Welcome to the first 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.
In over a decade backing and forthing across the Scottish border, I never once had the notoriously grimy pleasure of taking the overnight ‘sleeper’ train, but Arab Strap’s stunning account matches up to every testimony I’ve heard. The restlessness, cheapness and discomfort are all there, but there’s an edge to it, an eeriness drawn out almost to the point of magical realism by some of the most riveting storytelling you’ll hear from anyone this year. Goodness there’s more where that came from on their knockout of a comeback record. — Johnnyofthewell
Big Red Machine – A Crime
The return of indie darling duo Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner’s Big Red Machine is something to celebrate, with “A Crime” marking their first release since the debut barring
It’s been a long year. A long, long year. As we usher out one of the most challenging times in recent memory with the hope that 2021 will bring along better things, this playlist will serve as a time capsule of sorts. These are the sounds of 2020 – the ugly, the bewildering, and the beautiful. Compiled from all four quarters of the year (for each individual installment, see the hyperlinks in the header), this combined playlist affords you the opportunity to jam many of our staff’s favorite tracks all in one place. It’s often through the most difficult times in human history that some of the best art has emerged, and 2020 surely saw its share of amazing music. Press play and sink into this labor of love: 100+ songs born out of adversity, perseverance, and hope. I proudly present to you: the Sputnikmusic Staff’s 2020 Playlist ~
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*protip: Our list contains 107 songs but Spotify only shows 100 songs. For the remaining 7, either click the “next arrow” after the 100th track, or navigate to Q4 and jam them there!*
Overwhelmed by all the stuff on your news feed about Taylor Swift? Does the task of listening to 32 tracks (49 counting the Long Pond Sessions, 51 counting the yet-to-be released Evermore bonus tracks) appear daunting? Well, there’s no longer any need to fear ostracizing from your social circles due to a humiliating lack of familiarity with T-Swizzle’s most recent masterpieces – folklore and evermore – which quite frankly make Abbey Road sound like dogshit. Lest you be caught in such an awkward situation as not knowing that ‘marjorie’ is a tribute to Swift’s late grandmother, give this brilliant mashup between her two 2020 LPs a listen. folkever (or morelore) delivers only the highest quality cuts from each album, and in a little under an hour. For best results, give this a spin while sipping Starbucks™ lattes in your very own privately owned ski lodge overlooking lush gardens and majestic mountain ranges.
Welcome to the fourth installment of our 2020 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.
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Tracklist:
Adrianne Lenker – zombie girl
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a song that will make you feel warmer inside than ‘zombie girl’. It portrays sad romance and hopeful longing: “I sworn I could’ve felt you there, and I almost could’ve kissed your hair” / “Then the next night, dreaming I could feel your skin, but the dream escaped so easily”. songs follows suit as one of the most moving folk albums of 2020; a piece that consistently portrays total intimacy and crushing vulnerability. — Sowing
Collapse Under the Empire – Red Rain
Many of the genre’s stalwarts have released a new record this year, but I haven’t heard something that whets the third-wave whistle in Q4 quite yet, so I’m banking on the German
Welcome to the third installment of our 2020 quarterly playlist/mixtape! Below you will find hand picked songs from July to September. 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.
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Tracklist:
Acid Moon and the Pregnant Sun – I Love You
Jamming Speakin’ of the Devil is like travelling in a time capsule, as the Israeli outfit moves easily between Rolling Stones rock ‘n’ roll and psychedelic cuts a la Jefferson Airplane. “I Love You” is one of the more upbeat tunes of the album, and takes the listener back to late-‘60s San Francisco. — manosg
Adrianne Lenker – anything
Adrianne Lenker is peak Sad Music to Feel Good To: Warm. Patient. Open. In the sun, in the rain; half-asleep, half-awake. Small-scale ‘Holocene’: epoch of the self. — BlushfulHippocrene
Welcome to the second installment of our 2020 quarterly playlist/mixtape! Below you will find hand picked songs from April to June. 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.
