With Death Jokes Damon McMahon has created a complicated musical and cultural tapestry, inspired by hip-hop sample density. “I just really hope that people take the time to pay attention to the details, because there’s so much in this album. Even my dearest friends are saying, ‘I didn’t understand it until I’d listened to it five times.'”
Category: The AD Interview
Water Damage :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Maximal repetition with minimal deviation: This is the guiding principle of Water Damage, the amorphous Austin, Texas-based collective specializing in 20-minute slabs of hulking, relentless drone-rock for people who think two notes is one too many. An awe-inspiring racket that sounds like Earth taking a crack at making dance music, or a bulldozer covering Faust.
somesurprises :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
somesurprises began modestly, but with the band’s latest record, the excellent Perseids, they’ve moved into a positively widescreen space. It’s a dreamy sound, occasionally reminiscent of such legends as Stereolab, Grouper, Mazzy Star or Yo La Tengo. But it’s not just dreamy. Beneath the gorgeous drones and sweet motorik pop-rock, there are plenty of sharp edges, both sonically and lyrically.
High Llamas & Healing Potpourri :: In Conversation
Sean O’Hagan’s High Llamas project has always followed its creator’s whims. But with Hey Panda, the Llamas embark on their most unexpected journey yet, straight into the heart of the auto-tuned, hyper pop fixated social media feed. Simi Sohota of Healing Potpourri joins O’Hagan to unpack the new album, consider the spiritual life of pianos, and reflect on the way the ’90s changed how musicians approach—and shatter—the concept of genre.
Shabaka Hutchings :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
“What does it mean to have music of spiritual substance?” Shabaka Hutchings of Sons of Kemet joins us to discuss his solo debut, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, which finds him shifting from sax to flute, creating a spiritual, familial, and open zone that invites the listener in. He joins AD to discuss collaborating with André 3000, the flute, and trusting intuition.
James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
The excellent All Gist, out this week on Paradise of Bachelors, sees James and Nathan taking their musical partnership back to its roots. It’s an album full of gorgeously interlocking guitars, bewitching melodies and a couple of curveball covers. More than anything, All Gist sounds like a conversation between two old friends — one that we’re all lucky we get to eavesdrop on.
Catching Up With Phosphorescent
It’s been five years since the last Phosphorescent album, a dark half decade for most people and especially for those in the performing and creative arts. So it’s not surprising that when Matthew Houck first glimpsed the contours of what would become Revelator, the album seemed like it would be quiet, insular, inward-looking and maybe a bit of a downer. But a funny thing happened when Houck began working and reworking this material. It caught an updraft of hope, of expansiveness, or cosmic revelation. First and second takes with a core band yielded a free, unfettered sound, not perfect or finished, but a foundation for further refinement.
Petra Haden and Mike Watt :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Petra Haden and Mike Watt discuss their nuclear opera Planet Chernobyl, released under the Pelicanman banner and based on the work of poet Charles Plymell: “It’s human expression,” says Watt.
Rosali :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Rosali joins us for a discussion about her fourth full-length, Bite Down. It’s her best record yet and it embodies the healing power of art: “Music and songwriting have always been a spiritual healing practices for me. I think it’s trying to help people feel something, to have a connectedness in our humanity.”
Bill Orcutt :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Guitarist Bill Orcutt has expanded past genre, throwing blues or jazz or noise into the experimental blender that is his distinct guitar playing. Whether the jagged notes jutting out of his Telecaster, the algorithmic waves made in his open-source synth program, or his layered compositions with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, he continues to subvert expectations time and time again. Ahead of his live release, Four Guitars Live with the aforementioned group, we sat down with Orcutt, talking about Steve Reich and Phill Niblock, improvisation, and using algorithms to find songs to cover.
Patrick Sansone :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Though he’s known for his work with Wilco and The Autumn Defense, Pat Sansone embraces wordless vistas and inner/outer cosmic tones on Infinity Mirrors, evoking the work of Steve Roach, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine Dream. Sansone corresponded with us about his teenage synth fixations, and how photography and mindfulness tie into the expansive spaces of his new album.
Linda Smith :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Linda Smith started recording cassettes at home in the late 1980s, painstakingly writing out simple parts for voice, guitar, bass and percussion, laying them down on a four-track, dubbing them onto cassettes and selling them by mail order to a handful of admirers—many of them also DIY musicians. ow, following its 2021 compilation Till Another Time: 1988-1996, Captured Tracks has reissued Smith’s two exquisite mid-1990s cassette recordings, Nothing Else Matters and I So Liked Spring.
Nora Brown :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Nora Brown has been playing old time music since she was six years old. She came up in the folk scene surrounding the Jalopy Theatre, the headquarters of traditional music in New York City. Gearing up for a European tour this spring, she spoke with AD about the banjo, the vibes of old time music, listening to your elders.
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
During his 2020 live album Axiom, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly known as Christian Scott aTunde) states that he and his band are “reevaluating what we’re playing and why.” The result of that process can be heard on 2023’s Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning. Dedicated to his grandfather Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. of the Guardians of the Flame and his uncle, renowned saxophonist Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. of the Congo Square Nation, the songs on are a change of direction for Chief Adjuah in terms of both sound and subject matter.
An Abstraction of Peculiar Experience :: Tom Lunt On William Eggleston
Tom Lunt on producing music by Memphis photographer William Eggleston and assorted collaborators: Brian Eno, Matana Roberts, Sam Amidon, and others.