Marrying the sound of bands like Big|Brave or True Widow with the imagery of Dr. Who (the connection makes a lot of sense in my head somehow), this couple from New Zealand were one of my most precious discoveries this year. Heavy fuzz, with emphasis on heavy, splattered with psychedelia, prog rock, and vocal acrobatics. In just 30 minutes, Gussie Larkin (also of psyche pop act Mermaidens) and Ezra Simons will take you on a journey through microscopic worlds and galactic wonders unlike anything you’ve seen. –Dewinged
I’ve barely spent enough time with this record to be repping it this much, but needless to say I was immediately captivated by this hidden gem. If you’re someone who can accept its instantaneous turns between forlorn indie folk, straight-up country, and expansive alternative rock (and sometimes all three at once), then look no further. Roberts manages to spin all these contradictory elements into something that might not be wholly cohesive, but sells each individual feeling as true and exciting from moment-to-moment. So let’s make a deal: I’ll give this a few more listens while I give y’all a chance to catch up and get on this! –neekafat
When I think ‘under the radar,’ the words “underrated” and “underappreciated” are obviously synonymous. Still though, this album is a pretty hard sell with that abysmal 2.6 average, but I find it hard to discern the clear drop in quality between Helium and, say, Fresh Air or Midnight Snack that is apparently worth a full Sputnik point. I digress, ratings can hardly shake my appreciation for this smooth, wistful journey into the trendy psychedelic-pop waters, abandoning most guitars and live instrumentation for chime-like synth leads and coalescing colorful harmonies. Sure, it sounds a bit bare and even incredibly easy to replicate, yet the simplistic melodies and Homeshake’s knack for toeing the line between whiny and airy vocal lines help solidify the very original “milkshake for your home” sound. There’s also a coldness found within tracks like “Other Than” and instrumental rap-fusion highlight “All Night Long”, yet the eerie atmosphere tends to entice me rather than shock. The best surprise, however, comes in the form of a “(secret track)”, finally bringing back the warm, fluttering guitar for a simple yet evocative riff destined to reverberate within those chill nights on the couch with Mary Jane. Although it’s nothing extremely spectacular, it’s truly an album that is getting a lot of quiet hate, making it my 2019’s most…
I was lucky enough to get in touch with Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga, the creative minds behind Have a Nice Life. Approximately 10 years ago, Dan and Tim quietly released what would become one of Sputnikmusic’s most continuously-praised albums, Deathconsciousness. Regardless of whether that distinction is worth much of a shit, the high praise extends towards many corners of the internet (and beyond, as they’ve recently upped their live show appearances). Initially, the album went mostly unnoticed; it’s through attrition (constant exposure at the hands of devout fans) that Have a Nice Life has garnered much-deserved recognition. Their early work was emblematic of many tireless bedroom producers: low-budget, impassioned, and resourceful. They toyed with aspects of shoegaze, black metal, drone, noise, post-rock, and so on, developing a sound that harkened back to the 80s, but was collectively unique, and emotionally situated in present-day sentiments. Moreover, there is a unique approachability when it comes to Dan and Tim that lends to a reciprocal fan community.
Their newest album is entitled “Sea of Worry”, and we talked about it a bit.
Tristan: I don’t know how deep the allegorical component of Sea of Worry’s title is meant to run, but can you elaborate on the name choice a bit? The promo blurb seems to only scratch the surface. Like, without spilling too many beans, is “Sea of Worry” meant to reference uncertainty about the world in a way that feels more pressing than the themes of nihilism in previous work?…
It’s been said time and time again, but Melt-Banana are as unique as bands come. Now well into the third decade of their career, Yako (vocals) and Agata (guitar) are still writing and touring their brand of light-speed noise rock with rare, enduring levels of excitement and proficiency. Now on the verge of a 15-date UK tour (the band’s eleventh on British shores), the pair found time to fill us in at Sputnik on their past experiences in the UK, their hopes for this tour, and a few hints about their elusive upcoming record…
JohnnyoftheWell/Sputnikmusic: Hello! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat! Is this a busy time for Melt-Banana? Do you have much to do to prepare for your upcoming tour?
Agata: Hello. I think we are quite busy! Besides preparing for the UK tour, we are also working on new songs for our next album.
Yako: Hello. We constantly play shows in Japan when we are not on tour — like once or twice a month.
