assemblage allows for near infinite synthesis, and a genuine multitude of expression. As the world gets stranger and more difficult to understand, the record wordlessly questions what is real—and the times of day and night when the line between real and imaginary blurs. LIVE TRANSMISSIONS: On September 30th, we’re hosting a live taping of Transmissions at Manly P. Hall’s Philosophical Research Society with Matt Marble, discussing his fantastic book about Arthur Russell, Buddhist Bubblegum. Get more info and tickets here. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on the show, Matt Marble.

This episode is about how Sunburned Hand of the Man makes their free-form music. Through the episode, we consider the semantics of improvisation and practice in the context of this free form entity. In that context, we learn how the open nature of the band manifests in unspoken rules of not telling each other what to do. This, in turn, allows the band members to enter and commit to the jam in a way that is more authentically connected and elevated. While each player is actively doing their own thing, they are listening intently to the others, and the resulting ebb and flow of the group results in something greater than the individual parts. We hear how this creative practice of listening and responding has resulted in Sunburned’s oddly consistent and unique sound. Finally, we close this episode by tuning in closely to consider the impact of founders Rob Thomas and John Moloney on the band. After listening to this episode, we recommend going back to some of the live shows linked in the previous show notes. It could be interesting to re-watch the band’s playing while keeping in mind everything we now know about their creative practice.  Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode: Flex - Pick a Day to Die Hot Lickety Lazy Days - Covered in Mud The Middle Ages -> Sexmap - Secret in Disguise Pick a Day to Die - Pick a Day to Die Air Support / Tantrum / Wicked Passenger / The Easy Way Out - A Taste of Never Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this and previous week’s episodes! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions; this week on the show, we're joined by Jarvis Taveniere of Woods. You know his long running Woods band with Jeremy Earl of course—and Woodsist, their record label and Woodsist Festival, which returns September 23-24 upstate with Kevin Morby, Avey Tare, Cochemea, Tapers Choice, Ana Saint Louis, Natural Information Society, Kurt Vile, Scientist, DJ Aquarium Drunkard—that’s our own Justin Gage—plus many more. The band also just released a glowing new album, Perennial, which finds the band in a gentle, rambling mode.  Jarvis and host Jason P. Woodbury, alongside Willian Tyler and Sadie Sartini Garner, were all members of a book club through much of the pandemic, reading selections of authors like JG Ballard, Kiese Laymon, Eve Babitz and others. LIVE TRANSMISSIONS: On September 30th, we’re hosting a live taping of Transmissions at Manly P. Hall’s Philosophical Research Society with Matt Marble, discussing his fantastic book about Arthur Russell, Buddhist Bubblegum. Get more info here. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on the show, Coleen joins us to discuss her tremendous new album.

We open with our focus on the role that music has played in the band members’ individual lives and how a shared love of music brought them all together. This morphs into a consideration of the band’s many artistic influences, with a close look at the impact of the Wu-Tang Clan on Sunburned. We hear about the complicated and often difficult backgrounds of many of the Sunburned musicians and how jamming with the band can often serve as a type of group therapy. This is the Quietus interview where Rob Thomas talks about the influence of the Wu-Tang Clan on Sunburned. Here’s a mid-period live set from Sunburned at the Abbey Lounge in (I think) Somerville, MA. The set is interspersed with clips from a conversation with Rob Thomas reflecting on the band. Sarah mentioned the People of God’s Love, we did some digging and found this WaybackMachine archived page for a group with that name founded (like Sarah said) in Ohio.  Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode: No Magic Man - No Magic Man Take 5 - Mylar Tantrum Part II Take 6 - Mylar Tantrum Part II Yer Own Eyes and the Number None - No Magic Man Serpent’s Wish - No Magic Man Heavy Rescue - When the Shit Hits the Jazz Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this and previous week’s episodes! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

This week on the show, we’re joined by Sam Shepherd, AKA Floating Points. His discography is full of beautiful and strange electronic music—bubbling Buchalas, skittering beats, washes of synthesized sound, and even moody, spacious post-rock. But underneath it all, his love of jazz is clear. In 2021, he teamed with an actual jazz legend: the late Pharoah Sanders, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra for Promises, a single 46-minute composition broken into nine movements.  Though the artists were separated by decades in age, their approach is simpatico. Just as Shepherd has moved between genres and styles, so did Pharoah. His early work with John and Alice Coltrane established him as a dynamic, sometimes frighteningly intense sideman, and his first run of records, including 1969’s Karma, featuring “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” helped set the stage for what we now call “spiritual jazz.”  But Sanders, who passed away in 2022 at the age of 81, cared very little about what genre you filed his records under. “I just play whatever I feel like playing,” he told The New Yorker. Sanders stayed restless and creative—listen to his playing on Sonny Sharrock’s masterful Ask the Ages or his works with Bill Laswell, and you’ll hear what we mean. In 1977, he waded into deeply personal waters with the self-titled Pharoah, which will be reissued by Luaka Bop on September 15th. Exploring new age adjacent sounds, funk, and passionate ballads, it’s a radical departure from his early work, but perfectly in keeping with Sanders’ unpredictable ethos.  Likewise, Promises is hardly the “back to basics” late career album you might expect an 80-year-old artist to make. It’s its own thing, a meditative sojourn that relies on silence as much as sound. And next week, on September 20th, Floating Points will be joined by past Transmissions guest Shabaka Hutchings, as well as Caribou, Four Tet, the Sun Ra Arkestra, and others for the first-ever staging of Promises live at the Hollywood Bowl. Ahead of that show, Shepherd joined us from his studio to discuss his his years collecting records, making Promises—and we even got him to reveal Pharoah’s favorite place to eat in LA.  Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts, like Drifter’s Sympathy, with Emil Amos of Grails, Om, Holy Sons, who will be our guest next week on Transmissions. And of course No Way Out: An Oral History of Sunburned Hand of the Man, curated and produced by J Kelly Davis and presented by Aquarium Drunkard and Talkhouse. Back soon. Next week on the show, Jarvis Taveniere of Woods.

We hear about the personal impact of the band’s non-stop touring and the eventual burnout that ground things to a halt. Moloney and Thomas then describe how this was followed by several “wilderness years” where the band was just there but they weren’t really doing anything with it. Overlapping with this period there was a migration from Boston out to western Massachusetts. This brings us up to the modern era and ends the chronological review of the band’s history. In the second half of this episode, we explore some of the band’s many artistic collaborators, including NNCK, Ira Cohen, Circle, and Four Tet. Finally, we hear about the visual arts aspects of the band – both cover artists and a bit about the individual practice of Phil Franklin. If you want to see some of the cover art discussed in this episode, check out the songs linked below. Several of the songs used in this episode came from these same albums. More live Sunburned:  Heavy “performance” set - France 2007 (part 2) Recent show in Amsterdam Live in Austin TX (maybe at SXSW) Philly show during tour with Fourtet Sunburned with Ira Cohen - 2006 Playing live in late 2022 Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode: Loft at Sea - A Smokescreen - Weekend at Burnie’s The Parakeet Beat - Fire Escape Clowns in Jail - Clowns in Jail Three Lobed Festival 2022 (excerpt) - Archive Dive Variksenpelatin - Sunburned Circle Untitled 2 - The Tingle of Casual Danger Defacing the Facts - Complexion Gather ‘Round - No Magic Man Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this and previous week’s episodes! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

Welcome back, thanks for being here with us. Emil Amos of the Drifter's Sympathy podcast is with us today on Transmissions. Perhaps you know his work with OM, Grails, Holy Sons, or the records he releases under his own name, like Zone Black, his latest record of library style sounds, synthy 80s soundtracks, hip-hop beats, and ambient music. It evokes a mythic ‘70s—an area we linger in this conversation. You might also know Emil from his many appearances on The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, a podcast I really enjoy and listen to often. We lean a little into that spacey, open format in this episode. On September 22, Emil’s band Grails releases their brand new album, Anches En Maat. Ahead of the album’s release, we caught up to discuss a life in music, the virtue of doing it your own way, and much more in this conversation. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts, like Drifter’s Sympathy, with Emil Amos of Grails, Om, Holy Sons, who will be our guest next week on Transmissions. And of course No Way Out: An Oral History of Sunburned Hand of the Man, curated and produced by J Kelly Davis and presented by Aquarium Drunkard and Talkhouse. Back soon. Next week on the show, Jarvis Taveniere of Woods.

At this point in our story, Sunburned Hand of the Man morphs into a many-headed hydra with varying manifestations in the loft and on each tour. To get through this vague period of 5-8 years, we focus on the band’s tour stories. We learn how a years-long period of heavy touring was kicked off with a family-band excursion to play a wedding in Alaska. After a conjunction of high-profile press coverage, Sunburned suddenly found themselves in high demand on the international festival circuit. So we focus on stories of their extended tour of Europe and the UK in 2003. Our story gets blurry after that first European tour, so we step back and focus first on stories of Sunburned’s many North American tours – including the 2004 cross-country trek out to Arthur Fest and back where they picked up the “no way out” rallying cry. Finally, we hear a conglomeration of stories from the band’s later European tours. So many links to share for this episode! We’ll start with the New Weird America cover story on The Wire. Here’s the Pitchfork reviews for the Trickle Down Theory of Lord Knows What and some Arthur Magazine pieces about Sunburned. This is a digital brochure and schedule of the 2003 Kill Your Timid Notion Festival. Check out this wild poster and these photos from Arthurfest. This was an announcement for a No Way Out tour posted by Arthur Magazine (which is different from the tour out to Arthurfest, where the band picked up the No Way Out motto). Some video evidence of Sunburned playing live: Sunburned live in Newcastle - 2006 (shot by van driver Gozzy) (and another set in Cambridge) No Way Out tour (to Arthurfest) - Live in Missoula, MT - 2005 An ecstatic moment from Sunburned’s Arthurfest set Live in Lisbon - 2006 Playlist for live Paris set - 2006 (this might be where Rob got hit by a kumquat) Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode: Tent City Roller - Wedlock Salmon Sez - Wedlock Blow the Whistle – Earth Do Eagles Do Rivershine – Trickle Down Theory of Lord Knows What Fly Me Home - A Taste of Never (from the VPRO show in Amsterdam) Vaguely Aware - London Zero (from their O2 Arena show opening for Fourtet/Burial) Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this and previous week’s episodes! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, so glad to have you here once again. Our guest this week is Will Sheff, known for his solo work and years with the indie rock band Okkervil River. In this conversation, Sheff and host Jason P. Woodbury cover a wide stretch, examining how the indie rock landscape has changed and evolved over decades, exploring the spiritual core at the heart of his music, and hearing stories about his interactions with luminaries like Roky Erickson and Jason Molina. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts, like Drifter’s Sympathy, with Emil Amos of Grails, Om, Holy Sons, who will be our guest next week on Transmissions, and of course, No Way Out: An Oral History of Sunburned Hand of the Man, curated and produced by J Kelly Davis and presented by Aquarium Drunkard and Talkhouse.  Support Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions on Patreon.

