Emil Amos' Drifter's Sympathy

In 1998 Duncan Trussell (comedian), David MacLean (writer) and Emil (musician) went to India and Sri Lanka together for 3 months. They lived in Dharamshala for a month with Tibetan Refugees and Buddhist monks and then traveled to Agra, New Delhi and Varanasi together. In Varanasi they took a semi-disastrous trip down the Ganges where Emil ingested too many religious drugs and his body evaporated after being locked inside a very small, hot room after the power had gone out across the city. This OD came on the heels of having experienced an entire year of constant & supreme happiness... an unexpected explosion of serotonin that occurred after a dream where God had come to him and said "Are you ready?". After the overdose shattered that state, Duncan and Emil came back to the US in various states of distress and David decided to go on to Southern India. Four years later, David returned to India as a Fulbright scholar and ended up having a catastrophic reaction to Larium (an anti-Malarial drug), consequently losi

 EPISODE 30 ✨🔦✨ In this episode Emil travels back down to Chapel Hill to try and re-assess the landscape that gave birth to his musical outlook in the early nineties. He uses the flashpoint of Chapel Hill's underground music explosion to argue that its the people living in a town that truly define the psychological geography of a place before they disappear and that place's identity transforms. This will probably be the only Drifter's Sympathy cast that focuses on the atmosphere surrounding a 'modern band'. Polvo's era opens up a perfect gateway into the study of a fleeting uniqueness that explodes in unwatched environments before the sudden death of a culture's heyday and the rebuilding period that inevitably follows. In Episode 27 ('To Abraxas with Headaches') Emil dubbed Polvo as the band that quintessentially personifies the charm and underdog position of a local band for him. So we dive into the influence these older kids wielded and study a boiling kettle in its most unique moment.

On March 5th the next episodes of Drifter's Sympathy will start rolling out!💥 We've set up a Patreon for people to support the podcast so it can run ad free for the rest of the season. The 3rd Season has 6 more episodes to go, but if you want to support the show and join the Patreon you get all the episodes a week early and two of the Lost Episodes too. There's also a new Drifter's Sympathy shirt designed by Beholder Badges and a special Holy Sons hoodie you can order if you want to contribute more to the podcast too. After these next three months of episodes have run, Emil will cancel the Patreon and take some time off to create the 4th Season. Here's the link to the Patreon page... you can also find it on the Drifter's Sympathy Facebook, Emil's Instagram or Twitter (just search for 'Emil Amos'). Thank You SOOO much to everyone who's already helped out!💐 https://www.patreon.com/drifterssympathy

Episode 29 tells the genesis tale behind the song 'Saccharine Trust' that was named after the classic SST band of the '80s. The first half of the cast meditates on the unstable period of life the song is about and then segues into a lesson on meeting your heroes when Emil ends up face to face with his early underground idol, J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr. The second half of the cast drifts into the minefield of trying to discern why the modern era seems less distinct and vital and mourns the loss of a central underground community. While the end devolves into solipsistic philosophical attempts to find a positive thread somewhere within our cultural wreckage while wrestling with an increasingly plastic world.

'The Terrorists' digs down into the music that shapes our minds when we first become indoctrinated in the language of the punk spirit. Another version of the loner/outsider, The TERRORIST anticipates their marginalization and amps up the aggression for a preemptive attack. Twisting the knife back into the gatekeepers and mutating the artistic frontier before others can theorize on what's coming next... This cast features special spots on :: * Captain Beefheart * Sun City Girls * The messy birth of Sebadoh * Truman's Water * The Mothers of Invention * Gong & Tomorrow's Gift... The Terrorist movement rolls on forever in newer forms,, but this is a brief reminder of some of its most fertile periods,, always necessary to re-visit again or pass down to the Youth of Today.🌷

This is the story of how the first song on the first Holy Sons record was channeled during a precarious bender and super-faded viewing of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1997. This bender eventually leads to a semi-disastrous conclusion at a party that Emil has some trouble owning up to. The second half of the cast gets into the initial elation we feel when canonizing our early heroes... and then the complex horizon that opens up when we meet the spectre of depression for the first time. Emil meets Gator Rogowski right before he shocks the skateboarding world by committing the most notorious crime in its history (documented in the excellent film "Stoked"). And then Emil experiences the death of his love for the act of skating as depression takes over and music offers the only way out. This cast is soundtracked by the great Chapel Hill band POLVO.

