Aquarium Drunkard Podcasting

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.

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Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.