We learn that, after jamming namelessly for a year and a half, the band finally started using the Sunburned moniker. Then we tune in to learn about their earliest excursions playing outside the Charlestown loft, including their first show as Sunburned as part of an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. We hear how the interplay between these new locations and contexts provoked new modes of performance and artistic connections. They describe how an invitation to join a tour opening for No-Neck Blues Band (who were opening for John Fahey) prompted them to assemble their first CD – Mind of a Brother. After this tour story, we meet the rest of the band members interviewed for this podcast. Finally, we examine the chain of events that ultimately catapulted the band onto the international stage. This is Julian Cope’s Album of the Month write up of Sunburned Hand of the Man. You can read the full liner notes that Rob Thomas wrote for the Mind of a Brother reissue. If you want to know more about The No-Neck Blues Band, then check out the (More) Letters from the Earth feature on Aquarium Drunkard. Here’s the band playing a set at P.A.’s Lounge. Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode: Jaybird - Jaybird Franklin’s Mint - Show Me the Way - Tir Na Nog Too High To Fly No More - Jaybird Buried Pleasure - Rare Wood Wild Animal 3 - Wild Animal Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this and previous week’s episodes! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

Today's guest is writer Laura Snapes. Her work has been published by the BBC, Pitchfork, and NME, and she's the deputy music editor of The Guardian. We’ve been aiming to have her for Transmissions for some time now, and now we're so glad we’ve got this episode to share with you listeners, covering the psycho-geology of songs, the climate, varied definitions of the term “Americana,” and her recent listening: Julie Byrne, Be Your Own Pet, Róisín Murphy, and Jesse Lanza. Plus, the occult roots of Aphex Twin and what it means to "name" a nascent music genre. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.  Next week on Transmissions? Will Sheff of Okkervil River on Roky Erickson, Jason Molina, Bill Fay, and much, much more. Be well in the meantime, this Transmission is concluded. 

We rewind way back to before the band started and hear how some of the founding members first met one another. We learn how Sunburned’s precursor band – Shit Spangled Banner – formed, released a tape, and broke up. Thurston Moore provides narrative exposition about the wider music scene that partially informed Sunburned’s formation. We get a third-eye tour of the band’s incubator – an illegal loft space in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. Finally, we hear about several early band members and how all their eccentricities ultimately drove the band’s jamming. Here’s an amazing and extremely early glimpse of Sunburned playing live in late 1997. You can see many of the musicians described in this episode! You can check out Shit Spangled Banner’s Ass Run release here, and this is the discogs entry for the “other” version. Click through the images to see the accompanying note from Byron Coley. Also, here’s Byron’s piece remembering Marc Orleans published in The Wire. And this is an album by Marc Orleans’s band Juneau. We were wondering if Lothlorien – the Tolkein-themed space in southern Indiana was real. Here’s a fascinating article about it.  Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode: Loveletter to Complicated Dreams - Mind of a Brother (excerpts heard throughout the episode) Birth of Dearth - Mind of a Brother Shit Spangled Banner - Smallplant Fields - No Dolby/No DBX SSB - Heaven Often Manifests as Silence The If With the Golden Qualm - Mind of a Brother The Brother of All Shakes - Mind of a Brother Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this and previous week’s episodes! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

Our guest this week is Darren Jessee, a singer/songwriter and drummer. In the '90s, he played drums in Ben Folds Five, and he’s worked with a number of previous Transmissions guests, including Sharon Van Etten and Hiss Golden Messenger, as well as others like The War on Drugs, Josh Rouse, and Chris Stamey. In 2004, he founded a band called Hotel Lights, and in 2018, he began releasing music under his own name. His latest is called Central Bridge, released earlier this year.  On this episode of Transmissions, Darren joins us for a freewheeling talk about influences, lyrics, creative process, and his time on the road with Ben Folds Five. We discuss a wide range of artists—Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Judee Sill, Gordon Lightfoot, and spend a lot of time reflecting on Neil Young, who Ben Folds Five toured with in the 1990s. Along the way, we inspect the notion of how songs change and shape our views, the tenor of the culture wars back in the ‘90s, and the value of occasionally overdoing it.  Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast network, check out Talkhouse for more great reading and listening. Next week on Transmissions? Music journalist and editor Laura Snapes joins us to discuss regionalism, transcendent moments listening to music, the value of names, varying definitions of “Americana,” Aphex Twin, Cornwall, and much more. Join us then. Be well in the meantime, this Transmission is concluded. 

We hear about the origins and goals of the podcast – grappling with the complexities of Sunburned’s chaotic narrative. Music journalist Allison Hussey joins us to provide an outsider’s perspective of the band. Byron Coley describes Sunburned’s impact on the wider music scene. Then we focus on one song in an attempt to discern a bit of what Sunburned does when they jam. Finally, we turn to Sunburned’s iconic 2002 release, Headdress, and that album’s recent 20th anniversary reissue. Here’s an image of the center label for the Headdress album. You can read both the original Pitchfork review of Headdress here and an expanded review of the reissue at Aquarium Drunkard. Check out Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Instagram profile for more pictures related to this episode! Sunburned’s Bandcamp  Sunburned’s Website Songs heard in this episode: Shitless - Headdress Don’t Get Burned - Earth Do Eagles Do The Illness - Headdress The Underground Press - Headdress The Most Relevant - Headless Or  Check out this Spotify playlist with all the songs heard in this week’s episode! You can email or go here for Kelly. Allison Hussey is here and on Twitter. Go here for more Aquarium Drunkard or Talkhouse Podcast Network.

Back in 2022, songwriter Lincoln Barr got in touch, writing a personal note in which he expressed an appreciation for what we do here at Aquarium Drunkard. "Listening to the topics that come up in your conversations, I can't help but recognize a kindred spirit out there in the desert.” Since then, Barr and Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury have gone back and forth via email, discussing spirituality, art, poetry, Ireland, Sinéad O'Connor, NRBQ, psychedelia, personal work, and much more. And now, they finally link up for a proper podcast discussion. Though their conversation was shaded by the passing of O'Connor, a shared favorite, they covered lots of ground additionally, waxing on mysticism, personal exploration, and Barr's incredible album, Forfeit the Prize. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast network, check out Talkhouse for more great reading and listening. Next week on Transmissions? Darren Jessee joins us to discuss songwriting, playing drums in groups like Ben Folds Five and Hiss Golden Messenger and more. Stay loose until then, this Transmissions is concluded. 

Sunburned Hand of the Man is a long-running, free-form band from Massachusetts. They record everything, and their discography has over 200 entries. Membership is fluid, at times determined simply by whoever joins in the jam. One time they started to design a deck of cards where each card had a band member… but there were so many people they would have ended up with a full hand of jokers. There are no rules other than the unspoken rule that nobody tells anyone else what to do.  Despite this swirling complexity (or perhaps because of it), media outlets typically only interview one or two of the founding members. With this podcast, we embrace the full force of Sunburned Hand of the Man. The final result is assembled from conversations and recordings with 15 current and past members as well as outside commentary from friends, fans, and collaborators. Across eight episodes, we unravel the band’s complex history and examine the hows and whys of this bizarre creative endeavor.

Hataaliinez Wheeler grew up in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo Nation. And though he’s just recently released his Dangerbird Records debut,  Singing Into Darkness, he’s spent the last few years creating as much art as he can—recording music, making lo-fi videos, and writing poetry.  Sunbaked and sly, the new album is full of strange grooves and quixotic lyrics, and a sound that borrows from country, surf, indie rock, and shoegaze. We first heard Hataałii through Michael Klausman, who wrote about him for Aquarium Drunkard in 2021, saying, "[I]t was probably predetermined that he’d make music, as Hataałii literally means 'to sing.' His songs are weirdly genreless and out-of-time, yet constantly reach for some sort of cosmic agency. You can frequently hear him experimenting and trying different personas on, but the force of his charisma unites all the disparate elements he puts together. He’s a master at conjuring a kind of Southwestern saudade," a feeling of longing melancholy that permeates Brazilian music.  Today, he joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss his run-in with and shout-out from Mac Demarco, discuss the influence of his father's record collection, and discuss what its felt like for his personal art project to find a life outside of his own head. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast network, check out Talkhouse for more great reading and listening. Next week on Transmissions? Lincoln Barr joins us to discuss the magic of music. For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page.

Welcome back to another episode of Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, so glad to have you with us. A major inspiration for us in the podcast zone is media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, host of the Team Human podcast. As our digital age gets stranger, more fractured, and harder to parse, we find his humanist, consciousness-centered approach very helpful. One of the things he’s known for saying is “Look for the others”—the others who grok your worldview, whose enthusiasms and obsessions mirror your own. And no doubt about it, our guest this week, Andy Zax, feels very much like one of the others. Zax is a lifelong music devotee, and he’s worked on pretty much every side of the music business, writing copy and liner notes, producing records, working with labels like Rhino, and generally helping to shine a light on figures like Judee Sill, David Axelrod, Talking Heads, and many more. In 2019, he oversaw the massive Woodstock 50th anniversary project, restoring virtually all the audio associated with the historic concert. For Zax, all of this is something of a holy calling, and its led him to discoveries in unexpected places, like when he found an unreleased recording by electronic pioneer Mort Garson—known these days for the hippest ever music for plants to grow by LP Plantasia—nested in the archive of spoken word artist Rod McKuen. And not just any recording: we’re talking “Journey to the Moon,” music Garson composed for the live CBS News broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. That recording sees release this week via Sacred Bones’ Journey To the Moon and Beyond, released on Friday, July 21. Over the course of his long chat, we riff on the value of archived music, music streaming and music technology, audio quality, the merits of keeping your records unorganized, the haunting quality of Leonard Nimoy’s late ‘60s studio albums, and much more.  Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast network, check out Talkhouse for more great reading and listening. Next week on Transmissions? 20-year-old Navajo singer/songwriter Hataałii joins us to discuss his label debut and what music has meant to him growing up. Until then, this Transmission is concluded.  For heads, by heads. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page

It's the thick of the summer, which means your Transmissions correspondents are spending as much time in cool dark spaces as possible. One record that particularly suits the mood in our summer bunker hideaway is Gia Margaret's Romantic Piano. Though Margaret's 2018 debut, There’s Always Glimmer, was the striking work of a singer/songwriter, when medical issues put a strain on her voice, she turned to instrumental music, first with her ambient leaning self-titled 2020 album, and now Romantic Piano, a collection of moving piano compositions, mostly instrumental, that feels at once meditative and comforting. It’s the kind of music that carves out more space for the listener—and it turns out, it’s the kind of music that did something similar for its creator.  In our talk, we discuss the intuitive roots of Gia’s music, working with previous Transmissions guest David Bazan of Pedro the Lion, and much more. It’s a thoughtful, spacey conversation for you as we weather the way out heat of summers in a changing world Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast network, check out Talkhouse for more great reading and listening. Next week on the show, archivist Andy Zax shares the story of an unheard Mort Garson soundtrack and ponders alternate musical histories.

