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’s subject is an adorable young bean of Good Sput Stock, so fresh-faced that I originally misremembered the number of years he has been on Staff by a factor of 0.5 (this has been edited and I have been shamed). His penmanship is pointy, his reverence is zany and his charm is a gosh darned weapon. Please welcome: AsleepintheBack!

AsleepintheBack hi. What day/time is it and how is your day?

I am somewhere in France on a Wednesday evening after a most adequate day thanking you I hope you are swell.

What are you jamming at this moment?

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble – Here Be Dragons (thank you MoM).

Hmm. Let’s break some ice: what can humans learn from birds?

How to fall with style (penguins exempted).

Love penguins. Which problematic historical figure do you find most attractive?

I’d bang Stalin tbh (he can Soviet my Union, wink wink etc.).

Yikes hot, great! Now, the question on everyone’s lips: why are you named after an Elbow album?

God knows lol. My dad likes Elbow. I like my dad. There was probably some further reasoning between those two statements that led to me being named for napping somewhere uncomfortable but, truth be told, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten my own origin story.

If Elbow didn’t exist and you were to name yourself after an album now, which would you choose?

Gay For Johnny Depp – What Doesn’t Kill You, Eventually Kills You (or WDKY,EKY for short)

You’re a good English chap from, if I’m not mistaken, the middle of bumfuck nowhere. How does a boy like you fall into the nostalgic morass more commonly associated with Midwest America and sappy continental folk as a foil for his lonesome environs? What’s wrong with the copious levels of broken-boiler depressioncore that British post-punk long since churned out as a world standard? What would zakalwe say? 

First off, bumfuck nowhere is apt/accurate/correct etc.

Second, “sappy continental folk”?! Kristian and I will fuck you up so help me god (he is tall, i am told).

Third, I’m not sure I’ve heard a drop of post-punk in my life #ShameOnMe #ProbsMyNextMonthlyGenreRecList. Idk, beyond extracting a few choice British cuts from my parents (just Radiohead and Pink Floyd, tbh), it was Sput that originally taught me how to muzak; and Sput, it turns out, has (or had, idk) a preference for sad boi emo and wistful folky things. Therefore, blame Sput.

Dammit Sput, how could you. Now, I don’t think I knew you well on Sput until you became that guy Con knows who is now a Contrib. This was an easy sell! Tell me about you and Con (tell me about Con!).

Con is bae. As was the case with Blush(fulHippocrene), he took me under his wing when I started out on Sput, showed me the ropes, gave me the recs, and helped me learn how to do the writings (still, self-evidently, a WIP).  He was also a large influence on my musical taste and review style in the 2016-18 period, certainly responsible / to blame (in part) for my previous emo revival infatuation, should you be looking for an effigy to set alight. General all round cool boi who also happens to make very cool music and who I also wish was much more active than he is these days.

Oh yes for sure, come back to us (more), Con! Anyhow, at this point, you’ve had two years to settle in as a Staffer – let’s hear how it was adjusting. First up, what did you hope to do/change/achieve/promote when you were originally promoted, and how did this pan out in practice?

Honestly, I did not expect the bump and remain convinced to this day that Blush rigged the system to give an old mate a leg up. I still don’t believe the promotion was justified – I find my placement jarring alongside writers as adept as yourself, as well as those I’ve looked up to for years (Sow, Chan, etc.). TL;DR: MEGA IMPOSTER SYNDROME. My goal, ig, was therefore to overcome these insecurities, improve as a word-write-y-person and thereby earn my stripes.

Given that I still, in the round, do not regard myself as a very good writer, I’d say I’ve probably failed at this aim lol; BUT I feel I have at least developed a resemblance of a style/lane/personality over the course of my sophomore staff year that I hope others can recognise(?) which, if so, is a step in the right direction.  The closer I get to that goal, the more I’d like to shift my purpose here to more constructive results. I’d love to learn more about styes and genres of music that are oft under rep’d on Sput and write the good things about them to profile-raising ends, but that more ambitious task (I think) requires (a) me to actually learn about said genres (duh) and (b) to get over the aforementioned anxiety hump (duh x2).

When you got the bump up, was there anything about the Staff platform that surprised you for better or worse, particularly in relation to the Contrib environment? 

Erm, yes!  Some quick wins for ya:

• THE GOOD: The perks e.g. hella promo access, a collective of exceptional proofreading gurus on tap (who I am too intimidated to make direct eye contact with lol) and plentiful features #JoinUs.

• THE BAD: .1 decimal ratings are a blessing and a curse (huh, who knew?).