Loner Legends returns for a second round to help define the impetus behind Drifter's Sympathy. The 'loser' is an archetype that still needs a good bit of ironing out... and for this episode we're presented with classically wayward examples like Arch Hall Jr., Gary Stewart, Bobb Trimble and Jimmy Campbell. Underdogs who crashed up against their time with a particular fearlessness and were then trapped like a fly in amber for us to mythologize later on. Support Drifter's Sympathy by visiting https://holysons.bandcamp.com/

'Dawn of Individuation' launches Season 3 of Drifter's Sympathy by grappling with the etymology of nostalgia as an 'acute form of homesickness'. Its a mellow opening that digs into the initial chance you get to invent yourself at age 13, the mating rituals of junior high school and the vanity that drives one to flip a penny into a water fountain and pray to god earnestly for popularity and affirmation. Turning more serious at the end, we address the moment you become truly molded as a teenager and the initial set of decisions one makes that will damn them towards their future self forever. Hearing Dinosaur Jr.'s first record begins to change Emil’s mind completely by confronting him with the idea that art 'might actually be about what your really going through, rather than what you want people to think'. This is the moment we perceive the power of art as it radicalizes the child mind that was previously being trained to manipulate their appearance for other's affirmation. By the end, Dawn of Individuation bec

LONER LEGENDS brings the second season of Drifter's Sympathy to a close with special spotlights on Pete Hamm, Roger Rodier, Moondog and the great Skip Spence, who might've unknowingly kicked off this entire genre. Spence's story is used as a jumping off point as he embodied the classic tragedy of someone who was impossibly talented, taken off the path towards happiness by schizophrenia and addiction. A pure source of loner wisdom & confusion, Spence embodied the true spirit of 'private music' on his record "Oar", transmitting his idiosyncratic frequency from his own planet alone. Drifter's Sympathy will be forced to take a 2 month break to prepare for Season 3 and allow Emil the time to mix records again!... >> we'll be posting some updates on the Drifter's Sympathy Facebook page soon.✨🔦✨

To bring Season 2 to its thematic close, Duncan guest-hosts with Emil and they try to sum up their thoughts on the light and dark sides of the nature of the Guru. The episode is named after a Universal voice that Duncan dubbed 'The Lecturer'... an entity that might visit you when you've ingested too much and the rudder of your mind leaves you floating directionless. In that moment of vulnerability, the universe may deliver this intrinsic voice to you... and when that fragile moment comes, pray that you'll be visited by a benevolent Lecturer.

British Masters returns for a second volume to mine early Bowie obscurities, classically-influenced prog-folk, private press demos of failed songwriting teams and a short spotlight on Andrew Loog Oldham (producer of the Stones, Del Shannon and Billy Nicholls).

This cast is about the slow attempt we make to repair ourselves while staring into the heart of absurdity. Its about the family of people who've inadvertently helped each other through death and re-birth... the writers, thinkers and artists who have recorded their attempt to appreciate life throughout history. Taking its name from Colin Wilson's book 'The Outsider', the cast eventually devolves into metaphor and a drunken tribute to Emil and Duncan's Taoist teacher who died a few weeks ago.

Emil's bandmate Alex Hall from Grails and Lilacs & Champagne is in town from Berlin and they deliver an introduction to "Library Music"... The term goes back as far as the twenties when stock music began to be composed to accompany the first films that included sound. Television companies were able to avoid copyright issues by sourcing music from 'music libraries' and the anonymous players who provided the music were often some of the best in the world. Because the records were never available to the public, Library Music looms large as one of the secret troves of great composition and execution in the world of record digging and sampling. Holy Sons continue their tour with the Japanese band Mono at the Music Hall of Williamsburg tonight!

