#60: Compared to What?
Saving PBS with Cosmic American Ambience | New Dawn Starkestra
Welcome back to the Ambient Audiophile, where being first on the scene isn’t really that important. Everybody is happy you got there.
So, my plan to convert every psych rock loving indie nerd into a moe.ron is slowly advancing. This week I played a couple live jams and had two—TWO—heads on Bluesky say they wanted to diver deeper afterwards. One requested a sort of live bootleg primer in these pages, and that will definitely happen sooner rather than later. I really appreciate the open mindedness of this community. It wasn’t all that long ago that jambands were deeply uncool among a certain cohort of non-mainstream music lovers but we’ve really made great strides in tearing down the walls and connecting minds and music. This is due, of course, to the reemergence and reexamination of Grateful Dead music, of course. The Phish ascent is in progress and next is a smattering of bands only my fellow Northeast, Late 90s college heads will presently recall: The Ominous Seapods, Strangefolk, Jiggle the Handle, Free Beer and Chicken and Deep motherfuckin’ Banana Blackout. Shit, I saw a mention of Conehead Buddha recently and recall taking my first college date to see them at Wetlands.
There was no second date.
But anyway. This week’s radio show featured a lot of guitar in the first half, including a wonderful opening piece by Eric Arn, followed by great instrumental post-rock from NYC duo Aaron Fisher and Rob Stephenson and then some really gorgeous wordless sounds from new project R&D—Rebecca El-Saleh on & Dan Knishkowy on guitar. From there we went to the increasingly abundant catalog of Aural Canyon for pieces from the trio of Justin Houser, Andrew Weathers, and Daniel Wyche as well as something brand new from Texas artist Justin Sweatt. We finished up set one with another killer cut from Golden Brown’s latest for Eiderdown Records, Whisker Fatigue. It’s a fantastic record you all need in your life. I need it, too. I just wish the mail carrier didn’t leave it out in the sun on a 90 degree day. Yeah, totally fried, that one.
In set two we got to some progressive business, revisiting lesser herladed works from England’s Caravan and Italy’s Osanna. From the former we heard a long jam from 1972’s Waterloo Lily and from the latter, the lead track from their 1974 album Landscape of Life. And then we got to the moe. portion of the show with a perfectly rendered, partially acoustic of “So Long” that masterfully segued into the band’s signature tune about a pig, “Buster”. It’s a beautiful SBD/Matrix recording from 1999 and I discovered it using the “top rated” feature on the new version of the ReListen app. It’s got problems, but overall the update is nice. So, for the moe.curious, that tab is a good place to start for digging into their 35 years of live excellence.
Listen to the show here and check the playlist below:
The Trailhead 177
1. Eric Arn - Breathe More Deeply - An Anthology of Contemporary Solo Guitar (Creative Class War, 2024) 00:00
2. Aaron Fisher and Rob Stephenson - Breathing Space, July - Actual Space (Self, 2025) 06:49
3. R&D - I'll Send You A Sign - I'll Send You A Sign (Ruination, 2025) 10:45
4. Justin Sweatt - In Evening Air - Rose House (Aural Canyon, 2025) 18:45
5. Houser : Weathers : Wyche - A Note In Everything - Stone Mineral Metal Memory Metaphor (Aural Canyon, 2025) 23:34
6. Golden Brown - Boom Boom Pachyderm - Whisker Fatigue (Eiderdown, 2025) 36:00
7. Caravan - The Love In Your Eye / To Catch Me A Brother / Subsultus / Debouchement / Tilbury Kecks - Waterloo Lily (Deram, 1972) 57:39
8. Osanna - Il Castello Dell'Es - Landscape of Life (Fonit, 1974) 1:10:04
9. moe. - So Long -> - Smith Opera House, Geneva, NY, 4/16/99 (LMA) 1:19:01
10. moe. - Buster - Smith Opera House, Geneva, NY, 4/16/99 (LMA) 1:38:50
Mike Horn of Seawind of Battery has put together an amazing comp of modern artists to pushback on the attempted fascist takedown of public media in the United States of America. Save The Waves: People for Public Media features the likes of Bill MacKay, Zachary Cale, Nick Millevoi and a slew of others to support and bring attention to the danger PBS is in from the Cheeto-In-Chief.
Great jams for a great cause—a couple pieces from the comp are available to stream now. Check them out and pre-order a tape or digital as a “FUCK YOU” to the White House.
As I said uptop, keeping an open mind is essential in music discovery. Summertime is almost officially here and, for me at least, it’s time for jams. There is no musical experience that is more enjoyable to me these days than hearing noodly jams outdoors around smiling people. As a dad, the more family friendly the better.
So I’m always looking for jammy young bands and shows/fests to check out (got a favorite? leave a comment!).
Somehow I stumbled upon this Western NC group New Dawn Starkestra and I’m really digging them. The only member of the band I was familiar with is the legendary drummer Jeff Sipe (Aquarium Rescue Unit, Jazz Is Dead, Jimmy Herring).
It was Sipe’s name that drew me in but it was the incredible guitar work of Isaac Hadden that kept me in. He’s a great, melodic and fluid player with a sound that really reminds me of prime 80s John Scofield! And then there is the lovely vocal styling of Rebekah Todd and the punchy bass of Quinn Sternberg, making NDS a real contender for best new jammers of 2025. Oh and there is the nod to Sun Ra, a very good sign.
There doesn’t seem to be any studio work from the band yet but this recent live gig (great AUD recording) is a great listen. There’s some great covers and some solid originals. Most notable are the renditions of “Space is the Place” and Gene McDaniels’ “Compared to What”, made famous by Roberta Flack (but you gotta hear Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ version from Montreaux, too!)
Am I the indie psych nerd you’ve been looking for?