In “Lies and Distortion,” the opening essay of his book Unstrung: Rants And Stories Of a Noise Guitarist, Marc Ribot writes: “We seem to love broken voices in general: vocal cords eroded by whiskey and screaming, the junked-out weakness of certain horn players, distortion which signifies surpassing the capabilities of a tube or a speaker—voices that damage, but (at least in performance) don’t actually die…Was this always true? I don’t know.” In a way, that speaks to Ribot’s own playing, on his own and with many luminary collaborators. Though he can certainly play delicately, a frayed, beyond-the-limit quality informs Ribot’s sensibility. Since 2008, he’s released records with Ceramic Dog—a band featuring Ribott on vocals and guitar, previous Transmissions guest Shazhad Ismaily on bass and vocals, and Ches Smith on drums and vocals. On July 14th, the band releases another scalded and electrifying record with Connection.  Ribot is our guest this week on the show, and we’re pleased to present this rollicking, and at times charmingly contentious talk this on Transmissions. From his complicated relationship with his former Lounge Lizards collaborator John Lurie, to his views on how labor and capitalism inform his relationship with music, his history as a collaborator, Hal Willner’s Night Music, his recent embrace of the Gibson SG, and much more, this is a charged chat with a jazz-punk creative icon.  Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast network, check out Talkhouse for more great reading and listening. Next week on the show, Gia Margaret on her Romantic Piano.

While Black Lips have matured and grown since forming in 1999, the Atlanta-based garage band haven’t "settled down." Case in point is Apocalypse Love, the group’s 10th album, released last year on Fire Records. Incorporating gospel and country influences, it’s as strange and exciting as the band’s early work, but it also showcases a new depth to the band. Today on Transmissions, Black Lip Jared Swilley joins us to discuss his pentecostal roots, his minister father coming out of the closet, the importance of the Bomp Records catalog, his mentor The Mighty Hannibal, and much more.  Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network, check out Talkhouse for more great reading and listening, and support Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions by pledging on Patreon.  Next week on the show, guitarist Marc Ribot. 

This week on the show, we’re joined by London-based singer/songwriter David John Morris. Perhaps you know him for his work with folk rock band Red River Dialect, but for this talk, we mostly speak about his latest two solo albums, 2021’s Monastic Love Songs and 2022’s Wyld Love Songs, on which, to quote Aquarium Drunkard's Tyler Wilcox, balances "sacred and profane concerns, finding moments of welcome humor amidst more spiritual matters." He joined us to discuss his time in a Buddhist monastery, how it augmented his approach to music, his podcast listening habits, the consistent spiritual longing of the creative process and, truthfully, so much more.  Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Next week on the show, Jared Swilley of The Black Lips joins us to document the band's apocalyptic love story. This episode of Transmissions is brought to you by Dad Grass. Go to Dadgrass.com/Transmissions to try it out.

Writing about The Modern Folk’s Modern Folk One in our AD 2022 Year in Review, we called it, “A blend of field recordings, astral zones, freak outs, leisurely jams, and rustique concrète from the ever-prolific Josh Moss.” That gives you a little sense of the kind of music Moss creates with his ultra-prolific recording project. Head over to his Bandcamp and you'll find dozens and dozens of releases. Moss is such an inspiring creator, completely beholden to doing his own thing explicitly, so naturally, this conversation wanders down strange paths—from Bigfoot to Bob Dylan—and stands as one of our most discursive episodes to date.  This episode originally aired exclusively for our Patreon supporters, and we’re sharing it in the main feed as a reminder that if you want to support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon, you’ll get access to bonus audio and more. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Next week on the show, David John Morris of Red River Dialect joins us to discuss monasticism and music.  This episode of Transmissions is brought to you by Dad Grass. Go to Dadgrass.com/Transmissions to try it out.

Welcome to Transmissions. The name Bruce Licher commands respect in the underground world of independent rock. As musician and letterpress artist with Independent Project Press, he’s created art and bespoke album packaging for artists like R.E.M., Stereolab, Camper Van Beethoven, and more, and created music with post-punk combo Savage Republic, instrumental rock pioneers Scenic, and other projects. In 2020, he reactivated his Independent Project label, which he originally founded in 1980. On this episode, Bruce joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss his album art creations, his time in the Mojave Desert, the Southwestern dream-pop scene of the ‘90s, his letterpress origins, his work with R.E.M. and much more. He’s a lifer and a true example of sticking to your vision—we're really honored to have him on the show this week, and of course honored to have you joining us for this conversation.  Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Next week on the show, The Modern Folk. This episode of Transmissions is brought to you by Dad Grass. Go to Dadgrass.com/Transmissions to try it out.

This week on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions: ambient country trio Suss. On their own, Suss members Jonathan Gregg, Bob Holmes, and Pat Irwin have been involved in musical projects, with artists like k.d. Lang, the B-52s, John Cale, David Bowie, Norah Jones, the War on Drugs and Wilco—Irwin even contributed music to Nickelodeon's Rocko’s Modern Life.  Since 2018, they—along with the their departed bandmate, the late cartoonist and musician Gary Lieb—have created spectral, moody soundscapes they’ve dubbed “Ambient Country,” which is also the name of a podcast Holmes hosts, where he highlights “the roots of the high and lonesome sound,” weaving together strands of instrumental folk, Americana, ambient, electronic, soundscapes and psychedelia. The group’s latest is Suss, a self-titled collection that assembles four EPs—Night Suite, Heat Haze, Winter Was Hard, and Across the Horizon—into a majestic double album, full of slow motion twang, suspended synth drones, and gorgeous swells of pedal steel. This is country music mutated and stretched along a vast horizon, open music for open souls. It was a pleasure to host these three for a loose hang-out episode.  Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Next week on the show, Bruce Licher of Independent Project Press and Records, who joins us to reflect on a life of indie rock letter pressing and much, much more. This episode of Transmissions is brought to you by Dad Grass. Go to Dadgrass.com/Transmissions to try it out.

Today on the show, we’re joined by Allyson McCabe, author of the new book: Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters. McCabe is a writer, broadcaster and producer, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, BBC Culture, Wired and on NPR.  Writing about the book for an installment of Aquarium Drunkard Book Club, JJ Toth of Wooden Wand states, “Though McCabe’s impassioned defense of O’Connor in the wake of her many controversies is both heartfelt and persuasive, Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters is no hagiography: O’Connor’s noble desire—some might say compulsion—to express herself authentically could be messy, and the author reckons with O’Connor’s own gaffes and errors in judgment…”  Few artists have created a body of work as intense, as spiritually volatile, and as personal as O’Connor. In the book’s prologue, McCabe writes : “Insofar as O’Connor’s talents are inseparable from her struggles and triumphs, so are mine and yours.” That's the spirit that fuels this conversation: one of personal honesty and a believe that truth and beauty are ideas to be prized. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Next week on the show, ambient country pioneers Suss.

We're pleased to welcome Alex Pappademas and artist Joan LeMay on today's episode. Together, they have created a tremendous and deeply entertaining new book about one of Aquarium Drunkard's favorite bands: Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors From The Songs of Steely Dan.  The Danaissance is in full swing, and in Quantum Criminals, Pappademas writes that Steely Dan is the most 2020s of ‘70s bands. But what makes the book so great is its sidewise angle into the situation—this is no boring history or staid rock bio. With LeMay’s vivid illustrations leading the way, the duo welcomes us into the world of Becker and Fagen through their strange characters: Dr Wu, Napoleon, Peg, The Expanding Man. Like the band’s songs, it’s funny, wonky, and given over to wonderful digressions and detours. Ready your scotch whisky and fine Columbian, here’s Alex and Joan on Steely Dan. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Another University of Texas press author, Allyson McCabe, joins us to discuss Why Sinead O’Connor Matters.

Our guest this week is mystic poet, writer, publisher, and performance artist Janaka Stucky, who’s been hailed as “extraordinary" and "riveting” by no less an occult authority than Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. We were first introduced to Stucky through his work with Third Man Books, the literary division of Jack White’s Third Man empire, which released his 2015 collection The Truth is We Are Perfect and 2019’s epic poem, Ascend, Ascend. Rooted in horrific imagery and Kabbalistic prose and written over the course of twenty days as its author came in and out of trance states, Ascend Ascend is beautiful and horrifying—a meditation on decay and transcendence. Now, Stucky is presenting a musical version of the text. Recorded at the All Pilgrims Church in Seattle as part of a 7-city tour in 2019, the album finds Stucky joined by cellist Lori Goldston, known for her work with Nirvana, Earth, and Cat Power. This week on Transmissions, he connects with host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the poem, his musical journey, and touch on the ineffable and dread-soaked nature of reality. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay join us to discuss their new book, Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan.  This episode of Transmissions is brought to you by Dad Grass. Go to Dadgrass.com/Transmissions to try it out.

Today on Transmissions: Vashti Bunyan. Though her 1970 Joy Boyd-produced Just Another Diamond Day album was barely heard upon original release, its rediscovery by key members of the burgeoning freak folk scene in the mid-2000s helped make it a cult classic, a tender work of imagination and melody. Recently, Bunyan published her first book, Wayward: Just Another Life. It charts her youth in the orbit of the Rolling Stones, her musical and mental struggles, and details the horse-drawn cart journey across the countryside where the songs of Just Another Diamond Day came into shape. It is a vivid and touching read, sly, understated and emotionally expansive. Its quiet melancholy and endearing jokes feel a piece with her musical work. She joined us to discuss the book, that journey, and what it felt like to have her work rediscovered—and why she hates being called a “folk” singer.  This episode of Transmissions is brought to you by Dad Grass. Go to Dadgrass.com/Transmissions to try it out.

This week on Transmissions, Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner, the psychedelic folk duo Elkhorn. Their new album, On the Universe In All Directions, finds Jesse once again at his familiar 12-string acoustic guitar, but instead of Drew joining with his trademark Telecaster, he’s moved over to vibraphone and drums for this outing. Have no fear: the familiar Elkhorn magic is here in spades, but in brand new ways. The songs were born out of collaboration with New York consciousness group Psychedelic Sangha, and as JJ Toth puts it in his excellent liner notes, the sounds traverse “the valleys between fried cosmic psychedelia and American Primitive… splitting the difference between Popol Vuh’s devotional drift and the outer reaches of deep-cut classic rock while constantly keeping one foot in the river of the Ever-Weird America; call it Six Degrees of Uncle Dave Macon.”  From Buddhism to Fahey, from time slips to Aquarium Drunkard itself, this conversation unfolds and wanders, we hope you enjoy it. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? The incredible Vashti Bunyan, who joins us to discuss her vivid and deep book Wayward.

