Hello and welcome to the future of Sputnik’s recently rebooted, charm offending, hernia cleansing, fool hunting, wokeshopping mania avenue for the brave and brainless. Staff Wars is back! This is where we stick members of the Staff team against the wall and interview them within an inch of their lives. Steel yourself as impossible questions are posed and the Staffers you’d never had the courage to approach before surpass your wildest expectations.

Today we catch up with a Staffer who should have long since been on here!  Both uninterested in all things rock and metal, and in near-invariable alignment with the powers of logic and common sense, it bears no overstatement to call granitenotebook one of Sputnik’s most valuable, talented and frequently overlooked writers. No more of that! No time to waste! In we delve:

granitenotebook, hello! How are you?

i’m doing good! just finished some homework so now I’m on to more important tasks like watching The X-Files

What day of the week are you responding from, and what bearing does this have on your overall state of being?

it’s saturday afternoon, so i’m relaxing and trying my best not to worry about all of the things i know i would benefit from just getting done already.

I’ve always thought your username was a great image! Could you explain the inspiration behind it?

thanks! ultimately I’ll have to keep that a secret, but it’s definitely not a random series of words that i put together becauseiI thought they sounded cool when i needed a new social media username, i can tell you that much. i also definitely haven’t falsely claimed it was a commentary on the unnoticed permanence of our writings on the internet, that would be really pretentious and annoying.

This interview is so hideously overdue that we’ve had not one but two waves of new staffers since it was originally meant to be put together. How do you feel about 1) the new babysquad 2) the changes (if any) in Sput’s journalistic standards and archetypes and 3) your own position within the team since we got the bump up in 2020?

first of all – nothing is overdue on sput, a website entirely hosted from every angle by free labor. thank you for your efforts and, despite the pressure you’re always getting from all the rest of us, you’re doing a great job at keeping up on all your numerous projects, reviews, lists, etc. 

re: your actual question –

1. i don’t really know them very well sadly i’ve always been pretty out of the loop when it comes to sput users, even when it comes to most contribs and staff (i think because my taste tends to differ so much from most of the userbase). but i am always happy to see new contribs and staff and i trust them to make the site a better place. i think passion is what this site flourishes on and they have it in spades. looking forward to their contributions
2. this one’s interesting. i think to some degree Official Sputnikmusic.com Writing has gotten better and to some degree it’s gotten worse – there are some really poorly written and/or problematic reviews from back in the early years that we’ve thankfully moved past. at the same time, many (not all!) of the staff on sput whose writing i always looked forward to have moved on, often to bigger and better things, which i can’t blame them for. and to be clear – the staff on sput are good writers, including the active staff, i just shared more in common (taste-wise and stylistically) with a lot of the emeritus. 
3. well i got the position, published like three reviews or something and then became incredibly inactive outside of end-of-year lists lol. i swear that was not my intention. but i feel relatively good about my position as the staff who shoves a bunch of stuff the general userbase doesn’t care about down their throats. ultimately, that was my goal, at least to some degree – the kind of music i love has been ridiculed for as long as i’ve loved music, often for incredibly gross reasons (sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. etc.), or discussed in similarly gross ways. so becoming staff was kind of my big middle finger to all those people over the years, on websites all over the internet (not just sput) and offline. of course, to a larger degree, i just wanted to have a platform for my writing and to provide a platform for small artists i admire, but i’m not gonna pretend spite didn’t drive me when the more noble reasons failed.

Having only known you for a few months before we got promoted, I was surprised to see your join date hails all the way back from ‘14 and that you’ve been reviewing solidly since then (fwiw I was inactive for most of those years). What originally drew you to Sput, and what are the biggest ups and downs you’ve witnessed since?

i can’t really remember how exactly i got here the first time. i’d read reviews here in the past, just from googling “insert album i like review,” but i was looking for literally any platform where i could host my writing and get some attention and most of all constructive criticism. rym didn’t work, other websites which i will not be linking (but you can find if you look really hard) didn’t work, and then i found sput and published a truly awful review of Since I Left You. i knew from reading other people’s input that you shouldn’t just write a track by track review and should use actual paragraphs, so i wrote a tbt but i crammed the tracks together into paragraphs. baby steps i guess. then i gave it a 4.5 because i wanted people to take me seriously. the album’s a 5 though, obviously.

ups and downs, idk. there’s been a lot of drama, most of which i haven’t been able to keep up with at all, and not for lack of trying. most of the biggest downs have been dealt with appropriately in my opinion, which is why i’m still on the site. the ups have just been the insane amount of freely contributed writing. and for me personally, i’m grateful to have had a website where i connected with people who helped me figure out how to become a much better critic.

