This is going to be the first in a series of staff on staff interviews. I’ve been brainstorming ideas on how to grow the site, and bring new traffic in, and I thought there’s no better way to achieve that than to do a circlejerk staff on staff kind of thing that is going to be of no interest to anyone not already very familiar with Sputnikmusic.com. Anyway, here’s my interview with JohnnyOnTheSpot.
*(Signifies post-interview footnotes).
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Treb: all right let’s do this. Hard hitting questions first. What’s it like having two first names?*
*(question regarding Tristan’s real name context which is lost because he uses an alias on Sputnikmusic.com).
Tristan: I wasn’t aware “Jones” was a first name used by anyone.
I didn’t actually know your last name.* Were you always JohnnyOnTheSpot on sput? Or did you ever get a name change/use a different profile?
*(Me completely missing the fact that Tristan is referring to his online handle versus his real name).
I’ve existed in/around the site prior to that profile but that was the first/only profile I created that I used to any extent, beyond maybe rating a bunch of stuff in 2008-2009(?)*
*(Tristan’s official join date is 2012. I’ll get to the bottom of this if I ever do a follow up interview.)
How did you first hear about Sputnik? I remember for me, I was a big Wikipedia head, and I would read about almost every album I listened to, and I started to see Sputnikmusic…
There’s little sentimental to be had about “Spotlight,” because throughout his career, Lil Peep has always sounded like this; awash in syrupy, Xanax-fuelled haze, doing his best to sound just like Blink 182’s Blink 182. The same goes for Marshmello, whose “Wolves” and “Silence” rise and fall in similar fashion to the production delivered here, churning up some of Peep’s emo and pop punk instrumentals and giving them a muted, subtly anthemic undercurrent. It’s probably the closest Peep had come to a pop single before his passing, and its why the song’s opening declaration, that, ‘this time, I’ll be on my own, my friend / One more time, I’m all alone again,’ is ever so slightly more potent. Yes, Peep could be making a farewell, but he’s also saying everything he has already said before, succinctly, and better.
So, chalk it up to kismet or chalk it up to progression, there’s a lot about “Spotlight” that sounds like just another long wave goodbye. There are prophetical lines, and there are clichéd cries for love; there’s a constant, droning melody, and there’s a big, power ballad of a chorus, too. And in between, Peep’s lines never sound uncharacteristic, particularly his drearily declaring that he’s ‘faded,’ or that he’s, ‘all alone again.’ This was and always will be the public image of Lil Peep: a miserable 21-year old, battling with sobriety and dependency, motivated by little other than a desire to feel something, whatever that something might be. At junctures, it could sound empty, and…
I’m glad this isn’t a country song, or a rap song, or a country rap song; I’m glad it doesn’t sound like Joanne, or Forever Young; I’m glad Juicy J, Dave Berman, or Al Gore aren’t rapping on this thing; I’m glad this doesn’t sound like “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” The 20/20 Experience, Future Sex / Love Sounds, or Justified. These are all things to be thankful for.
I’m not glad that Justin’s having his Yeezus moment. It didn’t suit Taylor Swift’s Reputation, as was evidenced by that album’s awkward sounds and playfully muddled production, and it doesn’t suit “Filthy,” which takes Justin’s falsetto and puts it over top of a distended, grand ‘70s rock sample and a screwy, unrelated wobbly bass thing. ‘Hater’s gon’ say it’s fake,’ spits Justin, rolling up the sleeves on his suit jacket and informing us that this ‘ain’t the clean version,’ in case there was any confusion. It’s not as terribly stilted or as unsexy as “Look What You Made Me Do,” this song’s closest recent compatriot, but it’s also overreaching for something entirely weird and unnecessary. Honestly, did Justin not leave N*SYNC a few decades ago? Aren’t we all use to him being sexy? Did he not write a song about bringing sexy back? Did he not release an album whose title alluded to his ability to court, fuck, and marry you? Why must he insist that this particular song is real, or a moment wherein he ‘gets [his] swagger back?’ Has the…
I want to briefly talk about U2. They have a new album out this week, Songs of Experience, which Rowan described as ‘an Apple-funded gimmick to appeal to the poetry-loving college crowd.’ It’s ostensibly a companion to 2013’s Songs of Innocence, and it’s bad. Not offensively bad (not that U2 ever have been offensive, moreso bland and boring, spiritless and soulless, pedestrian and ponderous), but bad enough to warrant derision and mockery. What is it exactly that Bono stands for when he sings ‘I can help you, but it’s your fight,’ when we all know that he hides money in tax havens and has powerful friends compromise editorial integrity for him? I don’t know. For the record, “Get Out of Your Own Way,” the song that line comes from, isn’t completely awful, and could well have been successful had it not been compressed so heavily and recorded by a band with more clout and pertinence than U2. But the entire album is so completely diluted with the sentiment of nothingness that you can’t help but feel as if everything is painfully familiar; lyrically and thematically, its anti-Trump vitriol is obvious and well plundered; musically, it’s repetitive, blase, samey, and unoriginal. This was the band that wrote Achtung Baby, criticized the technocratic revolution, and then preceded to redefine the frightening implications of digital distribution. Nowadays, I would rather listen to The Killers. So, to simplify, it’s what we would otherwise expect from a new U2 album. But, perhaps most bizarrely, Songs for…
Thousands upon thousands of albums, EPs, mixtapes, compilations, and songs are released weekly. You might not be aware of the existence of 99% of those releases, but they’re there. So when each song released to the public is simply a drop in a pool that dwarfs even the Pacific Ocean, it can be hard to navigate the current music scene: it’s always moving and impossible to keep up with its speed. That’s where Share Some Singles comes into the picture. This series was formed to highlight songs released in 2017 that might not have been discovered by other listeners otherwise. I, alongside other Sputnikmusic users, have pulled together dozens of singles released in the recent past that we felt needed to be heard by the world. Or at least the Sputnik reader base.
