On The Turntable

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    Creation Rebel

    Creation Rebel :: Starship Africa

    Recently reissued via Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound, this 1980 platter is trippiest selection of the Creation Rebel catalog, expanding the lysergic limits of dub with whooshing backmasked tape effects. It’s also rumored to be the planned soundtrack of a Don Letts-directed film about ‘alien dreads from beyond the stars’…

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    Cindy Lee

    Cindy Lee :: Diamond Jubilee

    Diamond Jubilee feels like a throwback to a different, weirder, cooler, better era in independent music. An era where a record such as this one — a record not available on streaming services, that can only be listened to on YouTube and via WAV files available for purchase on the artist’s website, and which was birthed into the world with no advanced single or press, that eschewed the long and laborious album rollout, and so felt like an artifact from space crash landed onto Earth — wasn’t so tragically uncommon.

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    Winged Wheel

    Winged Wheel :: Big Hotel

    Winged Wheel was already a supergroup of sorts. With the band’s second LP they’ve gotten even super-er. Big Hotel brings the whole gang back together: Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray) and Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo). But it also adds two serious ringers to the mix — Sonic Youth’s mighty sticksman Steve Shelley and Water Damage’s similarly mighty Lonnie Slack.

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    Jessica Pratt

    Jessica Pratt :: Here in the Pitch

    Here in the Pitch is a gorgeous slice of baroque pop, but also something gnarlier and more complicated. Recording for the second time at Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn and employing a full band, Pratt’’s realized a lush, baroque 1960s pop sound akin to Vashti Bunyan’s work with Joe Meek, Dusty Springfield, even Petula Clark.

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    Greg Foat

    Greg Foat :: Live at Villa Maximus, Mykonos

    On his second live release this year, Villa Maximus sends jazz pianist and synthesizer maven Greg Foat to Mykonos with his frequent collaborators guitarist Warren Hampshire of the Bees and drummer Ayo Salawu of Kokoroko. But the real wild card here is stellar Greek reedman Sokratis Votskos, who adds flute and bass clarinet to this already formidable unit. The thrilling results range from deep space ambient jazz exploration to funky krautrock blowouts.

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    Gerry Mulligan

    Gerry Mulligan :: Night Lights

    Recorded over two sessions in the fall of 1962 at Nola Penthouse Studios in New York City, Night Lights finds Gerry Mulligan exploring the somber side of cool jazz, playing originals and standards with a no-frills approach.

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    John Martyn

    John Martyn :: One World

    It is perhaps at the peak of his unhinged behavior in the mid-70s that Martyn stumbled into his creative apex. Solid Air confirmed that the chops were there, but it was with One World that the artist cemented his potential for crafting masterworks that transcend the folk-singer moniker.

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    Broadcast

    Broadcast :: Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006-2009

    Long-rumored since the death of the inimitable Trish Keenan in 2011, the “final” Broadcast album has materialized as Spell Blanket, a megalithic collection of songs and sketches culled from Trish’s extensive archive of 4-track tapes and MiniDiscs recorded during the group’s post-Tender Buttons period (2006-2009).

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Dole :: The Speed of Hope

Some records, leave you content with just listening to the songs. Others, they get under your skin and into your blood. They demand to be played over and over and over. You start to wonder about its origins, how it was made. You want to go back in time and watch it all come together. This is the case with The Speed of Hope by Belgian post punks Dole.

Elijah McLaughlin & Caleb Willitz :: Morning Improvisations / Evening Abstractions

Guitarist Elijah McLaughlin sets aside his 12-string for an electric guitar on this outstanding new collaboration with visual and sound artist Caleb Willitz, plus a clutch of midwestern head music ringers. The result is an endlessly inventive, restlessly mutating work of improvised music, which moves between jazz, psych, post-rock, ambient and Americana. But more than that, it is also a love letter to the Chicago experimental music scene.

Transmissions :: Amen Dunes

This week on our podcast, Damon McMahon of Amen Dunes joins Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions to discuss the spiritual vastness of his beat-driven album, Death Jokes. Stacked with samples of artists like Lenny Bruce and J Dilla, it doesn’t reveal itself quickly, but reveals more with each listen.

Clarissa Connelly :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

As thoughtful in her articulations about her artistry as she is imaginative in her tremendously vivid arrangements, Clarissa Connelly is a compelling conversationalist. Today, she joins AD to discuss her new album, World of Work, the power of dreams and the ongoing discovery of magic to be found in her music.

The Lagniappe Sessions :: Chet Sounds

Last fall saw the release of the Sydney, Australia based DIY artist Chet Sounds’ sophomore LP, Changes Happen to Everyone, Everywhere. At a dozen tracks, it’s a lo-fi glossy and groove-laden trip across 70s-am pop, yacht rock, private press outsider folk, library funk, and Rundgren-esque psychedelia. For this installment of the Lagniappe Sessions we catch up with Chet (Tucker) as he works his way through a grip of disparate favorites, ranging from a mid-60s fantasy sit-com theme, to reinterpreting Judee Sill and the undisputed majesty that is Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”.

Winged Wheel :: Big Hotel

Winged Wheel was already a supergroup of sorts. With the band’s second LP they’ve gotten even super-er. Big Hotel brings the whole gang back together: Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray) and Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo). But it also adds two serious ringers to the mix — Sonic Youth’s mighty sticksman Steve Shelley and Water Damage’s similarly mighty Lonnie Slack.

Jack Name :: Fabulous Soundtracks

Fabulous Soundtracks isn’t a concept album per se, but it’s structured like a series of “soundtracks” for 10 distinct real life experiences. Each refracted through Jack’s mind and his senses, these commonplace occurrences come out the other side like a shimmering dream.

Broadcast :: Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006-2009

Long-rumored since the death of the inimitable Trish Keenan in 2011, the “final” Broadcast album has materialized as Spell Blanket, a megalithic collection of songs and sketches culled from Trish’s extensive archive of 4-track tapes and MiniDiscs recorded during the group’s post-Tender Buttons period (2006-2009). Its 36 tracks mostly nestle somewhere between that unadorned masterpiece and the rough-hewn assemblage of Mother Is The Milky Way, though it fully showcases the myriad of facets—aside from their earliest, dreamiest era—that made the group so special. 

Jackie West :: Close To The Mystery

With a glowing aura, Close To The Mystery’s twelve tracks cycle through with dashes of dreamy Julee Cruise balladry, the rugged glamour of early Roxy Music, and the artful experimentation of Arthur Russell. A loaded treasure of soulful art pop.

Miles Davis: Four More from Brazil, 1974

50 years ago this month, the Miles Davis octet traveled to Brazil for three-night stands in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – a stretch of gigs featuring the same personnel that recorded the Dark Magus live set at Carnegie Hall earlier that spring. While Dark Magus documented guitarist Dominique Gaumont’s incendiary first night with the band, the tapes from Brazil capture Miles’ well-oiled three-guitar lineup in full flight; Gaumont layering waves of feedback between flights of Hendrix-inspired indulgence, Pete Cosey supplying gobs of heavily modulated riffs and theatrics, and rhythm ace Reggie Lucas abandoning the steady throb of the wah-wah to solo at will.

Ferlin Husky :: Boulevard of Broken Dreams

A lost record from 1957, Ferlin Husky’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams would be right at home on the jukebox at The Bang Bang Bar from Lynch’s Twin Peaks. These are transmissions from the dark side of mid-century Americana, echoing across forgotten county line roads and empty chrome diners.