• THE UGLY: The sheer blood/sweat/tears and other forms of yikes effort that the mods put in behind the scenes is immense jfc.

The most fundamental shift, however, was that sense of responsibility (you know the one). Sput is a sm0l fish in a BIG pond but, nonetheless, seeing my various word salads and ratings on metacritic was a lil’ surreal.  Becoming, in a limited sense, a spokesperson for a site I literally spent a third of my life growing up on was also a heavier burden (internally, in me noggin’) than I’d anticipated.

Initial reaction = eek, pressure, no more unorthodox and silly write ups, pressure, must do good, must professional, PRESSURE, etc. You can see it borne out in my first year of staff reviews. Stepping back, they read fine, but my goodness some do be boring as feck lol.  Finding your feet takes time: Godspeed You! New Bois.

Speaking of New Bois, we’ve had a load of new hires recently(ish) , the second new generation you’ve borne witness to. I’m going to be an awful senpai to you and force you to be a good senpai to them – one piece of constructive criticism for the writing tendencies of each, please! Off you go:

Eek, gosh, well, erm, this is mean.  First of all, welcome new funky fresh frendos! Second, you are all v. v. capable writers who do not need c/c from an inferior coworker. Third, if you are at all offended by any of my hot takes below, just remember, Johnny made me do this…

dedex: my BOI good to have you here please sit down put your feet up grab a beer it’s REAL talk time son. Hot Take No.1: WRITE MORE! Your words are good but may i have some extra SAUCE pls. I am not one to talk – I barely hit the 12-a-year write up quota – but might I suggest you consider building out some of those almost 4,000(!) iconic sound-offs into short-form write ups my guy. The SHORT BOI is in vogue; seize it. Also: use the exceptional proof-reading resource now at your disposal (erm … do as I say, not as I do). An additional lick of polish every once in a while would make your work glimmer in all the right ways.

MarsKid: Sup Marsbro show me your daoboys. Hot Take No.2: WRITE LESS! Quick and easy illustrative example: your 2021 Conway rev vs. your 2022 Conway rev. The latter is vastly superior, imho, in that you’ve met the reader halfway. Both are detailed, insightful, well-reasoned and brilliantly written pieces, but the more recent write up leans towards accessibility and engaging the reader, whereas the older felt (to me) more designed to reflect your take on the relevant album in the fullest and most accurate way possible without necessarily accommodating the needs of those you are seeking to interface with. As a result, the 2022 piece was more generous and informative, despite containing less words. It’s not just a length thing, though – as I think Johnny mentioned re your 2021 write up at the time, it’s about allowing the reader’s requirements to temper your creative tendencies as appropriate (whether that be vocab choice, para length etc.). It’s something (I think) we all struggle with, and I sense is something you’re cognisant of and working on, as you mentioned in your own lovely StaffWars sesh.  Keep at it and I have no doubt you will ascend from one of the best writers on the site to literal GOAT status.

Tyman: Hi there how are you phew is it getting hot in here or is it just me? Hot Take No.3: IT’S SHORT BOI WORKSHOP TIME! Sooo i very much <3 your one-three para shenanigans. HOWEVER … the format is an inherently risky one, in that it can lend itself to inadvertently shaving off substance. Strive to retain more of that JUICY inner goodness and you’re gonna go far kid, particularly given how much LIFE you massage into your longer-form pieces. When formulating your short boi, each word/phrase needs, necessarily, to do more heavy lifting (seek mellifluousness), whilst sentence structure = a more important (and, in turn, deliberate) choice. If I were to be self-centred / congratulatory (and I will), maybe compare/contrast my Shô (2018) and END (2020) pieces (which, with hindsight, read quite shallow and surface level) with my 2022 stuff (which, I hope, have more umpth to them) – the distinction may be instructive, it may not, but it’ll inflate my ego either way.  See also Jesp’s and Sunny’s respective journeys with the format.

YoYoMancuso: Afternoon, squire. Hot Take No.4: KEEP EXPERIMENTING! Yo. Yo. You, it must be said, have a commendable versatility as a writer that I think would only improve by continuing to stretch and bend and fiddle about with it. So: do more tight-as-heck Billy Woods styled stuff; continue with deep-dive The Roots informative/discursive pieces; build on your Shiner cute narrative format (though actually relate the plot of the piece to the substance of the fucking album next time you bloody numpty); keep on keeping on at all of the things!! And, as a heads up, if you write on Pinegrove again after I’ve written on Pinegrove again I’m afraid I will have to cut you just a little bit (jk but also fr).

