Aquarium Drunkard: Sidecar/February 4, 2018

Swan's Chamber: Self-Titled
We’ve been talking a lot about “cosmic pastoral” on these pages of late. William Tyler contributed an entire essay on the subject, and we used the term in our write-up of Deerhunter’s new futuristic-folk record, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? What is in the air? How do these things permeate among us?

Whatever the answer, a space-age cosmic pastoral – a music for which the term feels entirely at home – comes to us via Swan’s Chamber, the new project from Georgia based multi-instrumentalist & songwriter Taylor Ross. His new four-song suite, via the Leaving Records imprint, is a solo work for guitar, recorder, and piano, employing a classical romanticism and playful pop humor that both artfully belies, and subtly projects its unfolding dramas.



Catching Up With Alejandro Escovedo 
It’s been more than six years since Aquarium Drunkard last spoke with Alejandro Escovedo, and since then he’s been through a few things: a new marriage and a near-death experience on their honeymoon, resultant PTSD, moving from his long-time home of Austin to Dallas, and a parting of ways with longtime management. But it’s his latest album, The Crossing, co-written and recorded with Italian musician Antonio Gramientiere and his band Don Antonio, that centers our conversation. It’s a song cycle about two immigrants – one Mexican, one Italian – who come together working in the kitchen of a restaurant and set out to find the America they’ve seen in the music, books and films that they love. The America they inhabit is a bit nebulous in time, but it’s very much grounded in the present as they struggle to find the country they had envisioned.

We spoke with Escovedo on the phone about the latest album, how he got hooked up with Don Antonio, working with James Williamson of the Stooges, covering Joe Ely, representation in art, and how he still believes in the power of music.



Yellowstone National Park Shares a Massive Catalog of Sounds 
Take a tour of the first National Park with your ears. 

Hello, Mr. Soul: Neil Young Covers, 1976-1978
Dig into this — a wide array of Neil covers from his first decade or so in action. There’s folk rock, funk rock, country rock, yacht rock, pop rock — all kinds of rock. And plenty of other stuff, too. New perspectives on old favorites. Say hello to Mr. Soul. 



Let's Paint TV
In the fall of 1992, American musician Bruce Springsteen released a single, along with a video on MTV called “57 Channels And Nothing On.” And, hey, perhaps that was true for a successful adult rock musician, but for myself, a teenager living in suburban Atlanta, there was aplenty. And by that, I’m specifically referring to the strange ghetto that was early '90s cable access television. This spartan, super-budget, programming provided some of my first tastes of formative subversion. 

And then there was the weird internet. RIP. It smelled like this.

PS - the music you hear is via Rahdunes...pre-Peaking Lights



Randy Randall: Shore Sunset, Pt. 1
New from No Age's Randy Randall: Sound Field Volume One, a forthcoming collection of contemplative, ambient soundscapes. His solo debut, the record is the latest installment in the ongoing album series via the LA-based experimental music and visual art collective, Arthur King Presents.



Scott Hirsch: No No
“I think of Lost Time Behind the Moon as Scott’s masterpiece, because everything I know about him is in these songs, the groove and the wonder.” — MC Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger)

Scott Hirsch’s HGM bandmate hits the nail on the head regarding the Ojai-based singer/songwriter’s new solo album, the follow-up to his 2016 slow-groover, Blue Rider Songs. Hirsch is, as forbearer Doug Sahm was and always will be, about finding the groove. On his new long player, Hirsch carries the musical and spiritual ethos of Sahm, Hiss Golden Messenger, Bobby Charles, and filters them through his own languid, back porch Americana; gentle folk atmospheres and country-funk humidity casting shadows underneath howling moons, empty highways, and moody swamps. Memories and ghosts lurking around the bends.

Enter the spectral psychedelia of album track “No No” and its video companion, directed by filmmaker Tati Barrantes. A swampy late-night noir – J.J. Cale cross-pollinated with Time Out of Mind tones – the horn & groove-laden boogies are turned inside out, sounding submerged underwater and transformed into oblique images. Hirsch looking to get out of town, visions of dark alleys and purple diamond eyes chasing him down. 

Dig the visual interpretation, populated with double exposed desert vistas and tripped out lunar excursions toward a dusk-clothed stop motion fever dream. Hirsch’s Cadillac groove stuck halfway between the rearview mirror and befogged phaser futures of sculpted esoterica, owls, horses, the moon, and time.



Ronald Lengestraat: Searching
27-minute eccentric fusion / funk / lounge jewel. Unearthed and released last November — 34 years after Langestraat cut it to a four-track tape recorder in his living room. 



Aquarium Drunkard Presents: The Now Generation/A Mixtape 
Enter The Now Generation. A gauzy 18 track ride through Portland record collectors Sam Huff and Meghan Wright’s current crate. It is as it must be….man.

Our weekly two-hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app.

SIRIUS 553 (January 30): Jimmy Jukebox – Motor Boat (AD Rive Gauche edit) ++ Loak Klang – Loak Klang ++ Shintaro Sakamoto – Love If Possible ++ Ronald Langestraat – I’m Ready For Dancing ++ Shintaro Sakamoto – Another Planet ++ Julien Gasc – Luke Howard ++ Kelly Lee Owens – Bird ++ Susumu Yokota Zenmai ++ Osamu Kitajima – Benzaiten (God Of Music & Water) ++ Shintaro Sakamoto – From The Dead ++ Steve Elliot – One More Time ++ Takeo Yamashita – A Touch of Japanese Stone ++ Eddie Henderson – Ecstasy ++ .ゴドメス星人」より侵略者のテーマ ++ Bob Cunningham – Lover’s Theme ++ DB Shriver Quartet – East ++ X Ray Pop – La Machine á Rêver – Todd Rundgren – The Spark of Life ++ Deerhunter – Nocturne ++ Sam Amidon – Juma Mountain ++ Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe & Ariel Kalma – MIlle Voix (excerpt) ++ Peter Gabriel – Biko ++ Klauss Weiss – Survivor ++ Patrick Cowley – One Hot Afternoon ++ African Head Charge – Stebeni’s Theme ++ Radiohead – In Limbo ++ Amen Dunes – Satudarah ++ UFO ++ Sam Spence – Sunken Ship ++ The New Creation – Countdown To Revolution (excerpt) ++ Bob Desper – The World Is Crying For Love ++ Re-Creation – Music ++ John Scoggins – For You ++ The Black Beats – The Mod Trade ++ Usha Khanna – Hotel Incidental Music ++ David Lee Jr. – Second Line March ++ Henri Texier – Talago Hocoka ++ Julian Lynch – Water Wheel Two

You can listen, for free, online with the SIRIUS three day trial — just submit an email address and they will send you a password.