Duncan Trussell & Emil Amos have been sitting on an archive of prank calls they did in college & talking about releasing them for 2 DECADES now. Some of Emil's favorites have been cleaned up for this exclusive episode of Drifter's Sympathy.✨🌺✨ It serves as a frozen photograph of a strange moment up in the mountains of North Carolina in the 90's, the bizarre personalities of that region and Duncan's spur-of-the-moment Genius that leads people's minds into places they didn't originally want to go.

Drifting deep into our UK roots on many drinks, Emil dedicates an entire episode to two unheralded pioneers that got lost in the initial flurry of British invasion-isms. Caravan hid behind the shadow of Pink Floyd without ever truly stepping out into the larger public's mind. Kaleidoscope also burst off that initial spark of Syd's imagination into their own obtuse world and then faded away into obscurity. Today the first ever record under Emil's name was announced. If you are into the RARE SOUNDTRACKS episodes, check out his new album FILMMUSIK, which was made in that same dark, paranoid mold. It comes out June 2nd on Pelagic Records in Berlin. More info here :: http://pelagic-records.com/product/emil-amos-filmmusik-lp-download/ And the new Album Trailer :: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNHJFNRIamw

This episode details the story behind the song "Reckless Liberation" from the Holy Sons' record 'Survivalist Tales'. Emil enters college and immediately descends into an inner-storm of disassociation and profound confusion; ...existing up in trees, on rooftops or gazing down upon normal human life from the rafters of the church. Until he eventually sees a girl from across campus that he decides has to fall in love with him. The uncomfortable relationship between falling in love and morbid depression is explored and Emil inadvertently casts a black magic spell on an enemy who would have him destroyed for a moment's entertainment.

Re-visiting the entry point at which we all encounter the idea of sex and the mystique/power it holds at a distance, we dive into some of the geniuses behind the music that soundtracked the classic softcore porn films. The centerpiece is on the Emmanuelle films and the three composers that brought to life the darkness and tension those films asked for. But a few moments of dirty disco are hauled out to illustrate the contrast between the virtues of low-brow and hi-brow approaches. The cast ends with a special spot on two icons of Gay porn, one who soundtracked it and another who acted in it... both dying tragically of Aids in the mid 80's before really making a mark in the larger culture.

This cast is about the absolute peak of recklessness... when you spin the wheel just to see where everything lands. It picks up the thread left off in "Center of the Cyclone", the darkest chapter of Drifter's Sympathy, where Emil had a classical guitar broken over his head and 17 staples put in to rectify the situation. In this episode he accidentally gets into college and then travels up to Boston to live with his guru one last time.

American Trailblazers returns and seeps into all new cracks of our abandoned history. In a half-drunken fit of mispronunciation, Emil calls up producer John Agnello to set the record straight on the various producers of the Eagles, uncovers various home tapes by forgotten garage bands and rolls out a few unparalleled epics by would've-been-giants from the genesis of the folk-rock boiling pot. Listen to the new Holy Sons record Emil and John Agnello made together here :: https://holysons.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-garden and buy the physical LP here :: http://shop.partisanrecords.com/products/holy-sons-in-the-garden

Episode 13 kicks off the second season of Drifter's Sympathy.💐 Like an archaeologist going over the same prehistoric site twice, we go back to High School in an attempt to return to more optimistic times. That strategy backfires completely as we dive fully into the experience of finding a dead body, the extremely faint footprint we leave on earth and the confusion of watching a peer get destroyed by authoritarian figures right in front of your eyes. This season is dedicated to Don Clarke-Pearson, a lovely kid I went to High School with that the local media and law enforcement put on a plank to walk in front of us.