Transmissions

We’ve reached the end of the road for this season—season 9 concludes with this episode, a conversation with Matthew Houck, the leader of the avant-country band Phosphorescent. In April, Phosphorescent released Revelator, the band’s ninth album. It’s their debut for Verve Records, after a string of well-received albums on Dead Oceans. Joined by collaborators like Jim White of the Dirty Three—who yo...

Welcome to the penultimate episode of our ninth season, featuring Pat Irwin of Suss. You may remember him from last year’s Suss talk, with his bandmates Jonathan Gregg and Bob Holmes, but he’s back for a solo talk this time, which allowed us to dig into his wild life in music, from his time in the the late ‘70s New York No Wave scene with The Raybeats and 8-Eyed Spy, to his work with Southern frea...

Welcome back to Transmissions, we’re so glad to have you tuned into this show. This week, a talk taped earlier this summer with Martin Courtney of Real Estate.  Real Estate has been releasing great albums since the late 2000s. This year, they released their sixth LP, called Daniel. Produced in Nashville by Daniel Tashian, who produced Kacy Musgraves’ breakthrough Golden Hour, it’s a mellow, refine...

This week on the show, a double-header. First, Rosali Middleman, and then, her bandmate, collaborator, and the leader of Mowed Sound, David Nance. Together, they both play on Rosali’s fantastic 2024 album, Bite Down. Reviewing it for Aquarium Drunkard, Brent Sirota writes, “A great summer album needs hooks and choruses, big barroom rave-ups and bleary confessions of both love and doubt. Bite Down,...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, one of our favorite return guests: Mitch Horowitz. As scholar and historian of the occult, he's established himself as one of the most literate voices in the New Age field. On previous episodes, Horowitz has discussed his books, like Uncertain Places and Daydream Believer—but he’s finally taking the plunge with a podcast of hi...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, this week on the show, we're joined by three guests—though, not all at once.  In the first half of the show: Mark “Frosty” McNeill of dublab and the LA Phil to discuss a new compilation he helped produce, Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971​-​1996; in the second-half of the show, Estevan and Alejandro Gutierrez, better known as Herma...

Welcome back to Transmissions—far out conversations for far out times. This week, we're joined by synthesist Jill Fraser. She's lived a remarkable life in music: mentored by Morton Subotnick, she went on work in film and television, with projects like 1974's sci-fi fantasy Zardoz and Paul Schrader's 1979 film Hardcore to her name, in addition to a litany of commercials featuring her inventive soun...

This week on the show, we're pleased to present a conversation with Matt Sweeney. He’s lived a truly dazzling life in music. After coming up playing with the great band Chavez, he contributed to masterworks of indie rock—including records by Cat Power and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, with whom he crafted the monumental 2005 classic Superwolf, a classic in the Aquarium Drunkard canon. He's also worked as...

If you’ve been listening to Transmissions for a while, you've noticed how often host Jason P. Woodbury brings up “time” when talking about music. And while he's certainly apt to talk about music in spiritual or "out there" terms, songs are in some ways literal time machines: they can take you back to your own past or in the case of traditional music, preserve some essential “nowness” of the human...

This week on Transmissions, we're sitting down with a genuine legend: Joe Boyd, author of And The Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music, out September 24 from ZE Books. On the front cover of the book Brian Eno—a venerated saint in the Aquarium Drunkard canon—declares: “I doubt I’ll ever read a better account of the history and sociology of popular music than this one.”  Joe Boyd’s...

This week on Transmissions, the return of Leah Toth, aka Amelia Courthouse. She was last here on the podcast in its earlier, more feral incarnation—and by feral we mean "updated with elss regularity"—but back in 2018 she reviewed Shinya Fukumori Trio’s incredible ECM release For 2 Akis. We've wanted to have Leah back on ever since, and this now we've got a great excuse to do so: the release of her...

From early mystic folk inclinations to more fried and psychedelic work, Ben Chasny's Six Organs of Admittance project has never settled into an easy, definable zone. But 2024 sees the Six Organs sonic universe expanding kaleidoscopically, even by Chasny's prodigious standards. First was Time Is Glass, an album that documented his return to Humboldt County; then Jinxed By Being, a collaboration wit...

Welcome back to Transmissions, our weekly conversational offering. On today's show? Nashville’s own Rich Ruth.  Opening his review of Ruth’s latest, the Third Man Records LP Water Still Flows, Aquarium Drunkard’s Brent Sirota states: “We don’t even have a name for what has been going on in instrumental music lately. There’s plainly some kind of new fusion afoot…[but] it doesn’t really sound like o...

This week, we have an exceedingly rare interview with Jason Martin, of California dream pop band Starflyer 59. Fermented in the nascent Riverside dream pop underground alongside his brother Ronnie Martin of Joy Electric in the early '90s, Martin's band SF59 released its debut album, Silver, 30 years ago in 1994 on the fledgling Tooth & Nail label. His latest, Lust for Gold, finds him winking knowi...

This week on Transmissions, return guest Yasmin Williams. On October 4th, she releases Acadia via Nonesuch Records. It's her long awaited follow up to 2021's Urban Driftwood, and like that record, it's beautiful—a showcase for a one-of-a-kind artist. And while the focus remains Williams' fluid and lyrical guitarwork, she's joined by a roster of ringers to help fill out the corners: Aoife O'Donovan...

Sometimes, background music moves to the foreground. That’s the case with today’s guests, guitarist Zac Sokolow, bassist Jake Faulkner, and drummer Nicholas Baker. Together, they form LA LOM, short for the Los Angeles League of Musicians. In 2019, they were hired to bring suitably vibey music to the lobby of the historic Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Employing a rotating cast of guest pl...

Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions, our weekly conversation podcast. This week on the show, we’re joined by Brian and Michael D’Addario, AKA, The Lemon Digs. Their latest slice of toothsome guitar pop is called A Dream Is All We Know. Writing about it in our mid-year favorite albums of 2024 (so far) list, we noted: “A dash of Badfinger, lots of Beach Boys, Todd Rundgren, and Sparks an...

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 ca...

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 a...

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...

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 me...

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...

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 p...

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 wid...

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 yea...