This week on Transmissions, we’re joined by writer and musician Jana Horn. Her new album The Window is the Dream is out now on No Quarter Records. Writing about it, Andy French at Raven Sings The Blues calls it a “delicate exfoliation of dream and reality.” When she’s not penning oracular folk rock songs, Horn teaches fiction at the University of Virginia and writes short fiction.  The Window is the Dream is a gem. It follows Optimism, which contains a song called “Jordan." Sometimes a song suggests something mysterious, something ineffable—nearly impossible to put into words, and that’s the case with “Jordan.” The song, as you’ll hear, is something of a mystery even to its author, a term Horn isn’t especially keen to apply to herself in the case of that song. If the notion of music or art working like a doorway into radical mystery appeals to you, you’ll find a lot of power and beauty in this chat, which centers on what we don’t know, what we don’t hear, and sometimes, what we don’t attempt to say.  Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Psychedelic folk duo Elkhorn join us for a head spinning conversation about underground music, spirituality, collaboration and much more. I hope you will join us. Until then, this Transmission is concluded. 

This week on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions: spiritual avant-garde jazz keyboardist Surya Botofasina. His new album is called Everyone’s Children and it was created in collaboration with previous Transmissions guest Carlos Niño, members of Botofasina's family, and other collaborators. Listening to his blissful synth meditations, listeners are treated to an open, cosmically vulnerable sound. This spiritual approach comes naturally to Botofasina. He grew up at Alice Coltrane’s Sai Anantam Ashram in the Santa Monica Mountains. Being there, and studying at the foot of Swamini Turiyasangitananda herself, profoundly shaped his musical worldview, which echoes in his present day compositions: "At this point, I feel that the music I want to be a part of at least, is a music, a sound, a frequency that advocates and promotes some sort of introspection, back to the here and now." Botofasina discusses his upbringing, connecting to the divine, growing up on hip-hop, and much more this week on Transmissions. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Jana Horn discusses her oracular folk rock and short story writing. This Transmission is concluded. 

In 1992, Eddie Chacon broke out as one-half of Charles & Eddie, his soul music duo with Charles Pettigrew. Their single "Would I Lie to You?” was a major international hit. Chacon was just a kid growing up in Castro Valley, California, when he decided he would be a music star. Before meeting Pettigrew, Eddie had played in a teenage band with Cliff Burton and Mike Bordin, later of Metallica and Faith No More. He had an alliance with Luther Campbell of the infamous 2 Live Crew, worked with the Dust Brothers. These days, he’s making oracular, synth driven soul music that draws equally on the mile deep grooves of Sly Stone’s drum machine and the cosmic synth hymns of Alice Coltrane. His latest album is called Sundown, out now from Stones Throw. This week on Transmissions, Eddie joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss his partnership with producer John Carroll Kirby, his fascinating years in the music industry, and his collaborative work with his wife, Sissy Chacon.  Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? A conversation with Surya Botofasina about his incredible synth meditations and growing up on Alice Coltrane’s Ashram.

Of all the ways to discover a song, there are few more inviting and experiential than driving down a desert highway and hearing something come in over the radio—a real life transmission. That was the case for host Jason P. Woodbury driving to Tucson, Arizona, in 2022, when “Puedas Decir De Mi,” by Adrian Quesada featuring Gaby Moreno came over the airwaves of KCXI Tucson community radio. Quesada is best known as one-half of The Black Pumas, his duo with singer/songwriter Eric Burton. But Quesada’s musical output is varied: he’s worked with Brownout, a Latin hard rock-tinged outfit, Grupo Fantasma, Adrian Younge, and many more. In 2022, he released his debut solo album, Boleros Psicodélicos, followed that same year by Jaguar Sound. He joined us to discuss his trajectory, his worldwide success, his roots in hip-hop, and much more. Transmissions is produced in partnership with Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patreon supporters. Next week on Transmissions? Future soul singer Eddie Chacon takes us back in time and to Ibiza for a conversation focused around his incredible new album Sundown. Subscribe to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions so you don’t miss it. This transmission is concluded.

This week on Transmissions, we’re talking past selves with Sharon Van Etten, who’s recently released an anniversary edition of her landmark 2012 album Tramp. Raw, personal, and born from personal upheaval, it's a gleaming example of what makes her songcraft so resonant. Something kind of unexpected happened when Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury revisited Tramp, which was produced by future Taylor Swift producer and National member Aaron Dessner and signaled a breakout moment for Van Etten. He found it very easy to "return" to the setting of 2012-13, via an interview he did with Van Etten way back then.  Listening to Tramp, one hears the way years can collapse in; Van Etten took time to discuss it with us, as well as her origins, her collaborators, and of course, her time on Twin Peaks: The Return, and why she was worried watching that show with her son in the house.  Transmissions is produced with the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? Producer and musician Adrian Quesada joins us to discuss his psychedelic latin sound, hard rock, and hip-hop roots.

Today on the show—two British Invasion legends: Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent of The Zombies. The band formed in the early ‘60s in St Albans, and remarkably, they are still out on the road and making new music. The band’s new album is called Different Game, and it’s out on Cooking Vinyl Records on March 31st. The album is being released in advance of a new feature documentary as well, called Hung Up On A Dream, directed by musician and filmmaker Robert Schwartzman in collaboration with Tom Hanks' Playtone media company, slated for release later in 2023. We've had the pleasure of seeing The Zombies a handful of times—unlike so many of their peers, they’re still truly active. How do you sustain that kind of run? That was our focus in this chat, which also touches on their classic single “Tell Her No” and landmark LP Odessey and Oracle, their relationship to super fan Tom Petty, and of course, we had to ask them about the fake Zombies that toured in the wake of the band’s late ‘60s breakup.  Transmissions is produced in partnership with Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patreon supporters. We’ll be back next Wednesday with a new episode featuring Sharon Van Etten.

Today on Transmissions, we’re joined by Saskatchewan-born songwriter Andy Shauf to discuss getting sober, God, and how these big topics relate to his latest album of introspective folk pop, Norm. Fans of his ‘70s-styled songcraft will still find lots to love here, but as we discuss, the production is deeply rooted in modern experimentation and the anything goes sonic possibilities of digital recording: “I like the way that records transport you. It doesn’t mean you have to listen to a record and be transported to the past; you can use new technologies to transport you to somewhere else…if not the future, a present that exists somewhere else.” Transmissions is produced in partnership with Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patreon supporters. We’ll be back next Wednesday with a new episode featuring Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone of The Zombies.

To quote album art master and AD visual guru D. Norsen: “Dorothy Moskowitz might not be a household name but was a musician on two of the headiest albums I know: 1967's Vocal And Instrumental Ragas From South India on Folkways and 1968's United States of America on CBS.” Moskowitz is our guest this week on Transmissions. She joins us to discuss not only the pioneering psychedelia she made in the past with collaborators like Joe Byrd and Country Joe, but also her brand new album, coming out soon from Tompkins Square. It’s called Under the Endless Sky, and it’s credited to Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy. Working with Italian electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino and composer and writer Luca Chino Ferrari, it represents a new vision from the 83 year old artist, at once apocalyptic, vivid, and transcendent.   Transmissions is produced in partnership with Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patreon supporters. We’ll be back next Wednesday with singer songwriter Andy Shauf.

This week on the show, a conversation with Philip Selway. You might know him best as the drummer of Radiohead, but he’s moved deeper and deeper in the last 13 years. His latest is called Strange Dance, and it’s out now on Bella Union. It’s a sweeping and textural listen, envisioned by its creator as something like a "Carole King record meets Daphne Oram." We caught up with Phil to dig in. Along the way, we discuss his songwriting approach, explore why he decided to not play drums on this new outing, the side project arrangements enjoyed by Radiohead, the band’s relationship to peers like Portishead, Wilco, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the 20th anniversary of Hail to the Thief, and much more.  Transmissions is produced in partnership with Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patreon supporters. We’ll be back next Wednesday with a mind blowing conversation with Dorothy Moskowitz, who was a member of the pioneering psych combo The United States of America. She’s returned with a new album, and group, The United States of Alchemy, and it’s an apocalyptic, vivid listen. Subscribe to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions so you don’t miss it. This transmission is concluded.

This week on Transmissions, we’re settling in for a tremendous conversation with Jason Stern and Don Fleming of the Lou Reed Archive. A decade on from his passing in 2013, Lou Reed's work remains as vital as ever, thanks in no small part to the efforts of people like Jason and Don. Working together with Laurie Anderson, they’ve helped bring a number of projects into existence, including the New York Public Library’s Caught Between the Twisted Stars exhibit, which runs through March 4th, and last year’s revelatory demos collection Words and Music: May 1965. Next month sees the release of a new book, The Art Of The Straight Line, which assembles Reed’s unpublished musings on tai chi, music, and meditation.  Both Jason and Don are, on their own, fascinating music lifers. In addition to his own bands, like Velvet Monkeys and Gumball, Fleming has worked with Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, Nancy Sinatra, and many more. His work as an archivist is equally impressive, and it’s found him working with the Alan Lomax, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ken Kesey estates. Meanwhile, Jason worked directly with Laurie Anderson and Lou in his final years.  This talk covers fascinating aspects of Lou Reed’s life, offers insight into his art, addresses controversies, and much more. Transmissions is produced in partnership with Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patreon supporters. We’ll be back next Wednesday with Philip Selway of Radiohead. Subscribe to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions so you don’t miss it. This transmission is concluded.

We’re hanging out with Mac DeMarco this week on Transmissions. For the last decade plus, he’s been a reliable source for laid back DIY music—a post-indie sleaze crooner with a warped sense of humor and charm. His latest album forgoes lyrics in favor of instrumentals. It’s called Five Easy Hot Dogs and it came about as the result of series of recording sessions Mac underwent while on a road trip. Cruising around with a fan full of gear and a head full of ideas, DeMarco let the songs flow and named each composition after the locale where he recorded it. We caught up with Mac to discuss life in LA, quitting smoking, the influence of heavy grade players in his orbit like Thundercat, Domi and JD Beck, covering Metallica, working with Tim Heidecker, Lil Yachty, and much more. Transmissions is produced in partnership with Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patreon supporters. We’ll be back next Wednesday with Don Fleming and Jason Stern of the Lou Reed Archive, who join us for a wide ranging conversation. Subscribe to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions wherever you get podcasts so you don’t miss it. This transmission is concluded.

This week on Transmissions, a revelatory talk with Max Turnbull of Badge Époque Ensemble. Last year, BEE released two great projects: the remix album Clouds of Joy: Chance of Reign, a collaboration with producer Lammping and rappers like Boldy James, THE03, and others, and the magisterial Clouds of Joy, which landed on the Aquarium Drunkard Year in Review best of the year list. A stirring blend of jazz, choral music, prog, funk, R&B, and indie rock, it’s a layered and dynamic creation. When we interviewed Turnbull for AD back in 2021, he said, “I like the idea of music as a communicator for philosophic or spiritually inclined ideas.” We knew a proper pod talk was in order and sure enough, this chat doesn't disappoint. We discussed Max’s work with his wife, Meg Remy of U.S. Girls, his lifelong hip-hop influence, and the myriad and mysterious ways music connects to listeners. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forward your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patrons—if you'd like to become one, visit us on Patreon. We’ll be back next Wednesday with a very special guest, Mac Demarco, joins us to discuss hitting the road, quitting smoking, jazz, and more.

