Transmissions

Pino Palladino and Blake Mills are two of the most dynamic studio wizards in music and they join us this week on Transmissions to discuss Notes With Attachments, their Impulse! Records-released collaborative long-player. Backed by a set of LA studio heavyweights like saxophonist Sam Gendel, drummer Chris Dave, organist Larry Golding, and others. Known for their individual collaborations with artis...

This week on the show, we're joined by poet and music journalist Noah C. Lekas and Ethan Miller of Howlin' Rain and Comets on Fire. They've got a new collaboration featured on Sounds From the Shadow Factory, a 10" record from Blind Owl: a rock & roll adaptation of "Saturday Night Sage," the poem from Lekas' recent book of the same name. The two joined us for a discussion about spoken word, their p...

Our guest this week on Transmissions is Martin Courtney of Real Estate. On March 26th, the long-running New Jersey group releases its new EP, Half a Human, which embraces the jammier side of the band and continues the stylistic explorations of 2020's The Main Thing. We discussed record stores, adjusting to life without live music, Twin Peaks, and Courtney's 2015 solo album Many Moons—and its forth...

Description: Our guest this week on the show is Shahzad Ismaily, whose recorded with, well, he’s recorded with a lot of people, from Moses Sumney and Sam Amidon to Beth Orton, Martha Wainwright, Yoko Ono, Bonnie Prince Billy, Jolie Holland, and many, many more. With his buddies Ches Smith and Marc Ribot, he’s a member of the punk jazz outfit Ceramic Dog, and last year he released Visitations with...

This week on Transmissions: Detroit’s own Warren Defever of Third Man Records and the experimental pop group His Name is Alive. Since the mid-80s, HNIA has released over a hundred records, EPs, and projects on labels like 4AD, Rykodisc, Time STEREO, and Unsung Hunger. Recently Warren has been exploring way back in the archives, sharing some of the work that caught the ear of Ivo-Watts Russell, who...

Our guest this week is Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, the the Search for the Next American Music, and Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records. She's also a critic at the New Yorker. She joined us from her place in upstate New York to discuss balancing comfort listening and new sounds, Bob Dylan’s Christian era...

Legendary music writer Peter Guralnick joins us this week on Transmissions. He's been writing about the blues, rock & roll, soul, and R&B since the late 1960s. His latest book is called Looking To Get Lost: Adventures in Music & Writing. It is a book about the creativity that fueled artists like Johnny Cash, Robert Johnson, Ray Charles, Dick Curless, and Howlin' Wolf, who Guralnick says viewed his...

Northern California mysticism with Fletcher Tucker. His latest album of ritualistic folk music is called Unlit Trail. Like the previous, Cold Spring, it's a record that settles deep into the sacred nature of existence. It's an lp designed to welcome the listener "into a liminal state, beyond ordinary awareness," and into the unknown. Tucker joined us to discuss Star Trek, animism, family and the d...

Hope you're enjoying the new season of Aquarium Drunkard's Transmissions. Here's a good one from the archives, a favorite of Timothy Showalter of Strand of Oaks a roundtable talk with three lifers: Howe Gelb, Robyn Hitchcock, and Steve Wynn. The three share similar paths through scenes and the industry, their paths are shared but divergent, and there’s a spiritual unity at work even in their diffe...

On her second lp, the newly released Urban Driftwood, Virginia-based guitarist Yasmin Williams creates expansive acoustic music. Playing guitar, kalimba, percussion, and kora, she pulls from disparate musical strands—including the smooth jazz she heard growing up—into music that feels spiritually connected to New Age music, Windham Hill guitar, and the work of contemporaries like Daniel Bachman (w...

Tamara Lindeman joins us this week on Transmissions for a conversation about Ignorance, her lush and sweeping new album as The Weather Station. Lindeman is the kind of songwriter who dares to write about big topics, like identity and global climate change, but the new album finds her exploring those concepts over deeply rhythmic jazz and pop-influenced compositions. It's out Friday, February 5 on...

This week we're happy to welcome Margo Price to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions for a talk about the music industry, her creative partnership with husband Jeremy Ivey, her online radio show, forays into the cannabis business, and her latest rock and seventies pop inspired lp, That's How Rumors Get Started. Bold and strident, it's a record that finds her blurring genres, like many of her country he...

It’s 2021 and Aquarium Drunkard’s Transmissions podcast is back. Every Wednesday, your host Jason P. Woodbury sits down with a fascinating guest for a rolling conversation about art, process, and inspiration. To kick off our new season, we’re joined by Nels Cline. Known for his many varied solo projects, work in Wilco, and a long history of collaboration with artists like Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Wada...