Artists are listed in alphabetical order with corresponding YouTube, Soundcloud, and/or Bandcamp links (click on the song title to open a new tab). A Spotify playlist is also embedded below if the singles are available through that service. Enjoy! –wtferrothorn
What do you know about beauty? Alex Cameron and Angel Olsen have a deep knowledge of it, that’s for sure. This is as tender and gorgeous as one could ever want a duet to be. In the short 4 minutes of runtime,…
Slowdive, in my opinion, are perhaps one of the premier shoegazers of the initial wave of the genre. Recording one of the landmarks with 1993’s Souvlaki and following it up with the radically different Pygmalion, Slowdive have cemented themselves as one of the giants of the effects-obsessed artform. Sometimes drifting in between heavenly dream pop bliss with cuts such as “Machine Gun” and the Eno-produced duo “Sing” and “Here She Comes”, to the abstract ambiance that permeated all of 1995’s Pygmalion, Slowdive can easily be not only the definitive entry-point to any curious onlooker, but the ultimate crossover from more conventional rock music to the incredibly diverse/divisive shoegazing genre.
In consideration to the amount of time I’ve spent listening to Slowdive – a whopping thirteen months (according to my last.fm: about 407 plays as of this writing; since Oct. 31st of 2016), I’ve still found myself somewhat overwhelmed with the near-abrupt shifts in their repertoire from album to album, although their catalogue is rather minuscule and far more accessible than some of their other contemporaries. Plus, they have the benefit of not promising an album to their fanbase, then pulling off the most drawn out disappearing act on them over a course of two decades, so Slowdive already have their priorities straightened out quite nicely.
This guide, in keeping with the recently established tradition I’ve forced upon myself (and will most likely alter in future iterations), will give a streamlined overview of the band’s works, along with a sampler that will hopefully guide…
In acknowledging I’m most likely the website’s local stan for this guy, and the point that I’m writing such an article solely due to the fact I seriously can’t stop listening to his rather plentiful back catalogue, I’ve come to have certainty in the idea that David Sylvian is quite possibly one of the greatest and most ambitious artists to come from his respective generation. There’s so much I could (and will) say, but considering the scope that his works have offered listeners for the last forty-plus years along with the various artistic overhauls that have accompanied Sylvian’s output — both solo and with others in the band format — it seems quite necessary that I provide somewhat of a guide to the works of someone I hold in high esteem. For the sake of not rambling on longer than I really need to, we shall begin with a quick glimpse of where Sylvian began: in the art rock group Japan. Formed in 1974, Japan had their roots in the glam rock scene and took to their influences quite clearly with their initial outfitting, which would come back to embarrass the group upon their identity shift to new wave/synthpop auteurs that often rejected the New Romantic culture and the following that came with it:
Following two albums’ worth of middling glam worship blended in with some worthwhile tunes, Japan had finally found their sound with their third album, 1979’s Quiet Life; along with this futuristic sound, Sylvian had eschewed the slurred vocal…
I had to ask myself yesterday: ‘Why?’ I was curious; stood inch deep in the quagmire, sniffling, giggling, losing my hair, losing my mind, and damn near losing my patience with the gurning bastard stood next to me, pestering me for a piece of Wrigley’s so he didn’t get lockjaw, I could not understand who might possibly enjoy this, and if they could enjoy it, how many pills I would have to have taken to do so. Granted, it was springtime, and I’d stand on human shit just to see Future, but the point remains; ‘Why?’
