Artist Bio:  Stray ghost mutt making strange noises. Gameboy music meets your favourite David Lynch film and gives birth to broken dreams. Digital ghost guitar screams. Cute/

Genres: Electronic/noise rock/shoegaze/fake OST/real OST

Band Lineup: Johnny Kwaitaminutenow

Website: https://nightmarepuppy.bandcamp.com/

Most Recent Release: Nara Nara Voltsong For Shower (LP, February 2020)

Sputnik User: JohnnyoftheWell

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INTERVIEW

I caught up with Johnny about his musical project Nightmare Puppy, from its formation to what he sees in its future.

Hugh Puddles circa 2017. Image has been blurred to protect his identity from Brazilian LDR stans.

I’m looking at the artist pic on your bandcamp page right now. Is that the elusive and ever-sought-after Hugh Puddles? Also, how long did it take you to grow that hair out? Is that a pornstache or just a shadow?

Hello heh, yes that was me five years ago. Can’t confirm how long the hair took because I was a hippy flake and never cut it, like, ever. Times have changed and I look like a moody square now, but it was fun while it lasted. The pornstache was and is real. It comes with a beard and lots of good intentions.

 

Tell us a little bit about how Nightmare Puppy formed. What sparked your desire to make music? What cumulative influences (artist, video game, or otherwise) led to the sounds that we hear on your latest endeavor, Nara Nara Voltsong For Shower?

Yikes, um, when I was 15ish, I had an instrumental prog project called Storm Daughter (lol), which was my first crash pad for writing music, which I was doing to channel theory I was learning for guitar. I took all that way too seriously, and created a side project called Ornstein’s Puppy for tracks that were supposed to be “ironically” bad (but were very much bad-bad), but then I started listening to Mike Patton and my guitar teacher got me into John Zorn, and that kind of goofy weirdo shit became much more valuable to me. Ornstein’s Puppy suddenly didn’t seem like such a throwaway, so I rebranded it as Nightmare Puppy and released everything Ornstein’s Puppy ever did as a debut compilation. As I grew up and realised that instrumental prog is Not Kool, Nightmare Puppy became more interesting and fulfilling than Storm Daughter, so I stuck with it.

It’s a long road from that point to Nara Nara, and most of that has been growing into a specifically digital sound and getting comfortable with the thought that Nightmare Puppy will never be a “real” experimental rock project (which I wouldn’t want now tbh). I’m not a tech wizard as a producer or a guitarist, but I’m confident in the way I write and I like noise and distortion and bangers and moroseness and pretty cinematic shit, so I tried to combine all that into a MIDI-centric sound that feels like My Thing. That impulse was the biggest “influence”, I guess – there are loads of artists who’ve guided and steered it at various points, and the Nara Nara songs came out of a wide range of years, so it’s hard to generalise, but the biggest ones were probably, in no particular order:

• Melt-Banana and Shellac were really freeing in how they got me trying to style my guitar differently
• Aphex Twin (later stuff), Venetian Snares and Crystal Castles. I didn’t actually listen to that much electronic music before Nara Nara, but those three were all huge when it came to pinpointing the atmospheres I wanted
• …oh, and also Ulver! The good stuff: Perdition City and Blood Inside and Messe! Those definitely gave me a lot of exciting ideas
• Early 65degreesofstatic’s flash-in-a-pan climactic writing style and mix of rock instrumentation with bracing digital percussion definitely went a long way
• Early Tera Melos have been in the back room ever since an e-pal introduced me to them on the basis that my old shit as Storm Daughter reminded me of them. Cute how stuff works around sometimes
• A load of video game music from (mainly) my childhood that always seeps in even though I never actively try to recall it lol

 

Personally, I really enjoyed Nara Nara Voltsong For Shower. One of the issues I normally have with “Gameboy music” (as you described it in your bio) is that it feels confined to that audience, but this album possesses a guitar driven indie-rock edge and some beautifully subtle piano/keyboard strokes which allow it to constantly plant its feet in two worlds. I was initially reminded of bansheebeat’s Lumine, which might not be 100% accurate but it’s the highest praise I can think of for this style of music. I also notice some overlap with Crystal Castles, especially in Nara Nara‘s heavier bits. How have you achieved such depth and nuance in your sound, and in your opinion, do either of those comparisons hold up?