This week on Transmissions: Nina Persson and James Yorkston join host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss The Great White Sea Eagle, their low key and homey collection of folk rock. Created in collaboration with the Second Hand Orchestra, it’s saturated with soul and kind wit. Calling in from their respective places in Sweden and Scotland, Persson and Yorkston joined us to discuss how the improvisatory album came together, and from there, we explore a bevy of interesting topics, including run-ins with members of Black Sabbath, Nina's interactions with Tom Jones, Yorkston’s ill-fated tour with John Martyn, and much more.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forward your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patrons—if you'd like to become one, visit us on Patreon. Next week on the show, Max Turnbull of Badge Époque Ensemble joins us for a far out talk about music, creativity, and consciousness. 

We're joined this week by James McNew of Yo La Tengo and Dump. For decades now, he’s been a prolific source of engaged independent rock music—the kind we like here at Aquarium Drunkard. As past work like I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass proves, YLT are masters of a great sardonic album title, and on February 10th, the band continues that tradition with its 16th album, This Stupid World.   When McNew and host Jason P. Woodbury connected, Yo La Tengo had recently finished its annual Hanukkah celebration, which is where we pick up our talk. But from there, the conversation roves into interesting places: McNew’s dalliances with hip-hop, important Dump anniversaries—including the 25th anniversary of his Prince covers album. From Yoko Ono to Sun Ra to the Dave Matthews Band, plenty of surprises pop up in this conversation—just like the YLT discography.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patrons—if you'd like to become one, visit us on Patreon. Next week on the show: James Yorkston and Nina Persson of The Cardigans discuss their new album, The Great White Sea Eagle.

Our 2023 season is officially underway. This week on the show, Chad Clark of Beauty Pill. He and his bandmate Erin Nelson joined AD in March last year, and on January 20th, Ernest Jenning Record Co. releases Blue Period, a double LP compilation featuring music Clark recorded for the legendary punk label Dischord Records between 2003-2005—including the full-length LP The Unsustainable Lifestyle, the You Are Right To Be Afraid EP, and a whole slew of outtakes, demos, and rarities. When this music was originally released, fans accustomed to Clark’s pioneering punk band Smart Went Crazy, early Beauty Pill, or Clark’s work with Fugazi and The Dismemberment Plan, wasn’t sure what to make of its art-pop ambitions, detours into jazz, and complex lyricism. Clark and Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury get into all that, and along the way, they touch on his recurring health issues, race, mortality, what it feels like when critics dismiss your work, and much more. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its Patrons—if you'd like to become one, visit us on Patreon. Next week on the show: James McNew of Dump and Yo La Tengo.

Welcome to the final episode of Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions’ 2022 season. We saved a great one for the finale: Kid Congo Powers. Born Brian Tristan in La Puente, California, he eventually adopted the stage name which appears on the cover of Some New Kind of Kick, a new memoir that documents his time in The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and The Gun Club, with whom he’s credited for “excessive feedback, guitar and slide guitar, whirling whirlies, maracas and ancient mutterings.” And that’s not all it covers. Kid’s story is a layered one. The book, written with Chris Campion, gets into all of it, including frank examinations of queer identity, struggles with addiction, and his connection to the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce—who’s dream visit inspired his 2020 Pink Monkey Birds Latin psych epic “He Walked In.”  At once hilarious, tender, and possessing an almost dreamlike spiritual quality, it’s a great read. And it arrives alongside two new records: Summer Forever and Ever, the second album by Wolfmanhattan Project, his trio with Mick Collins of The Dirtbombs and Gories and Bob Bert, formerly of Sonic Youth, and Kid Congo Powers and The Near Death Experience Live in St. Kilda, a live concert taped in Australia. Both will be out physically in 2023—but you can listen to them digitally now. Or rather, after you finish this conversation between host Jason P. Woodbury and Kid, fellow Arizonans. Thanks so much for listening to Transmissions. Our 2022 season closes with this episode. We’ll be back in early 2023, keep your eyes on Aquarium Drunkard for more info and check out the Patreon for bonus content we’ll be sharing over the next couple months. This season of Transmissions is concluded. 

Writing about the Bedhead career retrospective 1992-1998 for Pitchfork, writer Mark Richardson put it nicely: “Bedhead had no time for or interest in anything extraneous to the music…And this is what it sounded like—serious, intense, smart, beautiful, occasionally frightening...” Today on the show, we are joined by the Kadane Brothers, who founded Bedhead in 1991 in Dallas, Texas. Matt Kadane calls in from his place in New York, where he teaches history, and Bubba Kadane from Texas, where he composes music for film and television.  One of the defining bands of the “slowcore” movement, Bedhead had three guitars but was sparse, melding post-punk to humming Velvets-inspired intensity. Following the end of Bedhead, they formed another pioneering indie rock band, The New Year, and they’ve dabbled in side projects all along the way, including Overseas, with David Bazan of Pedro the Lion and Will Johnson of Centro-matic, and Bubba’s ambient project Sigh of Relief. On this episode of Transmissions, we dig into Bedhead’s history and idiosyncratic approach, exploring how they worked “remotely” and by telephone long before remote work was standard, the space carved out by Bedhead’s unique sound, their cover of Cher’s “Believe,” and much more.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Kid Congo Powers.

On Slow Fawn, Sam Cohen, a producer, songwriter, and musician known for his work with Apollo Sunshine, Yellowbirds, Kevin Morby, Danger Mouse and Karen O, creates a glowing, meditative space. Inspired by Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air and drawing from long jam sessions with his collaborators, it reflects Sam's desire to "create a world without friction, where you could float and feel joy." Combining dashes of jazz, synthesized new age, pop, and minimalist grace and it’s a record we've returned to many times over the last few months. Cohen joins host Jason P. Woodbury from his studio in upstate New York to discuss music's power to connect us to each other, his motivation for creating music, and opening up his own studio. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Matt and Bubba Kadane of Bedhead and The New Year.

This week on the show, Joe Rainey. Hailing from Minnesota, he’s a powwow singer of the Red Lake Ojibwe tribe. He’s known for collaborations with Bon Iver, Chance the Rapper and Alan Sparhawk of Low, and in May he released his debut solo album, Niineta on Justin Vernon’s 38do3d label. Created in conjunction with producer Andrew Broder, it pairs his vocals with samples culled from his vast collection of powwow tapes, thundering percussion, and dense, thickly layered electronic soundscapes. With its double-meaning titles like “No Chants” and “Easy on the Cide” nodding toward Rainey’s understated sense of humor, Niineta takes on a collage-like quality that bends time. He joined us from to discuss his days traveling the powwow circuit, how the collaboration with Broder came to be, and his teenage interest in rap.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Sam Cohen.

This week on our weekly interview podcast, a wide-ranging interview with Clem Burke of Blondie. He joins us to discuss the band’s early years, interactions with luminaries like Robert Fripp and Giorgio Moroder, the fashion forward cultural shift, disco, and Numero Group’s monumental box set collection: Blondie: Against The Odds 1974-1982. A game conversationalist, Burke brings a quick wit and sharp intellect to this chat, which traces the group's evolution, early days, and his work as a case study documenting the physical condition of drummers. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Joe Rainey.

This week on the show, Danalogue (Dan Leavers), Betamax (Max Hallett) and Shabaka Hutchings, known collectively as the improvisational crew The Comet is Coming. You might know Dan and Max from Soccer96, and Hutchings from his many projects, including Shabaka and the Ancestors and Sons of Kemet. Their new album is called Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam. Recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, it’s a blur of electronic music, funk ferocity, and free jazz squall. As that title likely suggests, this conversation goes all over the map, digging into concepts like apocalyptic imagination, the dynamics of improv, and artificial intelligence.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Clem Burke of Blondie.

Welcome to another episode of Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, we're so glad to have you here. Today on the show, Ken Shipley of Numero Group. October has arrived, but the storied Chicago label was still in the midst of its September ‘90s month celebration of reissues from Codeine, Karate, Current, and Unwound when we taped this conversation. Since then, the label has announced a truly bonkers 20th anniversary celebration for 2023, which will see Unwound, Codeine, The Hated, Karate, Ida, Chisel, Everyone Asked About You, Ui (featuring Transmissions guest Sasha Frere-Jones), Rex and Tsunami for the Feb. 18-19 event, which will be held at Los Angeles’ Palace Theater. In this conversation, Shipley and host Jason P. Woodbury discuss how the label has evolved, aesthetics, the new Blondie boxset, Shipley’s midwest emo roots and pre-Numero days at Rykodisc and Tree Records, whether or not Numero will ever release a nu-metal reissue and lots more.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: The Comet is Coming

With his debut book My Life in the Sunshine: Searching For My Father and Discovering My Family, Nabil Ayers walks a tightrope, balancing personal and familial history with stories about a life spent playing music, working in record stores, and falling in love with music. On this episode of Transmissions, Ayers discusses it all with host Jason P. Woodbury: wild record store tales, formative live music experiences, his work with 4AD, The Control Group, and Beggars Group, and his complicated relationship with his father Roy Ayers. Through out the talk, you'll also hear selections from Valley of Search, the 1975 free jazz album by his uncle Alan Braufman, which Ayers founded the label of the same name to reissue. An open, emotive, and riveting chat, we're thrilled to share this one with our listeners. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Ken Shipley of Numero Group.

Welcome to another episode of Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson and guitarist Yonatan Gat join us to discuss their collaborative work as Medicine Singers, which pairs the powwow drum and the voices of the Eastern Medicine Singers with Yonatan’s electrified guitar and contributions from experimental composer Joe Rainey, Ikue Mori of DNA, Thor Harris of Swans, previous Transmissions guest Laraaji, and the late jamie branch. Tapped into a kind of frenzied energy, the album is an overpowering force, and it features a transcendent cover of Link Wray’s immortal “Rumble.” Ahead of a performance September 24 at Pioneer Works with guests Lee Ranaldo, Laraaji, and Thor Harris, Jamieson and Gat join us to discuss their collaboration. A quick word: sorry about some of the audio in this one; there was an issue with a connection, but the conversation is more than worth it.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Medicine Singers.

Today on Transmissions, representatives of the Cosmic Network Gloria de Oliveira and Dean Hurley join us to discuss their new album of dream pop bliss and New Ages swoon, Oceans of Time, out this week from Sacred Bones Records.  Dean is best known for his work with David Lynch, with whom he’s collaborated on sound design, music, and more since 2006’s Inland Empire. Gloria is a German-Brazilian songwriter and singer. Without ever meeting in person, they fashioned Oceans of Time. Part Cocteau Twins, part Pure Moods, and also entirely its own thing, it’s a fantastic recording. In this interview, they join host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss their haunting cover of Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser’s “All Flowers in Time,” the myriad ways Lynch influenced the project, and the ever elusive nature of time and existence. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Medicine Singers.

