Listening Party
By Sowing
Wednesday July 5, 2023
2023 :: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q2 Playlist 2023
Welcome to the second installment for our 2023 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, any new artists you may have discovered here, or let us know what we missed!
Tracklist:
Alfa Mist – “BC”
Variables
If you’re a sucker for tricksy, stuttering drumwork, “BC” will have a firm hold on your nether regions from the jump. If you need to be wined and dined first, well, stick around for seven minutes worth of wild soloing and nimble comping before that final reprisal of the starting motif makes you want to spark a cigarette and stare at the ceiling, fully-satisfied and maybe just a little hungry. Go ahead and eat — you’ll need the energy. Those sheets aren’t gonna change themselves. –Milo
Allie Kelly – “Gunshy”
GUNSHY
Like Big Thief, Allie Kelly cognizes the value of a touch of the insolite among pop structures; like Sheryl Crow, she wants her guitars to shimmer like the sun; like both, she’s capable of knocking it out of the park — 2022’s excellent Menthol with Thumpasaurus…
By Sowing
Saturday April 1, 2023
2023 :: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q1 Playlist 2023
Welcome to the first installment for our 2023 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, any new artists you may have discovered here, or let us know what we missed!
Tracklist:
Acid Arab – “Habaytak”
٣ (Trois)
Acid Arab continue to infuse techno with Arabian music to great effect, with “Habaytak” offering a more aggressive groove sprinkled with catchy vocals and hypnotic keyboard leads. It might seem like an absurd mix at first, but the song (and the entire album) becomes addictive. –Raul Stanciu
Algiers – “A Good Man”
Shook
I like Algiers when they let loose and let that bit of Bad Brains take over. This is where this band shines. Their latest record Shook is an impressive display of experimental post punk — sometimes hard to follow, sometimes hard to let go — but it’s in short bursts like “A Good Man” where this band really proves there’s a wildfire still burning inside of them. –Dewinged
Asian Glow & sonhos tomam conta – “hangthemall”
…
KILL or KEEP Vol.9
Taylor Swift – Red
Time has passed. How much – too much! The gang at KILL and KEEP are getting back together, and where better to turn our attention than on Taylor Swift’s never-forgotten recently-reclaimed coming-of-age epic post-teen mess of an album Red.
This was the time! Most of us were dumb teenagers when Red was red-hot off the press and had complicated relationships with everything and anything including this album. How awesome! Now that post-Red history has continued and happened, we have the privilege of parsing it for Taylors past, present and future – for there was a whole lotta Taylor in that melting pot! She was fresh from stabbing the entire republic of Nashville in the front and exporting her domination of teenage bedroomspace to teenage dancefloordom: no more tiptoeing towards pop stardom, this was where Taylor Swift began to stomp (but on whomst’ve?).
Also, Sputnik was down for whatever reason while we were doing this lol. Let’s go!
Rules
The team is DavidYowi, johnnyoftheWell, Sinternet and Steak
Every song must either be KILLed or KEEPed.
The version of the album used is the original because we were invested in the time capsule, and because it is shorter and one of our number was midway through a 24-hour exam window, and Taylor Swift is rich enough as it is.
Two proposals were made…
By Sowing
Friday January 6, 2023
Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | 2021 | 2020
Since the turn of the decade, we’ve amassed 389 staff-selected songs for our ever-growing playlist, which equates to just under 30 hours of music. Here you can find all of our favorite songs from 2022 (for previous years, follow the links above) — from metal to indie to hip-hop to whatever obscure genre you can think of, it’s most likely represented here. We’re a proudly eclectic website, so if your aim is to broaden your musical horizons, then you’ve arrived at the perfect spot!
The playlist below encompasses all 143 songs that our staff hand-picked from the past year. Please join us on a retrospective journey through 2022: listen in order for the chronological Q1 –> Q4 experience, or shuffle the playlist for more of an even flow. Spotify’s embedded playlist only shows the first 100 songs, so be sure to launch the spotify app or web browser to listen in full. From our administration and staff to you, we hope you had a safe and wonderful holiday season. Happy listening!
By Sowing
Monday January 2, 2023
2022 :: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q4 Playlist 2022
Welcome to our fourth installment for our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here — or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening, and stay tuned for the cumulative 2022 playlist later this week and the Community’s Top 50 LPs (and Top 10 EPs/Live Albums/Compilations) of 2022 next week!
Tracklist:
16 – “The Floor Wins”
Into Dust
The sludge metal veterans returned this year with a brand new, uncanny full length that further explores the misery, deception and sad realities of American life. Centerpiece “The Floor Wins” peeks into the ugly downward spiral of drug addiction that haunts the country right now. The scorching riffs and aggressive vocals create a suffocating atmosphere that works really well with the lyrical content. –Raul Stanciu
The 1975 – “Wintering”
Being Funny in a Foreign Language
I’m not exactly a fan of The 1975 in general for plenty of reasons that many of this music site could articulate. “Wintering” doesn’t really set itself apart from all my…
By Sowing
Monday October 24, 2022
As part of a new tradition, Sputnik will be putting together seasonal playlists to celebrate some of our favorite holidays/times of year. The first installment in this series is for the spookiest/eeriest tunes of 2022, just in time for Halloween! It’s a pretty eclectic mix, featuring everything from hip-hop to doom metal, so hopefully there’ll be something for everyone (even though I know that the lone Muse track will be the one that everyone jams relentlessly). This playlist was compiled by both users and staff utilizing only songs from 2022, which admittedly limits the output but also ensures that while listening, you can feel like you’re on the cutting edge of creepy music — a hallow-hipster, if you will. So to all of our readership, enjoy this round of fresh tunes on us. Have a scary but safe Halloween!