Hmm I remember enjoying bansheebeat’s debut back when it dropped; no direct influence there, but I’m sure we have some common touchstones. I never checked Lumine, but I saw it repped on the Homephone TE thread, which seems promising enough.

As for Crystal Castles, shit yeah! They were a big stepping stone on my slow, slow journey into electronic music. I love the way their second album balances abrasive and atmospheric tones but sounds so clear and focused throughout – threw that record on the other day and the middle run in particular holds up a treat. Still inspiring.

I don’t know how much depth or nuance I really achieved, but if there’s any semblance of it, hopefully it’s because I didn’t want to indulge any particular sound beyond what worked for each piece. For example, the somewhat flippant “Gameboy music” descriptor – I do think bitcrush and chiptune are cool sounds and fun tools, but not always cool or fun enough to fuel entire tracks or albums as the primary attraction. I didn’t want to play too much to any single sound or style, and if that broadened the album’s appeal then I’m happy to hear it!

 

Four of the album’s eleven tracks reside in the six-to-nine minute range. Do you consider Nightmare Puppy to be post-rock influenced (at least in terms of structural aim for ebb and flow)? In your estimation, what is the key to writing an engaging song of that length and/or style?

Ahhh errrr tricky. In terms of past influence, yes absolutely: peak/valley post-rock had a big impact on the way I write because it’s such a reliable beginner’s template for instrumental music (certainly compared to prog). My writing used to be erratic and overstuffed with ideas, so I had to learn how to present things with more shape and space. There aren’t many points where I’ve actively tried to make post-rock with Nightmare Puppy, but it was a good mentor in that regard.

As for the key to writing engaging long songs, I think it’s about making the most of interesting ideas? Get a beat to land and make it stick. Conjure a strong texture or atmosphere and find a way for it to sustain a whole song. Post-rock has this trope where every song or idea sounds like it’s trying to outgrow itself, and I’ve come to realise that this isn’t necessarily an advantage: my favourite parts of GY!BE songs are never the climaxes, but when the drums kick in during the build-ups (Sleep and We Drift Like Worried Fire, say), and I think that feeling that something huge is around the corner says more than any crescendo ever can, like instrumental music is better at evoking larger-than-life things indirectly than at embodying them head-on. My favourite post-rock cuts now are things like

• Goodbye Enemy Airship (Do Make Say Think)
• In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, And Beethoven… (Tortoise)
• Pendulum Man (Bark Psychosis)
• For Dinner (Slint)
• Zen (Downy)

just because they take really engaging, really moody ideas and let them spread instead of forcing them into climaxes. I’ve still got a lot to learn there. Nightmare Puppy songs, especially the long ones, are usually one big idea after another, but I’d like to rely less on crescendos as a songwriting tool. I still like maximalist Huge Moments, but I see them more and more as ways to cogently derail or transform a song rather than obligatory peaks for predictable ideas, if that figures? Nara Nara has its share of both, but in the future I’d like to explore more minimal/cyclical longer cuts (we’ll see whether I can actually pull them off). You know, what’s better: predictable ebb-and-flow, or a loop so irresistible you can’t stop listening to it? I got into the Field recently and was blown away by his track “Leave It”. Nearly 12 minutes of a single repeat with a few subtle changes along the way, and it works because the central idea/tones/beat/bassline are just that good. Genius. Goals.