We're sitting down with Chicago sisters Eibur, Charlene, and Chanté Stepney, who join us to discuss the work of their father, the late Charles Stepney. As a producer and arranger, Stepney was at the helm for incredible '60s and '70s work with Earth, Wind & Fire, Rotary Connection, The Dells, Muddy Waters, Minnie Riperton, Ramsey Lewis, Terry Callier, and many more before his passing in 1976. But on Step on Step, a mind-blowing new collection from International Anthem, a new vision of Stepney emerges: that of a home recording genius. Propelled by a drum machine and warm synths, the music here was recorded alone on a 4-track in his Southside Chicago basement, it retains the sophistication of his studio efforts but presents his sound in a raw, utterly unvarnished manner. As the Summer of Stepney rolls on, the Stepney Sisters join host Jason P. Woodbury to unpack who Stepney was, his relationship with his wife and partner Rubie, his love of science fiction, and his status as one of hip-hop’s most sampled composers.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network and you can find us on Patreon. Next week on the show: Gloria de Oliveira and David Lynch sound designer Dean Hurley join us to discuss their new age/cosmic synth album Oceans of Time.

Our return guest today on Transmissions: Chris Forsyth. The Philadelphia-based guitarist and bandleader is back with a new album, Evolution Here We Come. On it his backed up by an all-star cast including Tom Malach (Garcia Peoples), Douglas McCombs (Tortoise), and Ryan Jewell (Ryley Walker), with guest appearances by Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Steve Wynn and Linda Pitmon of The Dream Syndicate, and more. Produced by Dave Harrington, the album leans into electronic textures, conjuring into the existence a zone where ZZ Top goes kosmische musik or Popol Vuh dons skinny ties. Forsyth joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the interplay between man and machine, power pop, improv ethics, and more. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Charlene, Chante, and Eibur Stepney, who join us to discuss the work of their father, the late Charles Stepney, as featured on International Anthem's fantastic new release, Step on Step.

Today on an all-new episode of our weekly interview podcast: Steve Marion, better known by his recording name Delicate Steve. As a sideman, Steve’s joined up with folks like Paul Simon, MacDeMarco, Tame Impala, The Black Keys and Yeasayer, but all along he’s made his own instrumental guitar recordings. His latest album is out on Anti Records, and it’s called After Hours, and it blends viby rhythms with cyber rock riffs, always placing an emphasis on emotionally compelling melodies. For this talk, we dug into his cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah," his work with previous Transmissions guest Shahzad Ismaily, his complicated artistic relationship with Kanye West, and his work on Amen Dunes’ Freedom.  Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Chris Forsyth joins us to discuss Evolution Here We Come.

Built on loops culled from doo wop, psychedelic pop, and early rock & roll records, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom's new album Reset is an exuberant and oracular listen. Mining resonance in the past—including musical themes that recall their past work, both solo and in Animal Collective and Spaceman 3—the duo create the kind of ecstatic music that renders time elastic. In this all-new episode of our weekly interview podcast Transmissions, Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) and Peter Kember (Sonic Boom) sit down with host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss their collaborative partnership, the influence of far out futurist Buckminster Fuller, memory and musical optimism. We connected with these frequent collaborators from their respective places in Portugal following after a long night of celebration. Thanks for checking out Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review—or just forwarding your favorite episodes to a friend. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: plugging in with guitarist Delicate Steve.

If you’re a fan of jittery guitar-driven indie rock, you’re probably most familiar with our guest today, Glenn Mercer from his work with The Feelies. While this episode of Transmissions doesn't skimp on Feelies discussion, Mercer also discusses the diversity of his catalog, including work The Trypes, whose 40th anniversary edition of Music for Neighbors was released earlier this year, and his solo canon. Along the way: the Velvet Underground, The Dead, Peter Buck of R.E.M., his tribute works to David Bowie, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, and Marc Bolan, plus even more.  If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review. We appreciate you helping us connect with new listeners however you do so. You can listen to and subscribe to Transmissions via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and of course, the trusty RSS feed. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Panda Bear and Sonic Boom discuss their new album Reset.

We’ve been captivated by the striking music featured on Cheri Knight’s American Rituals lately—one of our favorite songs from it opens this episode, the mantric “Prime Numbers.” Recorded in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Knight’s experimental compositions recall the minimalism of John Cage or Meredith Monk, but are shot through with a post-punk streak, all delivered with meditative, repetitive vocal abstractions that evoke her interest in Buddhism and meditation.   Hailing from Western Massachusetts, where she grew up a “farm girl,” which she remains to this day, Knight’s travels eventually took her away from Olympia. She joined up with an alt-country band, Blood Oranges, and after that embarked on a solo career. Cheri is a rare person who connects equally to Pauline Oliveros and Steve Earle, who we discuss in this episode.  Thank you for listening to Transmissions. If you dig the show, please consider leaving a five star rating or a review. We appreciate you helping us connect with new listeners however you do so. You can listen to and subscribe to Transmissions via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and of course, the trusty RSS feed. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: Glenn Mercer of New Jersey indie rock legends The Feelies.

Our guest this week on the show is Mitch Horowitz. Perhaps you’ve heard the occult scholar and author on Coast to Coast AM or The Duncan Trussell Family Hour or perhaps you’ve heard him right here on Transmissions. With the occasion of his new book, Daydream Believer: Unlocking the Ultimate Power of your Mind, out this week, as well as the forthcoming essay collection, Uncertain Places: Essays on Occult and Outsider Experiences out on October 18, we invited Mitch back to the show for another fascinating and wind ranging conversation about mind causation, ESP, the paranormal, and music. Daydream Believer—yes, it’s named for the Monkees song—focuses not only on the subject of research into psi, or extrasensory perception, but also examines some of the pitfalls that Aquarian or New Age thinkers sometimes stumble into. Meanwhile, in Uncertain Places, Horowitz offers thoughtful and entertaining essays about UFOs, bigfoot, gnosticism, the historical roots of the Illuminati conspiracy theory, and many other fascinating topics, as well as an uncut version of his David Lynch interview. Horowitz joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss all that and more. Thank you for listening to Transmissions. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Check out Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon to support the show. Rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word if you dig Transmissions. Next week on the show: minimalist Cheri Knight joins us to discuss American Rituals.

Welcome to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. Our guest today on the show Glenn Jones, who joins us to discuss his new album Vade Mecum, out now on Thrill Jockey Records, as well as touch on and illuminate the complicated legacy of John Fahey. Both solo and as a member of Cul-de-Sac, Jones has been a force of creative energy in the world of solo acoustic guitar, guitar soli, or American Primitive music, a term we discuss in this chat. Before we get into the talk, we want to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Steve Lowenthal, for his great book on Fahey, Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist. Though we mostly focus on Jones’ own work—and the new album is a fantastic example of what makes him such an enduring presence in the avant-guitar field—we do at one point shift into discussion of the complicated relationship Fahey had with race. Steve's book serves as a great resource. We also want to thank Glenn for the candidness and honesty he brought to our talk.  I want to thank you for listening to Transmissions. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Check out Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon to support the show.

Crossover time. Today on the show, Canadian podcaster, broadcaster, music journalist, and music lifer Vish Khanna. He’s the host of the long running and inspirational Kreative Kontrol, a podcast dedicated to creativity. Here’s what Bonnie “Prince” Billy said about talking with him: “…it’s rewarding, relaxing, fulfilling to engage with Vish, as the exchanges have always been just rife with that rarest rarity: communication.” Alongside Will Oldham, Vish has hosted members of Pavement, Sonic Youth, Warren Ellis of The Bad Seeds, Jeff Tweedy, Ian MacKaye, and many other major alt rock figures. For this episode of Transmissions, Khanna and host Jason P. Woodbury embark on a revealing conversation about niche music podcasting and creative process. Rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word if you dig Transmissions, which is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Wanna go further? Check out Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Next week on the show: guitarist Glenn Jones on his new album Vade Mecum and John Fahey. Transmission concluded. 

On Joan Shelley's fantastic new album The Spur, the singer/songwriter reaches out from a place of solitude, seeking connection. Rooted in Britfolk aesthetics, it's an album that feels intimate but spacious too, all finger picked acoustic guitars, Richard Thompson inspired electrics, and sparse percussion. Alongside her collaborators, who include producer James Elkington, Bill Callahan, with whom she sings a duet, and Shelley's husband, archivist and guitarist Nathan Salsburg, she explores deeply human territory with an almost supernatural calm in her voice. We’ve interviewed Joan for Aquarium Drunkard a few times, but this is her first appearance on Transmissions. She spoke with host Jason P. Woodbury from Kentucky, and this talk offers a respite from the intensity of the news cycle.  Rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word if you dig Transmissions, and if you want to take things further, we’re on Patreon. We are a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show: podcaster and music lifer Vish Khanna of the Kreative Kontrol podcast.

As leader of The Hold Steady and a solo artist, Craig Finn specializes in unlikely redemption stories. His latest is called A Legacy of Rentals. Like his best work, it traces the lines of down and out characters, imbuing them with humanity and inner drama. Finn is one of the most empathetic indie rock writers out there, and to that end, he’s also launched a new podcast called That's How I Remember It, dedicated to exploring the connection between memory and creativity with guests like Fred Armisen, Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers, and Brian Koppelman of Billions. On his week's episode of Transmissions, Finn joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss memory, Judee Sill, his mood in New York during the "rock is back" era, and much more.  If you want to support Transmissions, check out Aquarium Drunkard’s Patreon page. We’re a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network.

This week on Transmissions, a post-punk roundtable with Mark Stewart of The Pop Group, Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire, Eric Random (The Buzzcocks, Nico). On Mark’s latest album, VS, they team up for “Cast No Shadow,” which was made in response to the Simon Reynolds book Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984, and Nikolaos Katranis, Russell Craig Richardson, and Academy-award winner Leon Gast’s forthcoming documentary of the same name.  How did post-punk hit their respective places? What role did regionalism play in the music’s development? These three join us for a freewheeling hour of discussion and deconstruction—talking about the VU, German cosmic music, black magic, and more.  If you want to support Transmissions, check out Aquarium Drunkard's Patreon page. We're a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on the show, Craig Finn of the Hold Steady joins us to discuss his new record, A Legacy of Rentals, and his new podcast, That’s How I Remember It. This Transmission is concluded. 