For anyone unfamiliar with you, would you mind explaining the essence of Melt-Banana?
A: If I need to explain our music to my parents’ friends, I say we play rock music, but a little bit faster, along with using noise sounds.
Y: Yes, we usually say we are a rock band basically. It is quite difficult to explain ‘sounds’. Maybe it is simple to say ‘fast loud rock with female vocals and effected, unique guitar, music like…
For once, it’s truly pertinent for me to state where a band are from rather than it being a formality — Seizures, metalcore band from Dana Point, California, have created an album which encapsulates a complex relationship between band and hometown, as well as their past and present. If you’ve heard The Sanity Universal, then you hardly need any introduction to the band; it definitively establishes Seizures’ dizzyingly detailed and dense songwriting, characteristics which the newly released Reverie of the Revolving Diamond embodies and expands on. I spoke with guitarist Albert Navarro on the creation of Reverie of the Revolving Diamond; here, he describes the (intriguing) compositional process and his influences, and also provides insight into the themes and stories illustrated within the album.
Claire: It’s immediately apparent that Reverie of the Revolving Diamond is a different beast from your last full-length album, The Sanity Universal — the former is more condensed and arguably more focused, with the introduction of a jazzy dynamic that I see has been aptly tagged as surfcore. What were your main motivations for this particular shift in sound, and what sort of experiences have shaped the creation of Reverie… in comparison to those informing The Sanity Universal? Furthermore, would you consider the split with Arms a precursor to this significant change?
Albert: TSU started off as a batch of songs, some newer and some way older than others. It wasn’t until the recording of it that we realized how much spontaneous experimentation was happening. Nathan (my brother, guitarist)…
Well, it’s been an adventurous third quarter around here. Question marks in reviews have been fixed! You can see entire release dates! All album art and images uploaded between November 2017-the Great Power Surge of 2019 have disappeared into the ether, never to return!
As a Loaf of Meat once power balladed: two out of three ain’t bad.
We’re getting geared up for not just the 2019 year-end list (to be published in late December, as is tradition), but the Top 100 Albums of 2010-2019 feature (to be published in… TBD? Probably the tail-end of Q1 2020!).
In the meantime, we have a nice slab o’ tracks from July-September for your listening pleasure, with thanks to Atari, BlushfulHippocrene, DrGonzo1937, insomniac15, Rowan5215, SowingSeason, Voivod, and Willie.
What albums would top your list for this quarter? For all of 2019? For all of 2000-2019? Let us know what we inevitably forgot!
3TEETH – “Pumped Up Kicks” Metawar Listen if you like: Youth Code, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM
For me, Metawar is easily the most disappointing album of 2019 so far — I can’t emphasise that enough — but the quality speaks for itself when one of the LP’s strongest numbers is a cover of Foster the People’s “Pumped up Kicks”. This is a bloody excellent reinterpretation of Foster the People’s dark and bouncy indie-rock hit, one that shrewdly integrates 3TEETH’s industrial DNA into the piece whilst remaining faithful to the source material. I can’t…
Kyle Bates is the primary creative force behind the Portland-based experimental lo-fi project Drowse. I say “primary” because Drowse has taken the form of a collaborative space, with Bates as the singularity in the centre. This year, he released Light Mirror, an album highly influenced by his time spent in residency in Iceland. I decided to reach out to Kyle, since he seems pretty cool for a guy named Kyle; and, when it comes to bedroom recording, his intuitions are almost unmatched.
Tristan: You mentioned, at one point, how your newest album Light Mirror “marks the first time [you’ve] been able to translate [your] intention directly into sound” (and not having to struggle with technical hurdles). I have a couple questions: 1. if you had to describe this intention in writing, what would that look like on paper?, and 2. If I assume that the limited resources you had at your disposal during your Iceland residency forced you to be more resourceful, then it’s interesting that you were able to pull this off and not concede to artistic compromises. How do you think it all worked out?
Kyle: When I wrote that I was addressing sonic intention, in terms of lyrical meaning and songwriting Cold Air conveys my intention as well. While recording I am often pushing towards two seemingly polarized extremes: a warm, lo-fi style perfected by bands like Duster, and this clear, detailed way of sculpting sound found in the work of musicians…
All it took was one line to get Marskid (Mitch) all riled up. A cursory, sweeping statement about the lack of innovation in Mitch’s most-loved genre (that’s my assumption anyway) was enough of a reason to shake his fist angrily at me in a Contributor’s group discussion (off-site). Basically, it got us thinking about what actually defines a genre as “dead”, and more importantly how much life (specifically) metalcore has left in it. Rather than dismissing the thought we took our beloved Marskid down the proverbial rabbit-hole and have hesperus (Dean) expand on the points Marskid brings up.