You’re well-known now for covering electronic and pop, from cult-classic viral stuff all the way to full-on mainstream. Without going too far into discussion of Sputnik’s ailing relevance, could you share a few thoughts on the perks and pitfalls of critiquing popular content from a fringe platform?

perks: i have complete control. i can say whatever i want in these reviews about any artists or projects and give them whatever score i want and will influence the metacritic/aoty/whatever ratings accordingly, even occasionally even getting quoted in wikipedia, without having to get caught up in the latest “discourse.” because of that, it’s also possible, if i am ahead of the curve enough, to have the only non-retrospective pseudo-professional review for a project, which can feel nice.

pitfalls: my writing is very rarely noticed lol. also because the userbase of sput are a bunch of nerds (i say this with love as an absolute dweeb myself), it can sometimes feel like i’m trying to convince people of something’s relevance that would be taken without question on, say, pitchfork.

What does the term poptimist mean to you in generally, and to what extent would you identify with it? 

i think there’s a couple meanings. some people interpret it to mean trying to almost retroactively come up with reasons why something popular is good, actually. i take it as (and i think the originators of the term, most of the writers that people reflexively attack as poptimists, etc. also take it as) just taking pop as seriously as any other genre. i think the outright dismissal of pop music is, at best, ignorant to the vast swathes of gorgeous, influential, avant-garde, etc. pop music, and at worst (and very frequently) rooted in deep levels of sexism and racism. i could expand on that aspect but many, many other writers have gone on at length about it, and i think it’s kind of self-explanatory to anyone who’s into pop music at all and spends much time online.

Which review has been the trickiest to negotiate from that standpoint?

hmmm. CRASH was tough because i was effectively trying to argue that her more experimental stuff was way better but also that her “”””””””selling out”””””””” was not what made it worse. my Ed Sheeran review was rough (and it shows) because i was simultaneously trying to say “fuck the bourgeoisie, especially those pretending they’re not” and “this music is complete garbage” while trying too hard to make sure the average sput user knew i wasn’t trying to talk trash about pop music. final answer is probably my Maroon 5 series as a whole – it was really tough trying to figure out how to talk about their last few albums in particular. i felt like there was nothing to write about, until i realized that’s what i should say, which is how i came up with my review for V, still one of my favorites, at least in the context of the rest of that series.

We’ve had a fair bit of soul-searching on these interviews on what it means to be a good writer, but relatively little on what it means to have a platform. What responsibilities do you feel apply to you as a platformed critic, what responsibilities do you believe Sputnik has a site that offers a platform, and what (if any) changes to the current site infrastructure/status quo would you be glad to see?

great question. i make a strong effort to not write about stuff i don’t know about. that’s not to say i have to be a total expert on all pop music to write a review for the latest Taylor album, for example (i haven’t even heard most of the Beatles albums yet, don’t tell anyone). but like, if you’re totally new to the genre, i think it’s important to run your thoughts by someone who knows the genre. more importantly, and sometimes in tandem with that, i think it’s important for me to do my research on themes and social issues that i don’t have a full understanding of, which is plenty of them. just like, remembering that the things i say in reviews have some level of impact and are often seen by thousands of people is an important reminder. as uncle ben said, “with an extremely small modicum of power comes great responsibility.”

i used to have more issues with how sput was run as a website with a platform, but it has come forward miles in the past 5-10 years. if you’d asked me this in 2017 i would have told you “ban people who use slurs, remove soundoffs that are just talking about the artists’ body, etc.” and while i don’t think the site is quite where i’d like it to be in that regard, it’s much, much better. part of that is stepping up from the mods (thanks y’all!) and part of that is a more (on average) socially conscious userbase. i think we’re on the right track in that regard.