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Tracklist:
Ad Infinitum – Marching on Versailles
Do a quick Google search for Melissa Bonny; she’s hot. Not just physically, but vocally. She seems to specialize in power metal, symphonic metal, and is also one of the more convincing female growlers out there. “Marching on Versailles” displays that ability with one of her many bands, Ad Infinitum. “Marching on Versailles” shares a lot in common with the proggy symphonic power metal of a modern Kamelot album execept heavier without nearly as much theatrics and cheese. — Willie
Andrew Judah – Hair of the Dog
If you’re into the theatrical, progressive rock of The Dear Hunter, then allow me to introduce you to
Welcome to the first installment of our 2020 quarterly playlist/mixtape! Below you will find hand picked songs from January to March. 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 comment, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here – or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
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Tracklist:
(#1) Algiers – We Can’t Be Found
On their new album Algiers show that they are not afraid of taking risks. We Can’t Be Found is a haunting dub-inflected track that’s all about the ghosts of the past. Yet, the verses build up to a soaring chorus that feels like a much needed release from all the doom and gloom. –Greg.
(#2) Yuri Gagarin – QSO
This is one of Yuri Gagarin’s most raging tunes, pushing forward soaring, noisy guitars over punishing drum beats. Solos abound and windy synthesizers roam along, growing steadily until a gentle coda puts things to rest. For
It’s that wonderful time of year when we all try to figure out hilarious, and sometimes flat-out evil, ways to make each other cower in fear while having premature heart attacks. Yes, Halloween – which, let’s face it, spans all of October – is upon us, and with it comes the first Spooknik Soundtrack installment in what will hopefully become an annual series. Thirty users got together and shared their creepiest songs, which has been compiled and organized for your own personal horror.
I listened to this and can vouch that it’s quite terrifying, so if you don’t think you can stomach it, just click the “back” button at the top left corner of your browser. But if you think that you have what it takes, then dive right into the below playlist and let us know what you think!
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…
In case you haven’t noticed: the charts are finally updated and the default year when adding new albums to the database is 2019. Sayonara, 2016!
26 entries make the cut for Q2 2019 (as always, thanks to BlushfulHippocrene, DrGonzo1937, insomniac15, manosg, Rowan5215, and verdant for pitching in!), so while I was perilously close to throwing in a power metal entry, I’ll tell you instead to check out Slavic Spirits by EABS if you want to whet your improvisational jazz whistle (the best songs run a bit long for a mixtape).
Let us know what we missed (or who you miss, because we probably miss them, too) and see you in Q3!
88-Keys f/ Mac Miller & Sia – “That’s Life” That’s Life Listen if you like: reminding yourself why life is worth living
Mac Miller’s unreleased discography may be more imposing even than his fantastic run of mixtapes and albums from 2013 until his death. Especially now there’s no new music to come, the presence of Mac’s vault attains near-mythical status among his fanbase; the tape with Madlib, Pharrell collabs, unfinished companion album to Swimming tantalisingly just out of reach. We’ll take minute-long scraps as cause for celebration. Thankfully, “That’s Life” is no scrap, rather a shining example of how to do a posthumous single with respect and taste.
88-Keys had the unenviable task to polish and clean up the raw demo known as “Benji the Dog”, which with its heartfelt performance from…
Welp, it’s March 31st, possibly April 1st, so you know what that means.
Is your March Madness bracket more busted than Kyle Ahrens’ ankle or Chuma Okeke’s ACL?
Did your baseball team start off on a roaring 162-0 pace before regression towards the shit kicked in real, real hard?
Fear not, people who don’t even like sports: our Q1 2019 mixtape is here for you to treat with general apathy!
From blistering punk from a band nearing their 40th anniversary to a singer/songwriter who earned the #3 spot in our Top 50 back in 2014 to [insert user here]-core stylings of psychedelic rock (insomniac), indie pop (Sowing), alternative R&B (BlushfulHippocrene), and the generally abstract (Winesburgohio), there’s [hopefully] something for all to enjoy. There might even be a sneak peek at the 2019 AOTY if this set is any indication.
If it’s not on the Spotify playlist, then the Soundcloud/Bandcamp/YouTube pick-your-poison should do the trick.
Let us know what we missed (or who you miss, because we probably miss them, too) and see you in Q2!
Aldous Harding – “The Barrel” Designer Listen if you like: Halloween during Christmastime
In a way this song is the most disconcerting thing I’ve ever heard. It’s all sharp fangs softly piercing skin, dead things buried under a big pile of autumn leaves. Different instruments float in only to be scared off by Harding’s ghoulishly pretty visage. Play this at my funeral; I accept there will…
This project is a collection of the very best individual tracks from the decade spanning 2010-2019. All tracks have been linked to this homepage for ease of navigation. If you’re less in the mood to read, and would rather just jam the entire playlist, a spotify link has been embedded below for your convenience. The homepage will be updated as additional songs are chosen, so you can always navigate to this page to find the latest updates. Enjoy!