 

As a relative newcomer to Nightmare Puppy, I’m still trying to decide what my favorite song is from the new LP and it’s currently between those longer tracks. I’m addicted to the mysterious, echoing atmosphere of ‘Overlooking View’ (contrary to the song title, it makes me feel like I’m in a cavern), the raw, upbeat chaotic energy of ‘Caffeine Icicle’, the sinister beauty of ‘Murder Speculation’ (that breathtaking outro, phew), and the winding aesthetic journey that is ‘Shower Song // Everything Evil Happens In Bathrooms’. Which song from Nara Nara Voltsong For Shower are you most proud of and why? Also, is there a strategic reason for placing nearly all of your lengthier tracks in the album’s back half?

Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you picked Overlooking View, Murder Speculation and Caffeine Icicle – they were the final batch of songs written, and probably the ones I’m proudest of as compositions. Shower Song… started as my 17 year-old self’s shot at an overbearing prog/post-rock opus, so I’m just glad it turned out as something listenable.

Honestly though, the song I’m most satisfied with (maybe not proudest of) is Homewrecker. Maybe three years before the album release, I was in a dark place over a carcrash breakup and started listening to Shellac in a borderline toxic way. There was something so scratchy, so mechanical and overwhelmingly negative about Steve Albini’s guitar tone that sparked me off somehow. I didn’t overthink it, I just made this pounding industrial beat and chord loop, mixed up the dirtiest tone I could and slammed out whatever felt natural as a noise-solo over consecutive takes. I felt like I was causing my guitar physical pain, which isn’t something I’ve ever had before or since. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken more clearly through music. The title is super juvenile and I regret sticking with it, but otherwise that’s the one.

As for the sequencing, I guess I just like albums that get longer and denser the further you get. Unwound’s New Plastic Ideas is probably the best example of that, absolutely love how that record is paced. Records with weighty back-ends often sit right with me really. Cult of Luna – Somewhere Along The Highway, Joy Division – Closer, Boris – Pink (the trve vinyl version), Broken Social Scene’s s/t… I’m just namedropping now, but who doesn’t love an overpowered closing stretch?

 

You have an apparent inclination towards soundtracks (Canal [2019], Susanne [2016]). Tell us a little more about what went into this, and what you see as the primary difference between a Nightmare Puppy film score and a regular Nightmare Puppy LP, considering both forego vocals.

Oh haha, those were both from my student film days. Back then I didn’t work that much on music for its own sake, but I was in and out of design roles for theatre and short films the whole time, so a load of what I was writing had tie-ins to other projects. Half the Mirrored Headbutt album is drawn from soundtracks, and, say, on Nara Nara, Totally Wicked came to life because a director wanted a goofy dance piece. The entire central section of Shower Song was originally a single repeat of four bars, but I looped and augmented it because I needed something to soundtrack a vlog and ended up liking it that way. There’s no serious difference between score pieces and “regular” tracks, except that I never gave the score pieces much work beyond what they needed to do for whichever film/show. They’re very means-to-an-end, but I think a few of them hold up on their own.

On a sidenote, it might interest you to know that Overlooking View and Murder Speculation were soundtracks of a sort, too. A couple of months before Nara Nara dropped, I had an obsession with the Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners movies. Best atmospheres I’ve come across in anime, hands down: you’ve got your perplexing-intriguing nonlinear storyline, you’ve got your esoteric mysterious magical shit, you’ve got your real-world grit and menace, you’ve got enigmatic characters with a lot of depth, you’ve got a load of noirish suspense and – of course – you’ve got an astoundingly good soundtrack. I wanted to try recreating what the composer Yuki Kajiura had made without paying specific attention to anything she’d done on a technical level, so I focused on the atmospheres of the first and seventh films (for which the Nightmare Puppy pieces are named) and tried to pin down everything that stood out to me about them and their music in my own language. I did a similar thing as a goof a while back with Pokemon music, but it was such a rewarding process this time around that I wouldn’t hesitate to return to it if anything inspires me the same way. But yeah, are those pieces soundtracks of soundtracks, or real tracks in their own right? I don’t know if it matters.

