Copy
View this email in your browser

Aquarium Drunkard: Sidecar/February 18, 2019

New year, new issue of Aquarium Drunkard's weekly dispatch of audio esoterica, interviews, mixtapes, and cultural ephemera. As always, we're presented by Gold Diggers boutique hotel, bar, and recording studios in East Hollywood, Calif.



Spencer Doran on Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Environmental, Ambient & New Age Music 1980-1990
Producer and curator Spencer Doran on Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Environmental, Ambient & New Age Music 1980-1990, a new compilation out on L ight In The Attic that documents
substrata of Japanese music born out of a growing interest in new computer and synthesizer technology, and the influence of composer Erik Satie.  



A.A. Body: Images of Love
Here comes Auguste Arthur Bondy out of the wrath of the California wildfires toting 
Enderness, his first album in eight years. “Images of Love” is an intoxicatingly spare, private-press-R&B-style affair built on skittering percussion, warm synthesizer and a locked bass riff. Bondy’s weathered tenor tells of surrender, death, and the nuances of companionship. That synth doubles back and looms larger midway through the track. And with a quick snap at the end, the Lafayette County gloam slips into true nightfall and all that comes with it. There’s a truck cruising 278 with this one on repeat, broken taillight be damned.



The Lagniappe Sessions: Hand Habits 
Hand Habits, the working sobriquet of Meg Duffy, first entered our sphere in 2015 backing Kevin Morby at a house party. Their weapon of choice is the guitar, an instrument they wield with aplomb. However, to focus too heavily on this one attribute is to miss the greater whole of the songwriter. On the eve of their sophomore lp, Placeholder, Duffy cut a three-track Lagniappe Session for Aquarium Drunkard. Recorded over a three month period in Los Angeles and New York City, the selections-Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross," Simon & Garfunkle's "The Only Living Boy In New York," and A.A. Bondy's "When The Devil's Loose," simultaneously echo Hand Habits roots and aspirations. 



Music for the Deluge: A Sonic Meditation 

A sonic meditation crafted during an exceptionally fierce 24-hour downpour in northeast Los Angeles. An imaginary hour and half instrumental score.



Spirit World - Pattern in the Expressive Folk Culture of New Orleans
When taking the long view, photo books (not unlike records) continue to inform, entertain and inspire long after their purchase date. Over the years I've picked up an indiscriminate array of tomes documenting/presenting all manner of concerns. Here is one I return to often: Spirit World - Pattern in the Expressive Folk Culture of New Orleans. Originally published in 1984, photographs and journal by Michael P. Smith. Per context, Smith describes the work as focusing on "the preservation of New Orleans' black culture, with special emphasis on the spiritual and musical aspects." He succeeds on both fronts. I've spent more time in New Orleans than any other city besides the ones I've called home. It's an atmosphere unto itself, a town unlike anywhere else in the states, complete with its own rituals, customs, foods, colloquialisms, and eccentricities. A singular and strange bouillabaisse, it's a town that cannot be accurately described, but must be experienced. That said, Smith's deft eye captures part of what ultimately makes New Orleans, New Orleans.


The Cosmic Range: The Gratitude Principle
The Cosmic Range’s second LP finds the Toronto-based collective exploring all sorts of zones: dense Bitches Brew-worthy jams, soothing astral travels, freeform freakouts, Afrobeat 
groovers. Miles Davis called this stuff “New Directions in Jazz” back in the day. And while the approach is not so new anymore, it’s still fresh. Led by multi-instrumentalist Matthew “Doc” Dunn, the band is familiar to some as the backing group on US Girl’s 2018 release In A Poem Unlimited. But as adventurous as the sonics were on that stellar LP, The Gratitude Principle is even more untethered, with instrumental textures that call to mind not only fusion and spiritual jazz classics, but also the recent work of Bitchin Bajas and Natural Information Society. The opener, “Palms to Heaven” throws you right into maelstrom with fierce sax, overdriven keys and an unstoppably sinuous rhythm. The title track, meanwhile, builds to a maximalist, almost Kamasi-esque climax, Isla Craig’s wordless vocals leading the group into the heavens. Cosmic, to say the least. 


Unearthed, Vol. 4: Jerry Garcia & Friends at the Matrix, 1966-71
The array of sounds Garcia made at the Matrix is dizzying, from garage rock to jazz fusion to bluegrass to cosmic funk…and beyond. Download and enjoy.


Aquarium Drunkard Guide to ECM Records: The New Millennium
Welcome to the third installment of the Aquarium Drunkard Guide to ECM Records: The New Millennium. Writer James Jackson Toth (Wooden Wand) explores the label’s contemporary output, that of “a boutique label in the guise of a music industry behemoth.”

The Lagniappe Sessions: Jonathan Wilson (Sawmill Vol 1)
Jonathan Wilson: Sawmill, Vol 1 is a collection of traditional songs and a few songs I have written, all recorded live to cassette on acoustic and nylon classical guitar. This is a handpicked selection for Aquarium Drunkard from that collection…




Tim Presley's White Fence: Phone
The artists that tend to intrigue and hold our attention are rarely one dimensional. They build worlds. They create myths. Often they savvy the importance of both—for themselves as well as their audience. Tim Presley understands this. Having followed his work for more than a decade, through various permutations of his craft/muse, he continues to evolve via his paintings, his music, and his very presentation of the self.


i






This email was sent to <<Email Address>>
why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences
Aquarium Drunkard · Hillhust Ave · Los Angeles, CA 90027 · USA