Aquarium Drunkard

Antonio Adolfo :: S/T 1972

Justin Gage — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Antonio Adolfo hated his 1972 solo debut. Intensely. He banned it from his official discography and denounced it whenever it resurfaced online. Yet the slightly off singing may be exactly what gives the self-titled LP its charm: there’s a Robert Wyatt or Scott Walker quality to Adolfo’s naturally dramatic timbre, with little bent edges creating tension against the jazz-inflected solos, basslines and gently cinematic arrangements. The result is a strange, beautiful record its creator wanted forgotten.

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Jess Williamson :: A Mile South of Heaven

Jason Woodbury — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Jess Williamson's Shooter Jennings-produced sixth solo album, A Mile South of Heaven, is a desert curiosity shop’s worth of inspirations: Williamson pulls storytelling techniques from Lucinda Williams’ gravel-road realism, a dash of Leonard Cohen’s everyday spirituality, and the vocal delivery of so many worn-leather country starlets.

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The Beach Boys :: Radiant Radish

Justin Gage — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

True story: in the late ’60s, Brian Wilson opened a short-lived health-food store called Radiant Radish in West Hollywood. Untrue story: there was a Beach Boys album named after it. There wasn’t—but now, thanks to the enterprising retrogorilla YouTube channel, there is. Radiant Radish is a wonderfully strange reimagining of the Smile / Smiley Smile / Wild Honey / Friends era, rearranged into a new and surprisingly coherent whole. Eat your vega-tables.

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Squirrel Flower

Justin Gage — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The nom-de-tune of Chicago-based songwriter and guitarist Ella O’Connor Williams, Squirrel Flower’s debut Lagniappe Session comes on the heels of her latest LP, Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going. Here, Williams takes on four songs that found their way into her orbit by different paths over the past decade: Tunnel of Love-era Springsteen, the Alex Chilton narcotica that is Big Star’s “Kanga Roo,” Guided By Voices’ “Awful Bliss,” and Joan Osborne’s “Lumina.” Williams notes on her selections below.

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The Sagegazers :: A Mixtape

Justin Gage — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

The Sagegazers is an ongoing project devoted to the strange and beautiful world of privately released ambient, electronic, and New Age cassette music of the 1980s and ’90s. Working from a collection of rare and often nearly undocumented recordings, the project uncovers a forgotten culture of synthesizers, home studios, spirituality, landscape, and imagination.

This mix offers a journey through that world, bringing together 15 recordings that reveal the remarkable breadth, intimacy, and imagination of this largely unmapped musical culture.

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Andy Boay :: Doomed

Justin Gage — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 18:00:39 +0000

Andy Boay returns with an opus crafted with ecstatic care: a journey of reverbed vocals and guitar noodles, a lo-fi love letter, a bedroom SMiLE, and its own thing completely: Doomed. Doomed shares the same creative DNA as its brilliant predecessor, 2025’s You Took That Walk For The Two Of Us: another painstakingly crafted cassette recording, with tape manipulation galore and self-harmonies aplenty.

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Jeremy Cunningham :: Passing Fires

Justin Gage — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Cunningham makes music that seems to be perpetually slipping out of its own frame. On Passing Fires, the Chicago drummer moves from free-jazz and skronk to electronics, funk, post-rock and pop, assembling a cast of improvisers, producers and singers who keep the music in motion. There are moments of muscular rhythmic interplay, strange electronic textures, children’s voices, whispered vocals and unexpected turns. It’s an album of restless curiosity, but never restlessness for its own sake: Cunningham’s drumming provides a steady gravitational pull as the music wanders.

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

Justin Gage — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 01:00:00 +0000

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

Inspired alliances and loose connections. West Coast twilight, boot cuts, alternate takes, live excursions, stray transmissions and wayward frequencies.

34.1090° N, 118.2334° W

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Dur-Dur Band :: Volume 3 (1988) & Volume 4 (1989)

Justin Gage — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:00:00 +0000

The latest archival installment from the Somalian hotel band shows an unwieldy group streamlining their sound in the studio, dialing up the hooks, battening down the rhythms and keeping the grooves on point. Taking inspiration from Motown and disco as much as reggae and Afrobeat, the Dur-Dur Band kept the wild 70s alive even as the ugly 80s were taking over.

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Transmissions :: Johnny Marr

Jason Woodbury — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Certain people play guitar in a way that is immediately recognizable, no matter the context. Our guest this week on Transmissions, Johnny Marr, is one such guitarists. A founding member of legendary indie band The Smiths, his sound is undeniable a blend of jangle, chime, bite, and attitude. He's back with a new album The Age Of Everything, which he joins us to discuss.

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Future Sounds Of Jazz Vol. 16

Justin Gage — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Future Sounds of Jazz Vol. 16 is both a forecast and a wormhole. Across two discs, Michael Reinboth and Michael Rütten move through jazz, dub, electronic music, improvisation, and psychedelia with the intuitive logic of a late-night DJ set. The result is a strange, elastic universe of DJ Oil, Bitchin Bajas, Booker Stardrum, Nico Zam, Ilhan Ersahin, and Momoko Gill—and a reminder that the future of jazz remains gloriously undefined.

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Protomartyr :: Hotel Usona

Jason Woodbury — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Protomartyr’s seventh album Hotel Usona (short for United States of North America) creates a fitting soundtrack as the country is pummeled by bad reviews. The Detroit veteran band envisions their homeland as a decrepit hotel where one of the TV channels is a live feed from Trump-Kennedy Center. The hotel is coincidentally located in Anacita, a fictional coastal town created by Casey for 2017’s Relatives in Descent. It’s the kind of place where the “liberal-minded close their eyes and dream of technology and kombucha.”

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Lee Ranaldo :: Guitar-Centric Film Soundtracks

Jason Woodbury — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:40:57 +0000

As a member of Sonic Youth, Drift, and his many other musical detours, Lee Ranaldo has treated the guitar as a pure sound source, creating dynamic new expressions in rock & roll and the avant-garde alike. But Ranaldo's new project, a soundtrack to director Joris Postema’s "eco-doc" The System, presents a new side of Lee, that of a filmic composer. To commemorate the album's release, Ranaldo sent over notes about nine other guitar-centric soundtracks that serve as conceptual inspirations for The System.

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The Aquarium Drunkard Guide to Across the Horizon

Jason Woodbury — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

What, exactly, is Across the Horizon? It could be accurately described as a podcast, a radio show, an imprint or even a genre; it’s also resulted in a host of compelling collaborations and a series of songs that push at the boundaries of what could be considered ambient music. "It’s like watching a musical community grow in real time," says Bob Holmes. Here’s a look at 10 standout songs from Across the Horizon thus far — music that demonstrates the breadth of the series as a whole.

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Dungen :: Vidrig Vår

Justin Gage — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:30:00 +0000

On the veteran Swedish outfit's most pared down and elegant affair, Vidrig Vår showcases Dungen still operating on a psychedelic wavelength not found elsewhere. Built around bandleader Gustav Ejste's panoramic piano progressions, the ballad-centric record flows with the weightless springtime atmosphere of the band's organically cinematic orbit.

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