[Nocte] Let’s start with the main question here. Is metalcore dead? To what degree and what are the challenges that bands face when writing new albums?
[Marskid]
I’m quite comfortable in asserting that metalcore is alive and thriving. Obviously, there still lingers an elements of the mainstream sound and djent-centric groups, but their presence has diminished over time due to a lack of innovation on their end, thus leading to their stagnation. In their place are a slew of collectives, both young and old, that are either 1) bringing new ideas to the table, bringing a fresh perspective on the genre over two decades since its formation, or 2) tightening the category’s original sound, perhaps adding a personal touch to it–basically fine-tuning the heart of the musical type but not necessarily pushing it per se. This has elevated the baseline quality of your typical metalcore release as more and more bands shy…
Recently, the Sputnikmusic contributors had a fun conversation about the kinds of people who claim they listen to “all genres” of music, and how they’re probably either ignorant or lying. Almost everyone has genres they’d rather avoid, and if you think you don’t, consider whether you’d pick up a record of polka, free jazz, harsh noise, or drone metal.
This conversation got us thinking about our own genre blindspots, and we decided to explore them further. We asked you, the users, to recommend us genres that listeners tend to avoid, and two songs each to serve as introductions to those genres. We then assigned these genres semi-randomly to contributors who didn’t listen to them. Here’s what we thought about the first batch of genres.
POST-PUNK
Recommended by Papa Universe
Assigned to SitarHero
Before listening to your two songs, what’s your opinion of post-punk?
Being a child of the ‘80s it would have been pretty hard to avoid post-punk completely. The Police (love), The Clash (love), U2 (like), and R.E.M. (dislike) were constant presences—I’m not going to quibble about where these bands fall in the punk/new wave/post-punk continuum—there were occasional appearances by Depeche Mode and Devo, and youthful dalliances in XTC and Echo and the Bunnymen. Then as a young adult in the mid-2000’s I was bombarded by the post-punk revival of The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, etc., which, quite frankly, I hated for the most part. So, the TL;DR version is: I loved some of the more mainstream strands of…
First thing to note: I won’t pretend to be able to analyze the hype phenomenon here (though hopefully I can offer some insight into why you might enjoy this album; at any rate, definitely give the two reviews a read). Rather, I want to delve into some specific themes that particularly endear Clairvoyant to me — its portrayals of love, spirituality, and vengeance.
The most central component of Clairvoyant is love — specifically, love without boundaries, universalized love, the sort of love that brings solidarity and acknowledgement of some shared humanity. Everyone involved in the transmission and reception of this message (i.e. the band and the listeners) is, I think, aware of the very idealized nature of such love; and to be sure, it’s never presented as anything easily attained (or even attainable at all in full). But if anything, Clairvoyant is a dogged pursuit of that ideal, a blunt confronting of the bitterness, loss and violence that inevitably precludes it. The religious allusions (often but not exclusively to Christianity), though somewhat ambiguous in attitude, lend more context to where the ethos of Clairvoyant comes from: within the album, Christianity is variously a cleansing force, a mechanism of rebirth, but also prone to corruption. “Contaminature” sings of “birdcages lined with Bible verses” — the implication could be that the desecration of the religion is a pitiable thing, but perhaps it’s a more general comment on hypocrisy in the political climate in which State Faults (who happen to be American) compose.
At any rate, the spiritual dimension of Clairvoyant is evident. The albumdoesn’t…
State Faults is a band that hardly needs any introduction on this site. Coming off of a 6-year hiatus, they’ve received universal acclaim for their newest album, Clairvoyant. Lead singer and guitarist Johnny Calvert-Andrew was kind enough to correspond with me about their comeback. Enjoy, y’all.
,
Slex: First, I wanted to address the hiatus. What brought you guys back together? Is it safe to say you guys are here to stay?