Ironically enough given the wider popularity of the stuff you cover, Staff are accustomed to frequent criticism for being out of step with the userbase’s tastes. Have you ever felt a responsibility to cater to the userbase? How does this tie into your attitude to Sputnik in general?

i don’t feel any responsibility to do that, no. that’s something i really like about the staff/mod team here! i do not personally see any purpose in conforming to previously existing tastes, and i don’t feel any pressure from the userbase to do so (at least, from anyone i take remotely seriously). honestly, if i don’t bother at least one person when i review something, it’s either really obscure or i feel like i’m not saying something worth saying. i like to read criticism that challenges my understanding of art, or expands it, or contextualizes it. i don’t like to read criticism that justifies my taste. i think there’s an enormous market for that, but sput is not a market.

As a complementary perspective to that, our AOTY list last year was relatively well received for its diversity and (in some cases) cogency of picks, whereas the User list, though far from the worst I’ve seen, picked up a fair bit of flack for one of the homogenous homeruns of its kind. To what extent do you believe the average Sputnik user still exists, and to what extent could or should this be a site that caters to everyone?

oh the average user absolutely still does. it’s certainly a much more open-minded userbase in general than it used to be (which reflects the music world at large, i feel), but i mean, the site has a clear emphasis on music made with guitars. people have made strong efforts to expand this box, and it has made a big difference. nothing against rock, metal, etc. it’s just that it’s, you know, one genre, and not only that, but it (specifically rock in particular, although metal has gotten plenty of attention too) is by far the most discussed style of music in the western canon. like, 8/10 albums in the rym top 10 are still rock music, in 2023. nothing against those albums, i like all of them. but there is so much music out there, with so many different sounds. the idea that almost all of the best music in the world comes from that one specific scene (almost all of whom are white dudes from the u.s. or england) is just ridiculous. sput isn’t rym, obviously, and i’m sure there’s much more diversity in the user list than i am aware of (i don’t know most of those albums and i’m not gonna pretend to), which i am not trying to diminish. but the point i’m clumsily trying to make is that as a general rule, the sput userbase is very heavily biased in favor of the style of music that the music canon is already very heavily biased in favor of. even more frustrating than that is that there’s a decent chunk of that userbase that has convinced themselves that isn’t true anymore. i do think this should be a site for everyone. that doesn’t mean people should change their taste, force themselves to listen to music they don’t like, etc. and i don’t think sput’s nearly as gatekeepy/exclusive as it used to be – again, definite winner of “most improved” – but if we want this to be a site for everyone, we have to keep making efforts to include people who have different taste than us.

Average Sputnik user’s artist:country mapping (©AgentDeathbat)

Your most recent reviews, for Charli XCX’s CRASH and Leroy’s Dariacore (and now for Skrillex’s Quest For Fire, hooray!) have seen you adopt a new style, fully decapitalised and loosely conversational. I’d maybe call the register a steely deadpan, and am somewhat envious of how balanced and informative it comes of as in your hands! Is this what you wanted to achieve? How does it tie in to whatever you envision as the future of your writing?

thank you, that’s very nice of you. i’m not 100% sure what i wanted to achieve – i think to some degree, i was trying to come off a little more casual, to really accept the fact that 90% of my reviews are written in a blur and not edited enough anyway, so i was kind of just accepting that and writing them in notepad, reading them out loud once or twice, and posting. i was also paying homage to one of the reviews that has inspired me most (https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/58182/Kanye-West-Yeezus/). i’ve been trying to capture that energy since i started writing here. 

in terms of the future of my writing, i think maybe another reason i did it is sort of a way of rebelling from my primary form of writing nowadays, which is extremely formal (read: boring) research writing for school and work. i’d like to push further in that “all style maybe just a little substance” direction in the future for my writing at sput, but we’ll see what happens. i’ve found that very few of my promises for my writing on sput end up coming true haha

I shamefully forgot to comment as such at the time, but I loved your end-of-year blogpost for both its format and content! I got the sense that such a comprehensive write-up made out of individually succinct autonomous entries played right into your hands somehow – how did you find putting that together compared to a standard review?

thank you! i had a hard time writing reviews that year, i started quite a few and never quite got any of them done. i just couldn’t come up with enough to say, even though i had something to say about so many projects. that’s why an eoy list worked best – i was able to write a bunch of blurbs without having to do a full review length thing for anything (except MOTOMAMI, which kind of just came together last second). i really enjoyed it and would recommend it if anyone’s in a similar situation.

Would you pick just one release off that list that anyone and everyone reading this interview should check immediately?

i mean, instinctually, MOTOMAMI, haha. she’s big enough on her own though. i think Rayo Mix 2022 is probably the project on there i think deserves more attention the most. 

