music · Deep-context Features
Aquarium Drunkard
Deep-context features, reissues and crate-digging.
Offworlding: Ambient House, 1992-1997 (A Mixtape)
For a fleeting moment in the early-to-mid 90s, ambient house consummated the perfect synthesis of dance music groove and cosmic expanse. Emerging from the chillout rooms and the afterparties at the margins of club culture, ambient house cultivated the psychedelic elements of the …
Axis: Sova :: Flowerage
Chicago guitarist Brett Sova slips further from psychedelic overload and closer to new wave song structure in this fifth full-length. This second album with a full band—Sova himself, plus bassist Jeremy Freeze and drummer Josh Johannpeter—layers clean, warbly guitar texture with …
CAN :: Karussell der Jugend, Soest 1970
No blueprint. Filmed by West German television in November 1970 at the Karussell der Jugend festival in Soest, this 84-minute document captures CAN with Damo Suzuki, Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, still exploring the possibilities of a sound that…
The Wicker Man (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Part folk record, part pagan fever dream, The Wicker Man’s soundtrack is so steeped in sex, fertility, ritual and ancient melody that listening to it feels like stumbling upon something unearthed rather than recorded. Paul Giovanni’s songs create a world that feels simultaneously…
Hawkwind: Do Not Panic (BBC Documentary)
A proper trip inside the Hawkwind mothership. This 2007 BBC documentary traces the band’s journey from the Ladbroke Grove underground through Space Ritual, Lemmy’s tenure, and their collision of rock, psychedelia, science fiction, and counterculture. Featuring interviews with Lem…
Emily A. Sprague :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
In an album as lyrically economic as the startlingly beautiful Cyano , the latest solo release from Emily A. Sprague—familiar to many as the thoughtful anchor of indie-folk outfit Florist—even the few words we’re given can feel like lifelines. “We have to take care of ourselves” …
The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)
Broadcasting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays. Uruguay. United States. Senegal. England. France. Ghana. Brazil. India. Egypt. Jamaica. South Africa. Japan. Italy. 34.1090° N, 118.2334° W The post Th…
Teenage Fanclub :: Do Not Dare To Dream
Few bands have aged like Teenage Fanclub. On their thirteenth record, the everlasting Scottish outfit embraces more of a soft focus on acoustics while maintaining their patented lilting and jangly elixir. Full of their unwavering and clear-eyed harmonies, the perceptive Do Not Da…
Transmissions :: Peanut Butter Wolf
This week on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, Peanut Butter Wolf of Stones Throw Records. We hooked up for him to spin the yarn about how ST went from a small backpacker hip-hop imprint to an Adult Swim-boosted powerhouse, and how, 30 years in, the label’s roster is as diverse as…
Antonio Adolfo :: S/T 1972
Antonio Adolfo hated his 1972 solo debut. Intensely. He banned it from his official discography and denounced it whenever it resurfaced online. Yet the slightly off singing may be exactly what gives the self-titled LP its charm: there’s a Robert Wyatt or Scott Walker quality to A…
Jess Williamson :: A Mile South of Heaven
Jess Williamson's Shooter Jennings-produced sixth solo album, A Mile South of Heaven , is a desert curiosity shop’s worth of inspirations: Williamson pulls storytelling techniques from Lucinda Williams’ gravel-road realism, a dash of Leonard Cohen’s everyday spirituality, and the…
The Beach Boys :: Radiant Radish
True story: in the late ’60s, Brian Wilson opened a short-lived health-food store called Radiant Radish in West Hollywood. Untrue story: there was a Beach Boys album named after it. There wasn’t—but now, thanks to the enterprising retrogorilla YouTube channel, there is. Radiant R…
The Lagniappe Sessions :: Squirrel Flower
The nom-de-tune of Chicago-based songwriter and guitarist Ella O’Connor Williams, Squirrel Flower’s debut Lagniappe Session comes on the heels of her latest LP, Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going. Here, Williams takes on four songs that found their way into her orbit by di…
The Sagegazers :: A Mixtape
The Sagegazers is an ongoing project devoted to the strange and beautiful world of privately released ambient, electronic, and New Age cassette music of the 1980s and ’90s. Working from a collection of rare and often nearly undocumented recordings, the project uncovers a forgotte…
Andy Boay :: Doomed
Andy Boay returns with an opus crafted with ecstatic care: a journey of reverbed vocals and guitar noodles, a lo-fi love letter, a bedroom SMiLE , and its own thing completely: Doomed . Doomed shares the same creative DNA as its brilliant predecessor, 2025’s You Took That Walk Fo…