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, with your host Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, we're joined by Andrew Khedoori and Mark Gowing of Longform Editions.  Home to extended experimental works by previous Transmissions guests like William Tyler, Carlos Nino, and Angel Bat Dawid—plus, many more avant composers and music makers—it’s tempting to think of Longform Editions as a “record label,” but Andrew and Mark consider it an online gallery for musical works. Every two months, they upload four new entries. On June 15th, the same day this podcast is released, they offer up a new batch, featuring Sam Prekop of Sea and Cake, Foodman, Megan Alice Clune, and Nailah Hunter. Mark and Andrew have a long history in the music industry and are lifelong record collectors. They joined us to discuss the way Longform works, how they crafted it as a sustainable project for both artists who contribute and themselves, the process of deep listening, and much more.  Thanks for listening to Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions. You can support this podcast by checking out our Patreon page. Help support independent media. And of course, rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word if you dig Transmissions, which is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network.

This week on the show, we're joined by Chicago indie trio Horsegirl—Penelope Lowenstein, Nora Cheng and Gigi Reece. Their new album, Versions of Modern Performance, out now on Matador Records, echoes classic indie rock—think Sonic Youth (after all, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley guest star on one song), Dinosaur Jr, The Clean, and The Breeders. But what really makes it such a compelling listen is the interplay between these three young people. Horsegirl does everything as a group, from answering emails to taking meetings, so naturally all three members join host Jason P. Woodbury to dig in, discussing high school, how the pandemic solidified their band, working at Electrical Audio with producer John Agnello, and trading off on a Bass VI instead of a standard four-string. We hope you enjoy this episode. If you do, please consider leaving us a rating and or review. It helps new folks find the show. Transmissions airs wherever you get podcasts each Wednesday. If you'd like to support the show, please consider a pledge to Aquarium Drunkard's Patreon. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse podcast network.

This week on Transmissions: producer, television music maker, radio host, and overall interesting guy Ben Vaughn. His new album is called The World of Ben Vaughn. It was released physically on vinyl back on Record Store Day and digitally earlier this month. Rooted in gentle strums,much of its sweetly traditional songcraft was recorded out in Vaughn’s Relay Shack studio in the Mojave Desert, and it echoes the most rustic of selections he plays on his great radio show The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn.  Ben’s produced albums by Arthur Alexander, Nancy Sinatra, Charlie Feathers, and more—as well as collaborating with Alex Chilton and Alan Vega. For this episode, we spoke about the new album, his work as a Hollywood television music maker, producing Ween’s irreverent cult classic 12 Golden Country Greats and much more. Thanks for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this program, please consider leaving a rating or review. Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. 

Today on Transmissions, London-based jazz and beat artist Ben Marc. He’s known for his work with Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke and with Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and Shabaka Hutchings of Sons of Kemet. His new album is called Glass Effect and it blends classical, electronic music, and deeply felt spiritual jazz. He joined us to discuss his work with the Sun Ra Arkestra, Astake, working with Jonny Greenwood and his bandmate Tom Skinner’s work in Radiohead side project The Smile. You can support this podcast by checking out our Patreon page. Transmissions is written and produced by Jason P. Woodbury. Our audio is edited by Andrew Horton. Our show is executive produced by Justin Gage, Aquarium Drunkard founder. AD Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word if you dig the show.

Today we're joined by Jeff Cloud of Velvet Blue Music, known for his work with Pony Express, Joy Electric, and California dream pop band Starflyer 59. Cloud founded Velvet Blue in 1996, and the label has been home to pivotal releases by people like Richard Swift, with whom Cloud played in Pony Express and Starflyer 59, the Broadway Hush, an early project headed by Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw of Cotton Jones, Fine China, and many more. Totally blue collar in spirit and independent, the label continues to release new music from groups like the synth pop outfit Golf Slang, as well as Ronnie Martin of Joy Electric and Jason Martin's Starflyer 59 gem, Vanity. We're happy to have him on Transmissions to discuss it all—meeting the Martin brothers, Velvet Blue, David Lynch, and much more.  You can support this podcast by checking out our Patreon page.  Transmissions is written and produced by Jason P. Woodbury. Our audio is edited by Andrew Horton. Our show is executive produced by Justin Gage, Aquarium Drunkard founder. AD Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word if you dig the show.

Welcome back to Transmissions. Today on the show we’re joined by Sarah Martin of Glasgow's Belle and Sebastian. The legendary Scottish indie band has a new album out now on Matador, A Bit Of Previous. Offering sunshine pop, disco-inflected groovers, and plenty of jangle, it's a record that finds Belle and Sebastian sounding very much refreshed. Martin joined the band just after it started, linking up with songwriter Stuart Murdoch right before the recording of the landmark album If You're Feeling Sinister. She joined host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the new record, the band’s history, that infamous scene in High Fidelity, the Belle and Sebastian cruise and much more.  You can support this podcast by checking out our Patreon page.  Transmissions is written and produced by Jason P. Woodbury. Our audio is edited by Andrew Horton. Our show is executive produced by Justin Gage, Aquarium Drunkard founder. AD Transmissions is part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word if you dig the show.

"It's funny, I was working up to it for so long...it's been my dream." This week on an all-new episode of our weekly Transmissions podcast, return guest Kurt Vile joins us from his basement studio Overnight KV to discuss his great new album (watch my moves). Loose, sprawling, and filled with spacey but intimate jams that couple drum machines, smoke-curled guitars, and off the cuff vocals, the record feels like being invited into Vile's head to sit down and hang out a spell. Since emerging from the Philadelphia freak underground in the mid-2000s, Vile has established himself as a quixotic singer/songwriter. Like his former bandmates in War on Drugs, Vile draws from rock & roll traditions, but turns them sidewise, imbuing his songs with a sidewise humor and charm. (watch my moves) is his first for Verve Records. This conversation with host Jason P. Woodbury is also like being invited into KV's head, as he shares thoughts on the new record, unpacks what he learned during the pandemic, reflects on working with producer Rob Schnapf, digs into his favorite Bruce Springsteen deep cuts, and offers musings on Neil Young, Kesha, and Sun Ra. Thanks for listening to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. We're part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe to Transmissions on your favorite platform and tell your friends to listen to the show. We'll be back next Wednesday with another new episode.

Liz Lamere and Jared Artuad join us this week on Aquarium Drunkard's weekly talk show podcast Transmissions to discuss the life, work, and creative philosophies of the late Alan Vega. As one-half of Suicide, alongside his partner Martin Rev, Vega blazed a trail of provocative, synth-driven art rock that was often too punk for the punks. From there, his solo career found him making forays into pop music with producer Ric Ocasek, painting, and constantly creating, rarely working on any terms other than his own. For this program, his widow and creative partner Lamere and collaborator Artaud join host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the Vega Vault, a vast trove of unreleased material that's yielded posthumous releases like It and Mutator on the Sacred Bones label, Surrender, a new career spanning Suicide comp, and Liz Lamere's Keep It Alive, out May 20 on In the Red Records.

Writer, musician, and prolific TikToker Sasha Frere-Jones joins us on Transmissions, Aquarium Drunkard's weekly talk show podcast to discuss music criticism, listening habits, and self forgiveness. As a player, he's known for his work with the fantastic post-rock band Ui, whose funky rhythms dipped into dub and electronica, the avant-rock band Body Meπa, where he plays alongside Greg Fox, Grey McMurray, and previous Transmissions guest Melvin Gibbs, and the ambient project Calvanist. As a writer, he's penned essays and criticism for The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, and dozens of other outlets. Most recently, he's focused on the S/FJ Substack newsletter, where he shares music he's interested in and other cultural ephemera. Today on the show he joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss recovery, navigating online life, and music. A note for audiophiles: just like online life, there's a lot of extra clicks and noise in this one, but we believe the talk is more than worth sharing. Enjoy.

Today on Transmissions, guest Owen Ashworth of Advance Base/Casiotone For the Painfully Alone and Orindal Records joins host Jason P. Woodbury for a conversation covering life as an indie artist/label head, the merits of "gloss era" Bruce Springsteen, the influence of David Bazan of Pedro the Lion and Joe Pera, CCR, working primarily as a solo artist, and diving into the heartland country music of KT Oslin and Nancy Griffith. Also covered? The importance of cool uncles and raiding your parents' record collections. Ashworth is a DIY lifer and a true head, and this conversation is as openhearted as you might expect.

Today on an all-new episode of Transmissions, Aquarium Drunkard's weekly interview podcast, we're joined by artist and creator Meredith Graves. She’s best known for her work with the punk band Perfect P***y, her label Honor Press, and as the director of music at Kickstarter, where she’s also the Head Witch in Charge, responsible for the Magic and Divination section of the crowdfunding site. Graves joined host Jason P. Woodbury to speak about magic and arcana, about the “purgative ritual” that is Perfect P***y’s 2014 album Say Yes to Love, the work of previous Transmissions guest Mitch Horowitz, her time at MTV News and the incredible artists that allowed her to interact with, Lana Del Rey, Wilco, and so much more. 

Roll up/that's an invitation...Today on the show, we're joined by a return guest, Ryan Walsh of Hallelujah the Hills. He’s appeared here on the show previously to discuss his great Van Morrison book, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 and now he joins host Jason P. Woodbury for a conversation about Van Morrison, the paranormal, and mystic corners of The Beatles' universe. On April 1st, you're going to want to head over to ESPeatles.com, to discover a truly freaky Beatles project, related to the obscure occultist HX Newhaven. To learn more, press play...

Right from the top of LABYRINTHITIS, the 13th album from our guest today, new wave art rock master Dan Bejar of Destroyer, you get an example of what makes him such a compelling artist. “It’s in Your Heart Now” starts, and then its real beat stutters in, interrupting a briefly established groove. But rather than feeling like an intrusion, this feels like blooming, and from there the song builds in layers of Cure-esque guitar and cascading synthesizers, with Bejar doing his signature vocal and lyrical darting a top the neon landscape. Today on Transmissions, he joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the perils of making the new record, This Night, the virtues of being a dilettante, nu-metal, Van Morrison, New Order, and much more.

Our guests this week are Chad Clark and Erin Nelson of DC post-punk band Beauty Pill. Clark emerged from the DC/Dischord punk scene with his band Smart Went Crazy, and he worked on records by Fugazi, Dismemberment Plan, Lungfish, Q & Not U, and many more. He formed Beauty Pill in the early 2000s and it's proved a musically restless unit ever since. He's allowed the band to shift and morph in public and in 2012 the group was commissioned to craft the album Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are live in public. Most recently, the band has released some great EPs, including Instant Night and Please Advise. For this episode of Transmissions, host Jason P. Woodbury spoke with Clark and Nelson about the oblique lyrical references in these works—get ready for our most Matt Damon-centric episode yet—as well as dig into the influence of Miles Davis, William Eggleston, and collaborations with the Taffety Punk Theatre Company.

Though Sonic Youth ended a decade ago, the band's archives have continued to surprise. The latest from the SY vault is In/Out/In (Three Lobed Recordings), a collection of instrumentals recorded during the band's final era, including some with Jim O'Rourke and contributions from The Eternal bassist Mark Ibold. Ahead of the album's release, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth join host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss The Simpsons, the band's Geffen years, stolen (and recovered) guitars, the science fiction of William Gibson and Philip K. Dick, and much more on this episode of Transmissions, Aquarium Drunkard's weekly podcast.