Going to jump the gun a little and draw on a range of pieces/comments you’ve written in the past couple of months that essentially suggest some level of disenfranchisement with the role of music in your life, followed by an unexpected renaissance in both familiar and unfamiliar fields. Rather than paraphrase your past remarks any further, I’m going to ask you to reiterate a little and bring our readers up to speed on this.

Yes, gosh, this is a rabbit hole that I’m still trying to figure out myself. TL;DR see our brief exchange on Boney’s excellent Kali Malone rev or my Chat Pile blurb BUT, for the deets…

Music has played a primarily palliative role in my life: a means to avoid ripping veins out of forearms via injection of sad boi relatability and folk catharsis (a void previously filled by Bennington and Taylor nu- screms circa 2007).  From that initial interest, so the story goes, grew the separate desperate passion that we all (I think) share: to explore all that music can be. Date of Origin: 2015/16.

Big boi self reflection time: I realise now, I think, that I was conducting that assimilation process through the lens of an unduly restrictive view re what music should be i.e. my personal painkiller and nothing more.  As such, w/ hindsight, my attempt to branch out and learn and develop was somewhat surface level (wanna check death metal? jam Symbolic ONLY. wanna check jazz? jam Kind of Blue ONLY etc. – AND if I didn’t immediately fall in love with the one album I’d chosen to peek, then, well, the entire genre in which it resides must therefore just not be for me e.g. see my REC ME CLASSICS trainwreck).  I am being a lil’ unfair on myself for the sake of (relative) brevity – I gained a fairly robust understanding of a handful of genres during this time, being those I write on regularly, and don’t think I was quite as ignorant / dismissive as I’m letting on – but that, I think, was the gist.

By 2018, after that semi-superficial process, I’d had enough. Having heard a little bit of everything, I felt I had “got it”; that, having skimmed the chocolatey surface, I assumed the sticky nougat centre buried beneath couldn’t be sweeter.  I was (obvs) dumb and naive (and wrong), but that simplified musical worldview – coupled with life getting increasingly busy once I’d found gainful employment late 2018 – led to me sticking with creature comforts and reigning in my explorative efforts. The effort of the persistent grind for new things no longer felt worth the hassle.

Snap back to reality:

I am now (finally) hungry for the new things again (yay!). I don’t really understand why – life is busier than it has ever been (do not buy a house jfc) and my reliance on music as a magical cure-all still persists, so, idk … I guess I’m older or some bollocks and something in a few albums last year (Chat Pile, Saya Grey, Billy Woods, BC,NR etc.) reignited that which I thought was exclusively a University-era obsession. To fuel it, I’ve been looking exclusively outside my comfort zone AND (I hope) beyond the surface a la une recent electronic/jazz genre discover series; lists which, success(!), have only further compounded my excitement and (bonus) have introduced me to some new Sput friends (hello!).

Long story short: music can and should be more than my personal comfort blanket.

This is excellent and exciting – sounds like you are on the new leg of a longer journey that you didn’t necessarily realise you were on at all? Where’s it taking you? How deep does it go? I feel it’s hardly uncommon for folks to have ‘phases’ with certain styles (even if that’s just collateral of contemporary trends) that, when the moment’s up, end up occupying a relatively small part of their rotation – but! – do give them a solid foundation to weigh up anything they hear from that style in future. 

For a lazy example, I spent a solid month or two tearing through Shibuya Kei classics in 2021, and though there were a few firm keepers and good times were had, the majority was more useful as a reference point than for ongoing active jams. No regrets there, but what do you think the prospects of, say, your electronic and jazz dives have been in relation to this? Cool one-stop fads or significant stepping stones to a wider process of discovery/reorientation? 

Excellent point. I anticipate that there is a cyclical nature to all of this and I will be having a similar epithionic meltdown come 2033, but am happy to ride the wave for the time being. Electronic feels like a mainstay milestone moment – I have literally not been so excited for a new category of music since, erm, a while! Jazz and Hip Hop feel, currently, more likely to become helpful reference points and/or stepping stone than a new fave. Fusion and ambient iterations on Jazz, however, seem more immediately appealing than the old-school solo-oriented shenanigans, but I’d be happily proven wrong.

Following from that, this is obviously a ridiculous question to ask anyone, but if you project yourself a year or so into the future, what do you imagine your new Comfort Zone to be re. older, present, and developing attachments?

The Field, Four Tet, Boards of Canada, DJ Sprinkles etc.  Give me that minimal house/techno + other soothing ambient-ish electronic things and let it soothe my aching head.  Also, I’m sure there is a baby within the bath water of black metal that I ought to save as well, though only time will tell.

