Transmissions

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. 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

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. 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

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. 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 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.