 

How do you perceive your project’s overall growth since it debuted in 2014 with The Complete Works of Ornstein’s Puppy? What has changed?  What has remained the same? Can you piece together a career-spanning 12-track Nightmare Puppy “Greatest Hits” to hook in new listeners?

Hmm, the project’s growth was probably something along the lines of

1. Going from something I didn’t take seriously to something I kind-of did (the Furtherance album)
2. Going from something anything-goes and “”“experimental””” to something that gave me a concrete sense of sound and identity (the Mirrored Headbutt album)
3. Working out exactly where I wanted my sound to go (Nara Nara)

so I’ve changed and my influences have changed and everything has changed, but also I think it’s been honing in on something that’s been there all along? Nightmare Puppy doesn’t warrant a greatest hits, but for the hell of it, here’s a 12-track digest that I don’t expect anyone to listen to (or necessarily read):

1. “Puppy” (2014): 9-minute eureka moment of pure jank – it rips off everyone from Radiohead to the Dillinger Escape Plan to Leona Lewis. It’s a cute mess, but this is where Nightmare Puppy sort-of found its groove for the first time.
2. “Everything and Anything” (2014): the one real shot I took at Naked City – this one changes style completely every 4 bars, so you get baroque metal, ambient Lord of the Rings shit, Midi noise, and some kind of drum and bass disasterpiece tracing round each other. Scrappy as hell but good fun.
3. “Foglio Tre: Fantasma di Fuoco” (2014): this was meant to be a post-metal epic that borrowed from Massive Attack, but somehow it panned out as a chiptune meltdown with an Italian screamo climax. I miss being able to throw together disparate shit and not care how it panned out
4. “Exit” (2015): this is a pretty standard end-credits soundtrack piece that is unremarkable in almost every way except that it’s (probably) the first entirely unified cohesive Nightmare Puppy track ever wooooooo
5. “Forest of Fire (Power Love Song)” (2016): hahahahaha the one track where I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s another credits theme, and it came out as this ginormous flash-in-a-pan heavy banger with a scratchy guitar riff and a load of silly synth stuff. I adore this track so much, it came at the end of this 90-minute mess of a film where nothing made sense, and then suddenly – boom! Who cares? It’s one of the only Nightmare Puppy songs that has been – or should ever be – performed in front of a live audience
6. “Mirrored Headbutt” (2017): ugh I wish this one had never been released so I could dig it up and take a better shot at producing it properly. It’s Nightmare Puppy’s version of a disco track – well, it has this dissonance between disco and breaks that I wasn’t really sure how to navigate, but the bass and chords went hard.
7. “Violet’s Theme” (2017): this was a character piece rather than actual soundtrack music, but it’s probably my favourite thing I did in that vein. It’s a drunken glitchy meltdown, probably the first time I really starting abusing bitcrush plugins
8. “Romantic Porn” (2017): more of that panoramic end-credits atmosphere, but this time much more expansive and prettier. I did some stuff with cut-up vocals that could have been implemented better, but otherwise this is a huge cheesy vibe
9. “TV Urinal in 5/4” (2019) there was a broken urinal, there was a TV, there was a bathroom, there was a mood. This was it – it’s a short soundtrack piece, but I think it captured something
10. “Turn the Helicopter Lights Off” (2020): along with Forest of Fire, this is probably my favourite synth-rock Nightmare Puppy banger. I guess it’s a little chaotic, but I had a lot of fun with it
11. “Overlooking View” (2020): said too much about this already, but it’s probably my favourite from a writing standpoint.
12. “Homewrecker” (2020): ditto this one, but from a cathartic standpoint

 

What does the future hold for Nightmare Puppy? It’s been two years since NNVFS dropped…are we due for a new release any time soon? Where do you see Nightmare Puppy in five years? A decade?