Nice! Moving on a little, what’s one realm of music you’d love to explore in more depth?

oh god don’t get me started lol. if i had to pick one, just off the cuff, i’d say dub. i love so much of what it has influenced but have barely touched the surface of the origins.

Oh hell yeah! Been thinking that a lot lately – I see and share so much love for dub via techno, trip-hop, ambient and post-hardcore but so little discussion of the source texts. Must dive into that sometime.

Onwards once again – a quick roleplay (gross!): you, me and Jesper are for some reason collectively DJing a night at the poolside bar mx has just opened in some remote-ish semi-suburb of Miami. The lighting is dim and colourful, the cocktails are overpriced, and we’re spinning the likes of Doss, TDJ, Four Tet, DJ Close Your Eyes to Find Me, OceanLab, James Ferraro etc.. Who shows up, who’s on the VIP list, what else gets played, do the cops get called etcetc. finish the scene!

mx said not to tell anyone else about his bar! hmm. 

shows up: normaloctagon, hyperion, ryus, almost certainly other users who are into electronic music that i have had many conversations with and have forgotten at this moment and am very sorry to have forgotten

vip list: exclusively deviant, who does not show up or even let us know he can’t make it

what else gets played: very sneaky way of asking for recs. jam city, easyfun, rustie, friendzone, and a bunch of random extended dance edits of pop songs i found on soundcloud that i enjoy and everyone else tolerates

do the cops get called: no, and people act relieved but they’re secretly disappointed because now the casual conversation thread won’t be as impressed

Out of curiosity and exhibitionist masochism, what’s the worst take I’ve ever had on Sputnik?

lmao gimme a second to look at your ratings.

ok yeah i remember. https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/80608/Hannah-Diamond-Reflections/ can’t believe you gave a coldplay album a point higher immediately after too, just pouring salt in the wound

First (and hopefully last) time anyone has ever indirectly accused me of overrating Coldplay lol. Will say that that rev was an unfortunate Contrib moment but I’ll stand by the score.

Anyway, final gauntlet! Kneejerks on:

Infinite Granite 

heard it once bc i don’t hate deafheaven and metal fans i knew said it was dulled down garbage so i figured maybe i’d like it ok. it was dull that’s for sure

Infinite Jest

i don’t remember the exact phrasing but i recently saw someone on a dating app who said it’s their favorite book and that they are extremely interested in post-modernism, and then they mentioned much lower in the bio that they had just started the book. i feel like that kind of says it all, really

(jfc lol)

Brakence 

heard one of his albums and it was alright, people seem to either love or hate his newest. i’ll get around to him eventually

Al Gore

idk he’s probably super problematic in some way i’m unaware of but his whole climate change thing certainly seems smarter with each passing year. also he has a funny name

The DADGAD guitar tuning

i don’t know enough about music theory, especially with guitars, to know what this is overused and overrated

Pomeranians 

like every single dog, cute

albumoftheyear.org

amazing resource for checking critic scores, seeing broad trends, etc. horrible resource for finding new music, and somehow has none of the benefits and all of the drawbacks of both sput and rym when it comes to userbase/discussions. gotta keep the lights on somehow though and it’s faster/more inclusive than metacritic so i like it

Facts

love them. wish more people knew what they were

Opinions

love them. wish more people were proud of theirs

Octopus

exclusively associated with “peaceful ocean screensaver” for me

The plural form of octopus

the only question i won’t answer for fear of getting cancelled

Halsey 

ok music, don’t know why anyone has strong opinions on it one way or the other. that being said, asking for another 9/11 because a music critic said their album was above average but not bnm was maybe a little far

DAWs

the best invention in music since the phonograph

Hit me up with a power quote so we can end on a high note!

idk how to answer this so here’s a fun video (the first 11 seconds represents me talking in this interview, the last 2 seconds represent sput’s justifiable reaction) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD8IWQY0IOM 

granitenotebook, thank you for your words!

thank you more!

Thank you for reading! Please stay tuned for our next instalment, coming soon!

Previously on Staff Wars:

Dewinged・DrGonzo・Trebor・Xenophanes・Sowing・Winesburgohio・Pon・BlushfulHippocrene・Nocte・mynameischan・johnnyoftheWell・MiloRuggles・MarsKid