You see, in Australia- or at least Perth- we like to have our festivals in the summertime, when it doesn’t rain and it is generally more conducive to standing outside for hours at a time. It wasn’t until a cursory Internet search that I discovered and realized that the rest of the world isn’t quite as hard, fast, or as hung up on all of that bother as we are. Apparently, there’s mud at Glastonbury. And apparently, this is something people will pay £238 for; better yet, something they will endure across 5 days so they can watch Ed Sheeran, Halsey, and Clean Bandit. Apparently, that’s entertainment.
I make the exception for wet weather festivals because Splendour in the Grass, a pilgrimage, rite-of-passage, and waste-of-money for self-described ‘elite’ sandstone university students countrywide almost always transpires as the ground turns to mud and the sky goes grey. It’s a miserable experience all up,…
September 2017 is a time of great change and uncertainty for me. Life-long friendships have dissolved, I’ve potentially been at the heart of intense pain for more than a few, and my own state of existence is being called into a flickering, wavering contention between worth and worthlessness. And, I suppose, most evidently out of this maelstrom of misjudgment and mistakes leaves the question that lingers at the edge of my mind every single night as I struggle to sleep: where will I live in three weeks’ time?
I have to keep myself living by a mantra that has defined the past few years of my life: “Take things one day at a time.”
This mantra often leaves the future in a constant blur that I reject the existence of, and while this blur helps shelter the fragility of anxiety that lures me into the oncoming traffic of sentience, it also allows me to make poor judgments and decisions — often in the heat of the moment — so as to not shatter the illusion that I have no idea what or where I’ll be one or three years from now.
In the aftermath of poor decisions, that illusion is usually shattered regardless, as the immediate nature and repercussions of my decisions don’t allow me to disregard thought beyond today. And when life begins to crumble over the poorly structured fail-safe I devise to keep myself going, I usually turn…
Editorial Note: This was originally written and posted as five separate album reviews. It functions as a retrospective and a discography review.
Link to Matt Aspinwall’s side of the split: https://bandcamp.com/download?id=2141216390&ts=1504398671.1591462948&tsig=2dbe75dc5beab0611396d08fe9aa5dbc&type=album
Demo?
The Brave Little Abacus is hard to pin down. They were eclectic, energetic, experimental, odd, off putting, and above all else, they were remarkable. What The Brave Little Abacus is not, however, is well known. Self-releasing almost all of their music, playing in legion halls, and forming slightly ahead of the emo revival scene, TBLA were mostly overlooked and underappreciated during their time. Creating some of the most challenging, intimate, and delightful music ever put to tape for half a decade somehow wasn’t enough – the band never broke out of their local New England scene, and sadly released their last record and played their last show in 2012. Combining mathy, sporadic, and unorthodox music ripe with complex song structures and a distinctive use of keyboard, TBLA filled a niche that The World Is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid To Die would later capitalize on. But outside of the fact that both bands are from New England, and have a keyboard player, there really isn’t any way to compare TBLA to The World Is… or any other band for that matter – they occupy a space all to themselves. Since their demise in 2012, The Brave Little Abacus has since been discovered by many internet music listeners hungry…
Thousands upon thousands of albums, EPs, mixtapes, compilations, and songs are released weekly. You might not be aware of the existence of 99% of those releases, but they’re there. So when each song released to the public is simply a drop in a pool that dwarfs even the Pacific Ocean, it can be hard to navigate the current music scene: it’s always moving and impossible to keep up with its speed. That’s where Share Some Singles comes into the picture. This series was formed to highlight songs released in 2017 that might not have been discovered by other listeners otherwise. I, alongside other Sputnikmusic users, have pulled together dozens of singles released in the recent past that we felt needed to be heard by the world. Or at least the Sputnik reader base.
Artists are listed in alphabetical order with corresponding YouTube, Soundcloud, and/or Bandcamp links. A Spotify playlist is also embedded below if the singles are available through that service. Enjoy! –wtferrothorn
Blue Hawaii – “No One Like You”
Not even the slightly out of place vocals could dampen the wonderful instrumental conjured up on “No One Like You”. Everything from the funky synth bubbling under the main ingredients for the entirety, to the grade-A bass grooves, to the disco-soaked strings that chime in quite a few times to remind you how stellar of…
I truly had a nicer intro written up, but the servers died, so let’s take you live to check in on how they’re sounding today:
Despite the internal strife heard above, we’re happy to bring you 22 selections of tunes that might have tickled our collective fancies this quarter, with some tracks being wonderfully complemented by some rather entertaining blurbs along the way. As you will see, not everybody could make it this time out (thanks, servers), so if we missed something, you’re certainly welcome to let us know in the comments.