Playlist Contributors:
mkmusic1995 – (for Ptolemaea, Ronin, Vlastimil)
AlexKzillion – (for Centurion, Photograph, Pamela)
SlothcoreSam – (for The First Dead Body I Ever Saw, Satanic Slumber Party Part 2, subtle-body-horror)
Sowing – (for Nuages, Ghostland, Laguna Seca)
Hyperion1001 – (for Mangled as the Hideous Feed)
Sunnyvale – (for You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween)
PitchforkArms – (for Dead Friends)
dedex – (for Welcome to Hell, Bites on My Neck, Nabokov)
izakaya – (for Vanity)
cold – (for Blue Chalk, Golgotha)
JohnnyoftheWell –…
By Sowing
Tuesday October 4, 2022
2022 :: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q3 Playlist 2022
Welcome to our third installment for our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here — or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
Tracklist:
The 1975 – “I’m in Love with You”
Being Funny in a Foreign Language
I’m historically mixed on the results whenever The 1975 go straight at their default, somewhat-played ’80s pop throwback sound. For every instant classic like “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” there are a handful of overbaked, cloying cuts which end up with titles like “She’s American” and “She Way Out”. Thankfully, the genuinely adorable “I’m In Love With You” leans towards the quality of the former; an irresistible groove underpins a hook that I’d describe as repetitive if it wasn’t so lovable. “I’m In Love With You” is so cutesy you may feel your strings being yanked, especially watching the too-twee video with Matty Healy doing silent slapstick and a Phoebe Bridgers cameo — but if I’m gonna have good vibes force-fed to me, it may as well be via a…
By Sowing
Friday September 2, 2022
I’ve always been a huge fan of two things: playlists and nostalgia. Lo and behold, I present to you that point of intersection! Since I first became an avid consumer of music back in 2010, I’ve been secretly compiling “greatest hits” versions of each year I’ve been on Sputnikmusic (I’m not counting 2008 or 2009 because I was barely present). It’s a hobby, sure, but it’s also a superhighway to connect me to any given point in time within the last decade or so. It goes without saying that these installments will be subjective in every conceivable way, but I also think that listeners – particularly on this website – might get something out these posts because my taste in music is essentially a product of what I’ve discovered on Sputnikmusic. I invite you to click ‘play’ on my selective 25-song 2010 playlist and get whisked away to some twelve year old memories. Because it obviously will not be the same as your 2010 experience, I invite you to share your own favorite songs in the comments below. Thanks for listening!
By Sowing
Tuesday July 5, 2022
2022 :: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q2 Playlist 2022
Welcome to the second installment of our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here — or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
Tracklist:
Artificial Brain – “Celestial Cyst”
Artificial Brain
Unsurprisingly, the eponymous third chapter from Long Island’s singular dissonant machine stands as one of the finest death metal albums to come out in the first half of 2022. The first single, “Celestial Cyst”, with its dense psychedelic(ish) slow-paced section, is not only Artificial Brain‘s most iconic moment, but also epitomizes its unforeseen emotional weight. –TheNotrap
Asian Glow – “Look Close, Nose the Reflection”
Stalled Flutes, means
The biggest and bestest track on Asian Glow’s tangled knockout of a new album might just be the most impressive thing to come out of the whole of 5th wave emo. It is momentous; it is ambitious, perhaps a little too much so; it is maudlin yet you can almost dance to it; it has best bits and they don’t last forever. It’s
…
By Sowing
Tuesday June 7, 2022
FOREWORD
Mason Maggio is a man of many talents. Currently he is the sole member of Souveneer, an indie-folk/rock project formed in 2016, but you might also know him as the lead singer from The Republic of Wolves and Tigers on Trains. I caught up with him recently on the progress of his new EP, the future of his other projects, and even his successful stint on Jeopardy.
In addition to the interview, Maggio has also granted Sputnikmusic exclusive early access to his upcoming song, “Evelyn”, which will be on his 2022 EP Sleep Study. “Evelyn” drops officially on Thursday, June 9th.
You can stream “Evelyn” below, as well as Sleep Study‘s two other already released tracks as you navigate through the interview.
Enjoy!
It’s been a while since we’ve caught up for an interview (2016, to be precise). A lot in the world has changed since then…how are you doing?