Click a thumbnail to hear a selected song of the decade and read more about it.
Now this is just creepy. There’s such an unsettling vibe to this whole thing, from the band name to the artwork to the massive industrial groove beat that throws me all the way back to The Downward Spiral. Oh, and those shrill, shouted vocals, followed by by the low, distorted Frank the Rabbit (Donnie Darko) spoken passage. Yikes. This thing just feels monumental. I get the feeling from the tracklist that there could be some serious political vibes on this thing as well. The band itself has 25k Facebook likes, so this is very much a fringe “under the radar band” (sure, they don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers)…but they have only released one album (as far as my knowledge and a cursory google search can tell) and it was all the way back in 2010. Apparently, Gate of Grief has been 7 years in the making. I have a feeling it will be well worth the wait, and one of those albums that catches everyone off guard when it comes out of nowhere. Consider me as hyped as I’ve been for anything so far in 2018.
We missed a quarter or two, but who’s counting? The infinite playlist has been a Sputnik tradition ever since I can remember, and we’re back baby! Jom was kind (or cruel?) enough to let me organize the playlist this year. Some coercion may have been involved, but it made for 30 creative and biting blurbs this time out. With such a diverse range of tastes among the staff, this edition has a little big of everything to sink your teeth into…
Don’t forget to check the Spotify playlist below in addition to skimming through the blurbs! The best part about this whole thing is branching out and listening to something you wouldn’t normally stumble upon.
All The Luck In The World – “Golden October” A Blind Arcade Listen if you like: Frightened Rabbit, Elliott Smith, Horse Feathers
Perhaps no better example of A Blind Arcade‘s beauty could be cited than “Golden October.” The album’s third track offers up poetic melodies that experiment with time signatures, as well as wintry effects that instill an absolutely breathtaking atmosphere. The whole thing commences with some simply strummed chords, introduces strings, slowly emphasizes the force of each drum beat, and eventually alters the vocal melody to rise and meet the intensity that the rest of the song has already arrived at. The way it all happens so subtly is a thing of beauty, and by the song’s final minute you’ll be totally spellbound. –Sowing
Soundtracks have always played a big role in my enjoyment of music. Often I find myself paying more attention to the various melodies in the background of whatever film is playing, imagining how the soundtrack’s producers decided to match certain moods with specific frames. I don’t know, it’s just fascinating to me. I watch a lot of indie-romances and stuff that the average guy actively avoids, but one thing that frustrates me is that even in the so-called indie flicks, they always seem to draw from the same pool of hip artists. I guess I was just tired of hearing the same types of scenes matched up with the same types of musicians, every time. It’s like they’re getting lazy; either that or they all just want to emulate successful indie soundtracks of the past without actually attempting to go through the requisite discovery of unknown artists that makes an indie soundtrack worth exploring. I wanted something that would make me feel like Garden State did when I first heard it, before I knew of The Shins, Remy Zero, or Nick Drake — but that was a long time ago, and my musical depth and breadth has more than tripled. I needed outside help to dig a little deeper.
So when I did my brief little rec competition (thanks to everyone who offered a song!), I was trying to fashion a “sputnik indie-flick romantic comedy” type of soundtrack that would (1) turn myself…
![folklore (deluxe version) [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91PYDrG2ejL._SS500_.jpg)
![Holy Vacants [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71fOJ64uPfL._SS500_.jpg)
![Go Farther In Lightness [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81g4mXDaSIL._SS500_.jpg)
![Trouble Will Find Me [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1ZqkeVrf0L._SS500_.jpg)
!["Awaken, My Love!" [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81aYuDTpo3L._SS500_.jpg)
![POWER [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/713Pdp0hXzL._SS500_.jpg)
![[Untitled]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81Yig76akQL._SS500_.jpg)
![Undun [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81Nl5xk+bGL._SS500_.jpg)
![E·MO·TION [Deluxe Edition]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71%2BSiv1oLDL._SX522_.jpg)
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![MAGDALENE [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A16f62eXR8L._SS500_.jpg)
![Vitriola [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91XEFSrcCpL._SS500_.jpg)
![House Of Balloons [2 LP]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51xrSLGmiOL.jpg)