So in practical terms, Nightmare Puppy’s on freeze until I get a new Macbook – my last one kicked the can last June and I haven’t been able to work on music since. I also haven’t played electric guitar in almost two years, so that’s fun. After I get back to the UK next month, this will hopefully change in short order.

As for new material and future direction etc, I’d definitely like to do something new in the not-too-distant future! I’ve got a basis for this in half-finished new-ish pieces kicking around my hard drives, and a few older ones that I left off Nara Nara, but I’d like to use this accidental hiatus to turn over a new leaf instead of giving old compositions a fresh makeover. Most of the new ideas I’ve got floating around are fingerstyle patterns for acoustic guitar that will take a fair bit of rearranging and digitalising before they work for Nightmare Puppy in any form. I started a new piece the other day that sounds like an imminent planecrash, so that’s fun. I’ll need to play around with it when I have a DAW again, but hopefully more tracks will follow.

So there will be new music at some point! But 1) Nara Nara took absolutely forever to fine-tune and there are a lot of parts of it that I still think ended up sloppy and 2) I feel insecure about whether I can make something better, in a way that I never got with past projects, so I’ll have to get over myself a little (a famously time-consuming process in itself). Just doing this interview has made me more excited to get going again though, so thanks for that! We’ll see what happens.

 

You’re currently one of Sputnikmusic’s most well-known professional writers/critics. As someone who possesses an innate ability to dissect music for its flaws, do you ever find yourself getting in your own head while creating music? Is it a blessing, a curse, or a total non-factor?

Ah. So, I think I’m lucky because I don’t really care about, say, production quality or musicianship in and of themselves – like, they’re important, but only because they support more important things like songwriting and aesthetic. That definitely makes life easier for me as a producer because it reduces the entire technical side of things to the question of does it sound good/flow right (which still takes a lot of ironing over). I’m a long way short of perfect, but having a sense of this, this, and this are letting the side down are definitely helpful when I’m combing over tracks. A lot of the late-stage work on Nara Nara was very similar to how I’d sometimes start on a review: just sitting on my sofa with a beer, some good food and a notepad, listening to the album and scribbling everything that came into my head on a track-by-track basis. Then I’d go back to my workspace and go through the whole lot one-by-one. Repeat that process too many times and you burn out, but it felt really good to be critical and creative at the same time.

However, I think there’s definitely a curse to being a critic because I have found it hard to come up with ideas I really believe in, or – much worse – to even feel strongly about being creative in the first place. Some of this is just laziness, but I definitely feel that I lost touch with that part of myself sometime in the last year or so, or that it just got sucked into the worlds and wars of words. Whatever happens next with Nightmare Puppy, a lot of it will hinge around breaking that rut and getting that passion flowing again. Maybe this would be a good thing for my Sputnik content, actually – I love reviewing, and a couple of pieces this year felt more satisfying than anything I’d done in a while, but separate inspirations have a way of rubbing off against each other.

 

You’ve been a member of Sputnikmusic since 2011. Summarize what you think “the essence of Sputnik” is. Why are some people still drawn to a site whose peak popularity arguably waned a long time ago? What advice do you have for the site’s collective membership?

Hmm, it’s easy to fingerpoint the glaring inadequacies in other music sites for discussion or community content, but I think at this point Sputnik’s post-iceberg Titanic status has an attraction of its own. I also think it supports a different community and kind of discussion to what it had in its dumpster fire “peak” years, fun as the few I was around for were. It’s refreshing that we’re partially shielded from the main Fantano-Rym-P4k thoroughfare of online hype, even if this is probably a side-effect of the angsty nostalgia that runs through most certified sputcore. None of this really pins down the “essence of Sputnik”, but I think the community presence kind-of answers that question on its own terms, right down to individual users – Sputnik comes with an initially oblique and often finicky flavour, sure, but by and large it is what you make of it. I guess my advice would be to get on board with that – don’t take it too seriously, but don’t undervalue it either.

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