A very tough question to start things off! Overall I’ve been well. Without getting into major worldwide events, some of the main happenings in my life since 2016 have been moving from New York to LA, getting a dog, becoming obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, winning on Jeopardy, meeting/collaborating with some amazing songwriters, and growing enough as a musician and artist to fully embrace my solo project.
There’s a big audience on Sputnikmusic for …
KILL or KEEP Vol.8
The Beatles – The Beatles
KILL or KEEP is back and we are doing the White Album! We have never done the White Album before, and this is quite important to stress because why the hell hadn’t we? It is the Beatles’ longest album. Is it their magnum opus? Some people think so, and most of them are wrong about literally everything! Let’s show those frauds! But first, we will go so far as to tender an apology for not already having KILLed and KEPT it, reasons for which go something along the lines of:
“Hey Phero, when are we going to KILL or KEEP the White Album?”
“Idk man sounds like a great idea. Sounds perfect. Let’s get porc and do it!”
“Sweet yeah, good shout. porc would be perf for this rofl. Hold on one sec, I’ll get in touch…”
70000 unanswered voicemails and two months later.
“Hey Johnny, remember when we had that great idea about KILLing or KEEPing the White album?”
“Oh shit man yeah, that was such a good plan why haven’t we done it yet?”
“Um no idea, but shall we do it now?”
“Yes let’s, actually wait, how about we do an actual good double album that everyone agrees is good instead?”
“You mean like, uh, idk. Physical Graffiti?”
“Nah.”
“Leaves Turn Inside You?”
“Wrong…
By Sowing
Monday April 4, 2022
2022 :: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q1 Playlist 2022
Welcome to the first installment of our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here – or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
40 Watt Sun – Behind My Eyes
Approaching twelve minutes in length, and devoid of most “exciting” musical elements, “Behind My Eyes” isn’t for the faint of heart. For those of the right bent, though, it’s a gold mine. Hazy slowcore (and a touch of folk) reminiscent of golden age Kozelek imbues the listener with just the right blend of melancholy and warmth. Spin at the required moment, and this listening experience can approach the feeling of a religious epiphany. –Sunnyvale
Astral Tomb – Traversing the Wandering Star
I’ve been searching around for the right album to throw a little more attention at all afternoon, but I couldn’t exactly throw the twelve minute track alongside the bite-sized morsels on this list. Astral Tomb have a small, cult-like following and for good reason.…
By Sowing
Friday December 31, 2021
2021: Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | 2022 | 2020
One hundred and thirty nine songs. Eleven hours. That’s what we’ve poured into our collective playlist this year, as we continue compiling what will hopefully be an infinitely growing resource for registered users and general readership alike. All songs have been hand-selected by individual members of our staff, and the final product represents a melting pot of musical tastes covering a diverse range of genres. No matter your personal preferences, there should be more than something for everyone. Who knows, you might even find yourself dabbling in genres that you’ve never considered approaching before! That’s part of the magic of this place. We’re unpaid, unbought music critics who play for the love of the game.
Everything you’ll hear below meant something to us at one time, and every word you’ll read in the blurbs (see our quarterly installments, linked above) was a labor of pure passion. As we put a lid on 2021 and look ahead to 2022, we hope you’ll join us in revisiting some of our favorite tunes from this year. Feel free to shuffle the below tracks for more of an even-flowing experience, or play it in order for a chronological/retrospective journey through 2021.
Protip: Spotify’s embedded playlist only shows the first 100 songs of our expansive 139 song collection. To hear…
By Sowing
Thursday September 23, 2021
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q3 Playlist 2021
Welcome to the third installment of our 2021 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the songs below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered. Alternatively, you can always let us know what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
To view the historical content of these playlists, visit the bottom of this page.
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Tracklist:
BADBADNOTGOOD – “Signal from the Noise”
At the height of BBNG’s (TikTok) fame comes ‘Signal from the Noise’, a psychedelic jazz marvel. The band’s longest track in some time, it’s also its most filmic. Having proven itself in a number of ways over the last few years — popularity-wise, as well as in terms of diversity and productivity — its about time BBNG returns to crafting albums. And if this and ‘Beside April’ are any indication (what else is the point of single?), Talk Memory is going to be a well-crafted album. Lotsa fun, too. — BlushfulHippocrene
Cloud Rat – “Mother Tongue/Glitter Belly”
…
By Sowing
Tuesday July 6, 2021
Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q2 Playlist 2021
Welcome to the second installment of our 2021 quarterly playlist/mixtape! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here – or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
To view the historical content of these playlists, visit the bottom of this page.
.
Tracklist:
AFI – Dulcería
AFI continue to delve deeper into a more sophisticated sound three decades into their career and ‘Dulcería’ is the most suave moment on Bodies. I dare to say the groovy bass lines and silky guitars echo Roxy Music and Davey’s smooth croons are impressive and very catchy. The result is such a beautiful and elegant tune. — insomniac15
Altarage – Magno Evento
Succumb sees the dissonant Basque collective broaden its spectrum by reconciling experimentalism and orthodoxy. Besides being one of its discordant highlights, the charismatic ‘Magno Evento’ stands as one of the best tracks the band has ever recorded. — TheNotrap
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