Cheers, and Happy Independence Day/Treason Day to all you Americans. See you in September for Q3 if our site doesn’t eat itself!
What So Not – “Divide & Conquer” (Noisia Remix) Divide & Conquer (Remixes) Listen if you like: Spor, SHADES, Ivy Lab, Mefjus
This song is bananas. You know those brain-dead YouTube comments on every mediocre dubstep or neurofunk drum & bass song, things like, “oi this song’s so bonkers I fucked me girlfriend without a rubber”? This is so nuts I’m almost tempted to make one of those comments. The half-time drop is an underappreciated resource in drum & bass – though it’s thankfully seen more use with the rise of SHADES’ and Ivy Lab’s hip-hop-leaning uptempo stuff – and a properly tuned one can ignite a room. This Noisia remix does just that: corrosive distortion, offbeat drum fills, and a snare the size of Mars fuse…
Thousands upon thousands of albums, EPs, mixtapes, compilations, and songs are released weekly. You might not be aware of the existence of 99% of those releases, but they’re there. So when each song released to the public is simply a drop in a pool that dwarfs even the Pacific Ocean, it can be hard to navigate the current music scene: it’s always moving and impossible to keep up with its speed. That’s where Share Some Singles comes into the picture. This series was formed to highlight songs released in 2017 that might not have been discovered by other listeners otherwise. I, alongside other Sputnikmusic users, have pulled together dozens of singles released in the recent past that we felt needed to be heard by the world. Or at least the Sputnik reader base.
Artists are listed in alphabetical order with corresponding YouTube, Soundcloud, and/or Bandcamp links. A Spotify playlist is also embedded below if the singles are available through that service. Enjoy! –wtferrothorn
ABRONCA – “Chegando De Assalto”
When thinking about abrasive and aggressive hip-hop, one usually imagines some ’90s gangstas, innit? Well, there is a trio of Brazilian ladies that would like to flip you off first, but then also convince you they are just as capable of delivering raw, in your face hip-hop harshness. –UniqueUniverse
Thousands upon thousands of albums, EPs, mixtapes, compilations, and songs are released weekly. You might not be aware of the existence of 99% of those releases, but they’re there. So when each song released to the public is simply a drop in a pool that dwarfs even the Pacific Ocean, it can be hard to navigate the current music scene: it’s always moving and impossible to keep up with its speed. That’s where Share Some Singles comes into the picture. This series was formed to highlight songs released in 2017 that might not have been discovered by other listeners otherwise. I, alongside other Sputnikmusic users, have pulled together dozens of singles released in the recent past that we felt needed to be heard by the world. Or at least the Sputnik reader base.
Artists are listed in alphabetical order with corresponding YouTube, Soundcloud, and/or Bandcamp links. A Spotify playlist is also embedded below if the singles are available through that service. Enjoy! –wtferrothorn
Algiers – “The Underside of Power”
On their self-titled debut, Algiers came through with a blend of genres that was a breath of fresh air, but definitely could have been improved upon with later releases. That’s exactly what happened here: Franklin James Fisher’s soulful vocals are as passionate as ever, and this time around, his vocal style meshes with the punk…
He needs no introduction. But here’s the quick and dirty: Anthony Fantano, aka TheNeedleDrop, is one of the most prevalent music resources on the net. He has nearly a million YouTube followers. He’s been blogging for a decade, and vlogging for roughly eight years. Fantano has an impressive output, and uploads videos at a voracious pace. He’s a busy man. I reached out to him for a few words.
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Tristan: Kicking off with the burning question: did Sam Hyde ever get around to beating up your dad?
Anthony: Nah, he pussed out. Sam is a lotta bark, but not a lotta bite. He’s a big softy beyond his abrasive, disorienting outer shell. His odd behavior is more like a test to see who is truly with the shit. It’s like he’s testing you for a fight club that exists in his mind. It’s all as a means to weed out the normies who can’t take his bullshit, and entertain himself by attempting to take the piss out of any situation he finds himself in. It’s all harmless fun for him. However, I wouldn’t wanna be there to witness the moment Lena Dunham makes him feel like he’s in physical danger.
That being said, there are ideological views Sam holds that I vehemently disagree with, but I personally don’t see that as a reason to trash or silence his artistic endeavors. There have been much bigger scumbags to climb up…
