Aquarium Drunkard

The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)

Justin Gage — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 01:00:00 +0000

Broadcasting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

34.1090° N, 118.2334° W

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Bitchin Bajas :: Isle Peaks

Justin Gage — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 19:18:03 +0000

On Isle Peaks, Bitchin Bajas continue their long-running musical exploration of the unknown, turning three outtakes from the Inland See sessions into an immersive journey through imagined landscapes. From the shape-shifting “Ajami” to the wandering beauty and darker turn of “Isle Peaks” and the unsettling terrain of “Watch Your Step,” Cooper Crain, Rob Frye, and Daniel Quinlivan move between wonder, discovery, darkness, and unease. The result is a compact collection that showcases the trio’s versatility and ability to make music feel like an expedition into unmapped territory.

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Transmissions :: Jim James

Jason Woodbury — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:56:52 +0000

Since 1998, Jim James has led My Morning Jacket. In the early 2000s, the band's blend of Southern rock, psychedelia, dub, classic songcraft, loner country, and experimental folk put them on the forefront of festival stages. And now, James has a new solo album: Wowed Out. It’s his first solo music in eight years, and a killer return to form. Touching on soul, psychedelic pop, folk, and ambient sounds, it’s some of the most spiritual music James has ever recorded, and tellingly, this conversation takes a heady, mystical turn.

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Lambchop :: Punching the Clown

Justin Gage — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 05:44:29 +0000

Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner’s weathered voice typically brushes up against melody, rather than embracing it. He sings very simply, with feeling but not much artifice, and if we left it at that, Punching the Clown might be just another exercise in minimalist Americana. But instead, in the making of this 17th full-length, Wagner became obsessed with lined-out singing, an un-notated form of gospel in which a leader sings a line, then a whole choir follows it in unison.

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Giraffe :: The Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums

Justin Gage — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 17:34:23 +0000

Giraffe consists of a quartet of well-known Los Angles improvisers -- Dave Harrington, Spencer Zahn, Robert Walter and Kosta Galanopolous -- who share an affinity for humid grooves and loose-limbed melodies. On their debut album, they deliver a set of loose, assured, funky and concise jams perfect for long, lazy days that are nonetheless getting shorter and twitchier, a laid-back yet unsettling soundtrack for hazy afternoons that are steadily turning into sharp evenings and restless nights, second by weird second.

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Ned Collette :: Mixed Light

Justin Gage — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Australia-born/Berlin-based singer-songwriter Ned Collette hasn’t exactly been wildly prolific since his solo career kicked off in the mid-2000s. Mixed Light, his latest, comes relatively hot on the heels of the masterful Our Other History from 2024; it’s another beauty, with Collette joined by such Down Under underground leading lights as Leah Senior, Chris Abrahams (The Necks), and Joe Talia (Jim O’Rourke, Oren Ambarchi, etc.), not to mention a gorgeous, all-too-brief guest spot from non-Aussie Bonnie Prince Billy on “In the Kitchen.”

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Cornelius :: Refractions

Justin Gage — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:42:27 +0000

Categorization of any capacity is simply elusive for the restless, genre-warping musician Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada). With a joyous elasticity and fresh set of eclectic collaborators such as Arto Lindsay and Ganesh "Bid" Seshadri of The Monochrome Set, Refractions wields some of the musician's most weightless, edifying pop-oriented work in decades.

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Lau Ro

Justin Gage — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

On this summer's introspective solo record Lau, multi-instrumentalist Lau Ro crafted an enduring cycle of radiance. Starkly original, yet lovingly recalling the atmosphere and sunny, layered undercurrents of formidable works from the worlds of Brazilian MPB, bossa nova and beyond. For the São Paulo-born musician's inaugural Lagniappe Session, they tap into such seminal heritage influences with a transporative cover from Tropicália legends Os Mutantes. An effortless showcase of Ro's whimsical range, also covered are the sublime Mal Waldron/Eric Dolphy jazz classic "Warm Canto" and a beautiful duet with collaborators on the folk standard "All My Trials".

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John Foxx & Harold Budd :: Translucence + Drift Music

Justin Gage — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Music to listen to with your eyes closed. Harold Budd had an uncanny gravitational pull, drawing unlikely figures into his orbit. Long before his collaboration with John Foxx, he found himself entwined with the Cocteau Twins, yielding the luminous The Moon and the Melodies. On paper, Foxx, whose own Metamatic remains a landmark of British electronic music, makes for an unlikely bedfellow for the minimalist composer. But Foxx had been listening closely: Budd’s 1984 album The Pearl had become a touchstone for his own thinking about sound and space. When they met, Foxx played Budd what he called “primitive imitations” of his music—sketches of where he imagined the sonic world of The Pearl might lead next.

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Videodrome :: Lucky Three (1997)

Justin Gage — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

For fans of Elliott Smith, watching Lucky Three feels like visiting with an old friend that you haven’t seen in a while, all the while knowing that they’re going to leave you again, all too soon, and without saying goodbye. True to Jem Cohen’s filmmaking style, Lucky Three is neither a performance film nor a documentary. Its interest is not in narrative nor editorialization. If anything, Lucky Three is an intimate portraiture of Smith simply being, existing in his natural habitat of Portland’s late-autumn charcoal skies and rainy streets.

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Fruit Bats :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Jason Woodbury — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The Landfill sonically demonstrates Eric D. Johnson’s strength as a leader and commanding presence, accompanied by a full band for the first time in a few Fruit Bats’ records. In the days following the album's release, during the early days of bringing the songs on the road, AD spoke to Johnson about adopting a share-but-shroud songwriting style as his career continuously progresses, the influence of Michael Hurley and reflections on this being his most collaborative body of work under the Fruit Bats name.

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National Park :: Outside

Justin Gage — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

The brainchild of veteran Scottish musician John Hogarty (The Pastels, Telstar Ponies) from Glasgow's storied guitar-pop underground, outside marks the hybrid archival/modern debut of National Park. Collecting rare previously released singles and new home recordings, Hogart's collective outfit churns out glorious Velvets-inspired guitar dirges, at times in a vein not unlike American counterparts from the band's original nineties run like Acetone and Galaxie 500.

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Julia Holter :: Materia

Justin Gage — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Julia Holter revisits old ideas and pushes them forward on Materia, opening up and extending them in a liberated direction. The EP captures the sound of a composer still entranced by the sounds she thought she’d finished—refining, reworking and reinterpreting her music in new ways.

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Chet Baker :: Daybreak (Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1979)

Justin Gage — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:46:15 +0000

There is something uncanny about late-career Chet Baker. In Europe, the mythology receded, leaving room for something stranger: space, spontaneity, and 48 minutes of suspended time on Daybreak, recorded live at Copenhagen’s Jazzhus Montmartre in 1979.

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The Grateful Dead :: Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7/3/66)

Justin Gage — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

A curious — and fascinating — listening experience. In some ways, the band is almost unrecognizable. Tempos are decidedly fast paced, even on laments like “He Was A Friend Of Mine.” Some tunes are dominated occasionally by the garage-y buzz of Pigpen’s Vox Continental organ. Vocals aren’t fully figured out yet. The Dead in the summer of ’66 was one of many similar Bay Area groups, wearing disparate influences on their sleeves, figuring things out, operating in a space where the rulebook hadn’t really been written. They were also first and foremost a dance band, which partly explains the aforementioned tempos.

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