I don’t want to devote too much time to this (*crosses legs in dishonesty*), but what are the odds on getting monthly dives on the following:

New age: Unlikely, though tbf my non-existent understanding of this particular genre tag (beyond knowing that Ray Lynch exists) is a significant limiting factor.

Noise rock: Low-to-Mid. Given I’m comfortable with loud grr the guitars go SKREE music, I feel like this is a genre I’m likely to gravitate towards naturally, making the forced ‘sit down and listen to this shit’ format somewhat redundant BUT if it need a break from floaty airy bullshit (golddust) this may well be where I go.

Hip-hop: 100% (it may have even concluded by the time this gets published lol)

Ambient: 200% (i just want to be happy man)

Techno/house/trance/drum and bass/IDM/other electronic subgenres: now? no. near the end of the year, if the format continues that long? yes.

R&B: mid (v. daunted by the prospect of leaping into this, yet also v. interested, so eh)

Let’s turn to the mechanics of reviewing. Stylistically, you tend to favour a visible personal voice seen off with innovative descriptors including evocative fragment-sentences, haptically charged lexis, unpackings of the listening environments you associate with the record in question, and the kind of bullishly succinct expressions that demand the reader sit in your exact headspace if they want to extract their full nuance (something I, for one, have never encountered any obstacles with). 

First up, would you consider this a fair parsing, and how would you unpack the methodology/motivation behind this?

Yes yes YES you have summarised the thing that I (try to) do better than I could (or was conscious of) thank you.

Re methodology: it’s a case of ‘throw shit in direction of wall and hope nothing lands on carpet’ type of deal. I tend to struggle with forming my view on any given thing into words (yes i am in the wrong career fight me) and so have found the stream of consciousness circa verbal diarrhoea approach best for getting the damn ideas on paper. The less tidying up I have to do thereafter, the better.

Re motivation: I find the format suits the way in which my brain formulates ideas. Imagery is fun, poetry is also fun (but hard) and, lately, they’ve felt like more playful and vivid tools to use vs. stale old-timey review thematics. It also slots in nicely w/r/t how I engage w/ music (experiential and emotional, sans analysis, sans music theory, sans intelligence rip).

There’s also a more practical point: I find I have very little time to just sit there and listen to music these days, let alone write about it, and assume others similarly struggle to find time to do the inverse i.e. the reading about it, bit.  In an effort to respect their time, and mine, I keep things snappy. In addition, my aim with this dumb writing thing that we do, beyond providing an essential creative outlet, has always been to try to accurately depict the purest essence of the thing in order to encourage others to listen to the thing and form their own conclusions re the thing, rather than attempting to document all that the thing is and where it fits into the culture / broader discourse (a more ambitious undertaking for more smarter people, like dedex! loved your StaffWars sesh frendo). Leaving more to the imagination of the reader, and almost necessitating that they hear the thing in order to understand my depiction of it, kinda makes sense to me with that endgame in mind. It’s an approach that lacks the depth that the very best records demand, which I either expend more words on or leave to those aforementioned smarter people, but in the vast majority of cases I find my toolkit does the job –

– and tbh i can’t write (see above) really this is all just an elaborate excuse slash cop out for me not having to learn how to actually do it…

I find this style has a fair bit in common with what I sometimes try to go for, and have found it fun to riff off at points (mainly when I tried to take it up to hyperdrive for that Cloud Rat review, which if I remember correctly ran onto yours for Mindforce’s New Lords). If I were to be a proper wanker (ha.), I’d probably call it a post-conversational register – the tone of voice is definitely personal, informal and approachable, but the articulation feels specific to online writing and wouldn’t quite transfer as well to a verbatim setting. 

Would you agree? How great a role would you say the internet (vs. printed journalism/literature, or other) has played in sculpting your writing? Have you ever read your work out in person (to a 2nd party lol), and what challenges did you encounter if so?

Post-conversational yes i love this [we can be co-wankers dw]!!!!

First off, yes sir, it certainly does not translate to the spoken word.  I have read reviews to my better half who has literally vomited all over me by way of constructive criticism.

Also agreed that it’s also a style v. much nurtured by and in homage to internet syntax/lingo, and I think it works. Given we’re in a time/place etc. where written reviews are increasingly outgunned by the short-form video format – the ever more popular means of consuming music news (fuck you Fantano) as well as just about everything else tbh – I think we need to use all the tools at our disposal to keep writing relevant and appealing to our likely audience i.e. internet music nerds who also enjoy reading / writing / shitposting.

