Aquarium Drunkard

In 1969 Istanbul, James Baldwin brought Don Cherry and Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz together to score Fortune and Men’s Eyes, a controversial play about gay love in an Istanbul prison. The resulting music—a hypnotic, unruly weave of drums and flutes, somewhere between free jazz and a fever dream—vanished for more than 50 years. Now, Caz Plak has finally unearthed i...

Some records evoke another era, and then there are those that seem untouched by chronology. Originally released in 1999, The Glinting Spade is one of the latter: an ethereal procession of drone, medieval folk, ritual percussion, and acoustic reverie that emerged just before the so-called freak folk renaissance.

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Far removed from Jan & Dean's halcyon early days as surf-rock "California sound" architects, Save for a Rainy Day was a valiant attempt at a concept album revolving around summer thunderstorms and precipitation. Conceived as a solo effort to keep the duo's name alive in Jan Berry's medical absence, Dean Torrence and a series of key session players from the Wrecking...

Since 1999, Atlanta label ⁠Dust-to-Digital⁠ has created lavish boxsets, books, and collections of gospel, folk, blues, field recordings, and other sounds sourced from deep global archives. This week on. Transmissions, Lance and April Ledbetter join us to discuss the label's mission.

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A patient, deeply atmospheric work developed over more than five years, Nick Hakim's I Can See finds the in-demand producer and songwriter distilling his expansive palette into something quieter, more intimate, and quietly elegant. It offers the low-volume comfort of a dinner at a friend's house, where you never want to leave the room, but don't feel the need to talk m...