Our guest this week is Patrick McDermott of North Americans. His latest is called Roped In and its blissed out guitar-scapes find him teaming up with cosmic pedal steel master Barry Walker Jr, William Tyler, and Mary Lattimore. He reached us from his place in Los Angeles to discuss pleasant zones, video games, and some particularly good lunches.    A quick note: this is the final episode of our se...

This week, we're joined by returning guest Chris Schlarb of Psychic Temple and Big Ego, his studio in Long Beach. His latest is called Houses of the Holy, a four-sided double-album, featuring a different band on each side: Cherry Glazerr with garage pop, the Chicago Underground Trio with their jazz inflection, psych warriors the Dream Syndicate, and rapper and producer Xololanxinxo. Schlarb took s...

This week on Transmissions, we welcome back a return guest: desert scribe and radio personality Ken Layne. He’s the editor of Desert Oracle, a pocket-sized field guide to the American Southwest and the host of Desert Oracle Radio, a weekly late-night broadcast out of Joshua Tree. With synthesist RedBlueBlackSilver in tow, Layne offers up tales of the paranormal, the odd, and the arcane. Layne illu...

This week on Transmissions, we're joined by sound healer, reiki practitioner, and avant-garde composer Devi Mambouka, better known as Masma Dream World. Her latest LP is called Play At Night, out on Northern Spy Records. It’s a blend of subterranean bass, spooky backwards masked poetry, and shifting, nocturnal soundscapes designed to entrance, inviting you to examine your “preconceived relationshi...

You’re tuned into Transmissions, where each week Aquarium Drunkard presents a strange conversation for these strange times. Today on the show we’re joined by Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Makers. The Markers’ new album 2020 is out now on Drag City. It’s a gloriously smeared burst of noise, raw riffs, and damaged country and folk songs. Ambrogio joined us to discuss the importance of good quarantine comp...

Incoming transmission from...Yves Jarvis. The singer/songwriter/producer's latest is called Sundry Rock Song Stock, and it's a blur of soft-focus pop and shimmering melodic mirages. He joined us from the Tree Museum in Ontario to discuss his interest in progressive rock, creative approach, the disparate influence of Joni Mitchell, Bill Bruford, and Kanye. Plus, a check in with Vic Berger IV and Do...

Transmissions…strange talks for these strange days. This week on the show, we’re joined by ambient hero William Basinski and his collaborator and engineer Preston Wendel. They’ve got two wildly divergent projects out this year. In July, they released To Feel Embraced a collection of saxophone-laden lounge and electronica under the name Sparkle Division. And on November 13th, they release William B...

Bonus episode! We put out episodes every Wednesday and we have already done so this week—a great chat with novelist and podcaster Hari Kunzru—but since this week being the week it has been, we’re in an energetic mood. So here we are. Our guest for this extra episode is John Darnielle. Since 1991, he’s released music under the Mountain Goats banner, in addition to writing a couple of great books, i...

This week on Transmissions, Hari Kunzru in conversation with host Jason P. Woodbury. Kunzru is a novelist and writer; his latest is called Red Pill. It’s about a writer who receives a fellowship in Germany, where he finds himself sucked into a spiral of reactionary thinking. His other 2020 project is a podcast called Into the Zone, from Puskin Industries. It’s a podcast about, well, to put it in r...

Incoming transmission from Joe Wong. He's an incredibly busy guy: he hosts the Trap Set, a weekly interview podcast he’s helmed since 2015, where he sits down with artists like Mix Master Mike, Sharon Van Etten, Jim Keltner, Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo, among many others. He also makes music for film in TV—you’ve probably heard his work on Master of None, Russian Doll, Awkwafina is Nora From Que...

Incoming transmission from...Joe Pera and James Wallace, who’s better known as Skyway Man. The two worked together on season two of Joe’s TV show, Joe Pera Talks With You on Adult Swim. Describing “what happens” on the show doesn’t really do it justice. Nothing too out of the ordinary occurs—characters go on hikes, they stay up late watching videos on the internet, they deal with the passing of lo...

The release of the new career-spanning collection Transmissions: The Music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland continues a wave of new appreciation for the pioneering folk, electronic, and experimental composer's celestial and enveloping songs. Offering a holistic look at Glenn-Copeland's diverse songbook—ranging from early folk-jazz stunners to electronic devotionals and breakbeat-inclusive pop—the compila...