A casual/playful/self-aware approach to prose and hamfisted/earnest poetic tendencies seem to work well in that environment, as does stretching the written review format up to and beyond breaking point.  I also feel like refraining from taking these types of dumb creative leap and instead sticking staunchly to the OG review format that more influential (constricted) music webzines run with (Rolling Stone, et al.) would be to entirely miss out on the copious amounts of creative rope we are blessed with on an entirely independent and volunteer-based platform like Sput (the Staff Wars format being a cute example thereof).

As a final aside (I promise): I do not read much printed journalism/literature these days (I have the attention span of a small birb) BUT I do find it an equally valuable source of inspiration. My vulgar staccato fragment-sentence approach originally came from Max Porter’s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers; my preference for intentionally (unnecessarily) complex sentences has been fortified by David Foster Wallace; my (I’m sure) irritating penchant for silliness probably lies at the feet of Douglas Adams; and my recent rethinking of the role of music in my life has been compounded by Rick Ruben’s excellent The Creative Act.

However, the main source of that creative JUICE (cringe incoming you have been warned) has always come from the music itself (eew cheese) and fellow Sput writers (eewww big cheese). You (Jonathan, you!) have been a chonky influence, as have the vast majority of the current and ex- Staff/Contrib roster (sup y’all thanks for your words).

Yes! Particular yes for Grief Is The Thing With Feathers! What’s one General Thing you wish you could express better, and which writers have the best knack for this? 

I’d love to be able to confidently and succinctly place an album within its context (be it temporal/cultural or re influences, genre, style etc). You good sir are v. good at this, as are papa dewi and mr gnocchi in their respective spheres. Ig it comes from experience/knowledge, which I’m working on, and research/effort, which I’m allergic to, but ye.

I am choosing to ignore the confines of your question and give you 2 extra shout outs:

• Sowing and Chan and Row’s personability: I immediately buy into everything they write and immediately want to listen to whatever they’re writing on and, tbh, I’ve had the damndest time trying to figure out precisely, mechanically, why. There’s a confidence and a friendliness and a graspable personality within their pieces that I admire and find very difficult to emulate.

• Plane/Blush/Granite/Milo/Sona/Wines: everything (my god you fuckers can write).

Alright, enough writing about writing (filthy post-conversationalists up to their filthy tricks, yuck) – more travel writing! You are in France – nice! Can you give us a quick virtual tour round your environs? Attention to detail appreciated – give us a sense for how frequently you have to dodge that dogshit, how cheap the post-cigarette air smells on street corners, and the exact turn of phrase you use to buy that baguette (these three things are 90% of my memories of France; please refresh me)! 

Am visiting the in-laws (my partner is le French). Red wine everywhere. Shellfish everywhere. Baguette everywhere (pronounced bag-guet-tea, should you wish to annoy said in-laws). I miss fish and chips.

Dope – more travel writing, please. Take these five (randomised) Staffers and recommend a country they do and do not visit:

I will solve this conundrum by giving you the 5 places I want to go next…

Kompys: USA (East Coast): Go to Vermont / Maine and drink Heady Topper / Julius and make me jelly.

dedex: USA (West Coast): Go to California and drink Pliny and make me jelly.

granite: Go to Japan (ask Johnny why)

Voivod: Go to Malaysia (ask my gf why)

Sowing: Come to the UK (I would like to make you a cup of tea)

Few short questions to wind up: who or what is the greatest menace to Sputnik in 2023?

Colton, apparently.

What band needs to make a comeback? 

Streetlight Manifesto (release the damn album already).

What band needs to not exist anymore? 

Skillet (are they still a thing?)

What is the best Beatles song? 

All of them (or “I’m Looking Through You”). (omg blessed, best Beatles riff?)

What is the worst Taylor Swift song? 

All of them (or that one about the boy who was not the correct boy).

Who did we forget? 

The Spanish Inquisition.

Gimme soundbytes for:

Solar panels

Fake news.

Slavoj Žižek

*sniff*

Solar collectors 

Real news.

The Krusty Krab

No, this is Patrick.

Harry and Meghan

No comment.

GhandhiLion

New phone who dis?

Harry and Meghan

Well, if you insist … the royal family is a multifariously flawed institution in desperate need of prompt top-down reform and Harry and Megan are both incredibly irritating, parasitic, vapid and dull human beings.

Alpacas

Fake llamas.

Mumford and Sons 

Sigh No More is still iconic, ngl.

Llamas

Real Alpacas.

Ketamine 

Tuesday afternoon.

Zumba

I do not enjoy, and humbly refute the concept of, exercise.

Any final words words words words?

Thank you for having me this was fun you are a legend I am very tired goodnight.

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・granitenotebook・dedex