Jonny Calvert-Andrew:Well we had tried a couple times getting together and playing the songs but the spark wasn’t really there. Last year Noisey published an article listing R/D as like a top ten hardcore record of the decade or something, and that got us looking around and realizing people were still listening and waiting. We each got the itch, went into the practice space again around September or October of last year and this time the spark caught flame, it felt like we were a brand new band.
S: Seeing as how you guys are a 3 piece now, how has that changed the dynamic? Did it make songwriting more difficult, or less?
JCA: It certainly changed our writing dynamic. I think it forced us to be more rhythmically interesting you know? Our older songs more or less relied on dual guitar parts for dynamics. Switching to one guitar, I had to make the riffs interesting haha. It was way more fun honestly instead of having to come up with rhythm and lead parts. This…
For Episode 2: Electric Boogaloo of the Sputcast, join Bloon and neekafat as they talk about the new Remo Drive, the Batushka controversy, the going-ons of Sput, and other miscellaneous tangents in a leaner, meaner 43 minutes.
1) As I mentioned in my review, you guys seem to use calmer/more melodic moments differently than most heavy bands I’ve been listening to in the fact that they exist as their own movements and not just a prelude to a breakdown or climax. Was that something that was intentional, or did it come about naturally? Does that come more from an emotional place or a songwriting one?
This was intentional. Cory has been doing solo ambient performances for a long time now and has a regular gig at a yoga studio in Austin where he plays a lot of stuff similar to the movements on the album you mention. One reason they’re their own tracks is because we wanted them to serve as reflections on their he previous tracks so they sink a little more. The other reason is to break up the formulaic crescendo-based post rock structure and let the bangers be bangers and the chill pieces be chill pieces.
2) Your first album was a bit more aggressive, whereas Spotted Horse is more spacious and dense-what heralded that shift between albums? It really seems like Memorial hinted at that shift a little bit, was it a case of picking up where Memorial left off, or no?
The first record is definitely a beat down but I think Spotted Horse is actually more powerful with its use of dynamics. It lets you breathe before punching you again and I think that comes from our evolved collaboration…
Our next stop on our tour of Bandcamp’s undiscovered artists takes us to Melbourne, Australia – the land down under. Specifically takes us to one Jesse Glass, a folk singer-songwriter whose music is extremely serine, dreamy, and picture-esque. With only one single out at the time of writing this, Jesse doesn’t have a large repertoire of work to pull from, but the Shouldered Friend single, featuring the title track and the “I Envy You” b-side, is an extremely powerful piece of work. Like a refreshing splash of cool water, this single runs gracefully, bringing chills to one’s nerves. The acoustic melodies are harrowing and melancholic, but not in an overbearing way at all. In fact, Shouldered Friend is a very light listen, but one that leaves me wanting more.
You could say I’m hooked…
Anyway, I had an opportunity to ask Jesse a few questions about pet peeves, influences, and what’s to come in the future.
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Sean: First off, I gotta ask, you have more stuff coming, right? I’m gonna be sad if this is a one time single…
Jesse: Thanks so much for the compliment! Well, I definitely plan to record and release a lot more in the near future. This was my first time recording something that is solely mine, having had all my previous experience recording in other bands. I really enjoyed the recording process – It is something I definitely plan to keep doing. I have at least an album’s…
Quarter-Year Crisis: My Top Records of 2019 (so far)
By: Brandon Nurick
If you had asked me in early January whether I thought 2019 could compete with 2018 in terms of releasing an equal (or greater) quantity of obscenely killer music, I probably would’ve upturned my nose, scoffed, and replied with some kind of snarky comment deriding the idea – y’know, typical music nerd shit. I do my best to try and not get snobby, but (for me) 2018 felt like a pinnacle for music. From the depths of the metal underground with gutter-slinking acts like Hissing and Akitsa to Ariana Grande’s return to the summit of the Billboard 200, last year exuded an undefinable yet unmistakably palpable aura that seemingly elevated every piece of music that was released in its duration. At the time, to think we could surpass or at the very least match this exceedingly high standard, felt nigh impossible.
If you ask me today, I would have to admit that somehow, someway, 2019 was also graced with that elusive and amorphous blessing; four months into the year and I couldn’t really even give you a ballpark to how many albums I’ve drooled and dribbled over. Similar to last year, there is no one bastion of great music – no singular artist or dominating genre – but a widespread renaissance, from jazz to emo, emo to black metal, and black metal to infinity. In no small part due to…