"Anything that knocks ya out, hits you harder than you planned," sings Matthew E. White on "Genuine Hesitation," which opens K Bay, the third solo album from the Spacebomb founder. And it's a knockout of a record, to be sure. A spirited producer and collaborator known for his efforts with Natalie Prass, Mountain Goats, Flo Morrissey, Sharon Van Etten and many more, the album finds him situating his traditional song craft in a future funk and avant-pop setting. On today's episode of Aquarium Drunkard's Transmissions podcast, he joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the album, as well as his duo recording with former guest Lonnie Holley, Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflection, which serves as a mutated musical twin to K Bay. Along the way, he touches on his communal approach, Miles Davis, his youth in the Philippines, and the transcendent qualities of The Flamingo's "I Only Have Eyes For You."

This week on the show, we’re joined by Ade Blackburn of Clinic. The Liverpool-based duo of Blackburn and Jonathan Hartley released a great record last year called Fantasy Island, full of skittering drum machines, cavernous sounds, and fuzzed out melodies, and this week sees the 20th anniversary of their sophomore album, Walking With Thee. The band’s trademark strangeness draws the listener in, and our talk with Blackburn focuses a lot on the allure of leaving room for mystery in music.  We also get into his countercultural inspirations, the blending of rock & roll and the avant-garde, discuss the dub-influenced side Clinic offshoot Higher Authorities, and chat about collaborating with Roky Erickson and John Cale. We had a great time speaking with him and think you’re going to enjoy this one. If you do, please consider doing us a favor: leave a rating and a review for the show, recommend it to your friends, and help us spread the word.

This week on the show, we're joined by world renowned whistler Molly Lewis. Last year, she released a great EP called The Forgotten Edge via Jagjaguwar. With its exotica and spaghetti western motifs, the EP is a supremely playful and lovely listen. And Lewis is a charming conversationalist too. We got into her roots in competitive whistling, being in the studio with Dr. Dre, working with John C. Reilly and whistling for the late, great Harry Dean Stanton.

"Transmissions is a lovely name; I think that's a very crucial name for this age." So says mystic musician Laraaji, our guest this week on the show. Sitting down with host Jason P. Woodbury, His Orangeness (AKA Edward Larry Gordon) discusses his new collaboration with NOUS and Arji OceAnanda, Circle of Celebration, plus his upbringing in the Baptist church, initial entry into meditation, the spiritual qualities of laughter, and much more. Introduced to the world by Brian Eno, who heard him playing electric zither and subsequently produced Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, Laraaji has created music constantly since, teaming up fellow artists like Carlos Niño, Bill Laswell, Blues Control, Shahzad Ismaily, and many more. "Metaphysical thought [has] influenced my music in that it prepared me for having an inner hearing experience, a paranormal hearing experience," he says. Join us today on Transmissions to explore his sound visions even deeper.

Today on Transmissions: Cate Le Bon, who, for the last decade plus, has made some of our favorite modern records, as well as producing great work for other artists, like Deerhunter and John Grant, who joined us last year on the podcast to talk about their collaboration The Boy From Michigan. Her new album is called Pompeii, an art pop gem out this week on Mexican Summer records. "I think the underlying theme of the record is we will forever be connected to everything," she says, joining host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the album's genesis, the religious quality of the album's art, wood working, and much more.

Welcome back to our weekly podcast Transmissions. Today on the show, occult scholar Mitch Horowitz. He’s the author of a staggering number of metaphysical books and the tremendous historical project, Occult America, a deeply researched book that examines how America’s alternative spiritualities and esoteric scenes—from freemasonry to Spiritualism and beyond—have influenced the country’s politics, social movements, and general character. Traveling along the ins and outs of the Psychic Highway, Horowitz brings an even-handed and intellectually honest approach to topics concerning mysticism, parapsychology, New Thought, and the study of unidentified aerial phenomena or UFOs. Horowitz can currently be seen in Ronni Thomas’ The Kybalion, an adaptation of the 1908 occult manuscript which explores the seven principles of Hermetics, and his forthcoming book, Daydream Believer, is now available for pre-order. For this talk, Horowitz opens up about his musical roots, Bad Brains, his vast t-shirt collection, musical telepathy, and much more. You can find Mitch Horowitz on Medium, Twitter, Instagram and at his website.

Welcome to a bonus edition of Transmissions with David Bazan of Pedro The Lion joining host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss the release of the band's surprise album Havasu. Like 2019's Phoenix, the record focuses on Bazan's youth in Arizona. In this loose conversation, Bazan describes how he approached writing about his early teenage years, the enduring artistic influence of Fugazi, his initial relationship with Christian rock, and the work of Tom Petty.

Our guest today is Haley Fohr, better known as Circuit des Yeux and Jackie Lynn. Her latest is called iO, and it’s a stunning work of art rock bravado. In our 2021 Year in Review contributor Tyler Wilcox wrote: “On the new Circuit des Yeux album, Haley Fohr has pulled off quite a magic trick. She’s crafted her most accessible (occasionally even poppy) effort yet without sacrificing one iota of her strange, fearless musical vision. Fohr’s inimitable vocals here are bolstered at various times by ornate orchestral arrangements, minimal post-rock, and idiosyncratic electronics. ‘There’s an avalanche inside of me,’ she sings at one point. Prepare to be buried in it.” No one sounds like Fohr—she possesses a four octave voice—and few artists are pushing as intensely as she is these days. She joined us to discuss the evolution of Jackie Lynn, her label buying her a star, and of course, stunt work. 

This week on Transmissions, the final episode of the season: Steve Berlin. Steve plays saxophone in Los Lobos, whose new album is called, Native Sons. It features Los Angeles-centric covers by the likes of WAR, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, and Thee Midniters. But Steve’s a fascinating figure on his own. He came up in the punk scenes of LA, playing with The Blasters and the Flesh Eaters, but since then he’s gone on to work with everyone from Rickie Lee Jones to The Replacements, The Go-Gos to R.E.M. and many more. Transmissions will return in January 2022, until then, follow Aquarium Drunkard for more and dig into the archives. 

This week on Transmissions, our weekly series of strange conversations: Roberto Carlos Lange of Helado Negro. His new album of electronic bliss pop, psychedelic ambient, and soulful love songs is called Far In. Lange joined host Jason P. Woodbury for a talk about Marfa, his journey through the world of independent music, expansive views of consciousness, and the early days of his musical practice—as well as much more.

This week on Transmissions, our weekly series of strange conversations: Scott Hirsch. Perhaps you know his name from the credits of albums by William Tyler or Alice Gerrard. Or perhaps you're into his solo records: the nocturnally grooving Windless Day is the latest. He's a long time collaborator of M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger, and their relationship stretches back to the post-hardcore band Ex-Ignota. Hirsch joins host Jason Woodbury from his Ojai studio Echo Magic. On this episode, we discuss JJ Cale, the spiritual topography of California, and his punk rock immersion into the broader world of independent rock.

This week on the Transmissions, Jeffrey Alexander of The Heavy Lidders and Dire Wolves. For decades now, he's been a fixture in the psychedelic mutant underground. He's got a great new self-titled record out now on Arrowhawk with his song-oriented project the Heavy Lidders, a vast catalog with Dire Wolves, and a forthcoming split cassette with Rhyton. Alexander joined us for a conversation about science fiction and fantasy, the Dead, improv, and his life in independent music. And as a bonus, we're presenting a live performance over at Aquarium Drunkard, featuring Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard of Elkland and drummer Scott Verrastro.

Hey, welcome back to Transmissions, we're so glad to have you here tuning in. Today on the show, I’m joined by two lifers of independent rock, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang. Their latest is a tremendous album called A Sky Record. Reviewing the record for Aquarium Drunkard, Tyler Wilcox called it “one of Damon & Naomi’s most purely gorgeous sounding records—and considering the glories of what’s come before, that’s a real accomplishment.” It features the guitar work of Michio Kurihara of Ghost and White Heaven, and he adds washes of sound and melodies to the duo’s deeply felt folk rock. Our talk covers a lot of ground—touching on the duo’s days in Galaxie 500, Naomi’s interest in boxing, Damon’s ever fascinating and insightful takes on the state of the industry, and much more. 

This week on Transmissions: the magnificent Neko Case. She’s recently launched Entering the Lung, a newsletter of nature writing. We don't need to tell you that Neko Case is a great writer—her work with the New Pornographers, Case/Lang/Veirs and her solo albums demonstrate that evidently—but it is deeply nice to be able to appreciate her on prose terms via the newsletter. She joined us this week to discuss the mores of the Victorian age, listening to Jane's Addiction, and getting into punk rock. Benefitting her sense of humor, we let this talk roam where she willed.

Today on Transmissions, author, artist, guitarist, and creator Alan Licht. He's the author of Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995-2020. It features some incredible talks with ANOHNI, Tony Conrad, Greg Tate, Yo La Tengo, Kelly Reichardt, Lou Reed, and many more. Licht seemingly never rests—in addition to this fantastic book, he’s part of the new Threshing Floor album—which pairs him with Nate Young and John Olson of Wolf Eyes, Rebecca Odes, and Gretchen Gonzales—produced by El Studio 444 and Transmissions guest Warren Defever. Licht is an artist/writer/and curator, and we touch on all of that in this revelatory talk. 

Today on the show, returning Transmissions guest Nick Lowe. 20 years ago, he released The Convincer, which many folks argue is his best album. It's reissued by Yep Roc Records this week. Following his rough and rowdy start at Stiff, his work producing Elvis Costello in the '70s & '80s, and a stint as a genuine pop star following the massive hit “Cruel to Be Kind,” Lowe found himself interested in reinventing the way he made records. The Convincer is part of a long line of albums that embrace subtle pop, R&B, and country tones, with Lowe’s gentle voice leaning into the crooner side of things. Originally released on September 11, 2001, The Convincer helped to establish Lowe’s reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter.

Welcome to Transmissions. Today on the show: Chris Swanson, co-founder of Secretly Group. This year marks 25 years of two of the flagship labels in the group, Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar, and to celebrate they’ve got tons going on—including SC25 Editions, which features titles by Damien Jurado, Anohni, Richard Swift, and more, as well as Merch, with net proceeds benefiting Bloomington’s New Hope For Families. Also of note: Jagjaguwar’s Join the Ritual, a Dungeons and Dragons-inspired release featuring Angel Olsen, Bruce Hornsby, Cut Worms, Jamila Woods, and many more. As a young person exploring record stores, Secretly and Jagjaguwar served as hallmarks of quality—it was a great time getting to settle in with Swanson to discuss the labels’ roots, artists like Anohni, Richard Swift, Jason Molina, Bon Iver, and more.