Hello fellow once-a-year-birthday-havers and welcome to a post that will answer how old people on this website are (or at least those that willingly posted their ages on a sputnik list). So, I surveyed you all to give me more ideas for Statnik, and many of you suggested things I had already done. No worries, the statnik/macman76 cannon is long and it bends toward being sometimes overly detailed and boring and, thus, easy to forget. One thing many of you did not suggest was letting me analyze data you had already collected.
In stepped our hero, Dewinged. He stalked my request list, waiting for the right time to spring on me… that he had asked the sputnik userbase what their birthdays were. So, I scraped the data from his twolists and will definitively answer once and for all what the average age for those 129 users is. And what the median is. And the range. And the standard deviation.
(Data cleaning note: Dewinged seemed unsure of some of the birthdays but I used whatever was listed, I threw out one entry because it involved googling a date, and added the 15th for the day of another since it only listed month and year).
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of March 2, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
Featured Release
Tech N9ne: Planet Genre: Rap/Hip Hop // Label: Strange Music
Background:
Tech N9ne has been delivering his rapid-fire lyrics over a dark and twisted version of hip hop since 1999. After nearly twenty years of solid releases, Tech N9ne returns with his twentieth release, Planets. First single, “Don’t Nobody Want None”, drops the twisted darkness and delves straight into the classic 80s scene, sounding like a blend of Tech N9ne and Debbie Deb. Throughout the rest of the album you get exactly what you’d expect… Tech’s rapid-fire delivery, multi-faceted, twisted hip hop, and a slew of guest appearances. The difference is Planet is delivered with more conviction than anything he’s done since All 6’s and 7’s back in 2011.
“Don’t Nobody Want None”:
– Full List of Releases: March 2, 2018 –
Andrew W.K.: You’re Not Alone
Genre: Rock/Metal // Label: Sony Music
Check out our Contributor Review of You’re Not Alone.
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Anna Von Hausswolff: Dead Magic
Genre: Experimental/Dream Pop // Label: City Slang
Hello, fellow numbers in a weighted average, and welcome to an investigation of how much weight this site really has. It may come as a shock to you or for some reason you’ve never even considered it, but metacritic collects the ratings from the staff reviews of this very website to make their average scores. Specifically, they convert the rating in the reviews, and they scale them to 100 by multiplying them by 20 (i.e. a 4.6 review becomes a 92 on metacritic). Then, for each particular album with more than 4 scores, they calculate a weighted average. Weights for each publication are assigned “based on their quality and overall stature“, and these weights are not revealed to the public. They include this question in their FAQ:
CAN YOU TELL ME HOW EACH OF THE DIFFERENT CRITICS ARE WEIGHTED IN YOUR FORMULA?
Absolutely not.
I’m fond of weighted averages. For instance, my user-usage adjusted means are weighted averages. They are simple mathematically and conceptually. “Imagine if you got 2 votes and everyone else had 1.” Boom. Weighted average. “Imagine if you got a vote proportional to your wealth.” Boom. Politics around the globe (and a weighted average). The problem with weighted averages (relative to, say, statistical models) is that assigning weights is an arbitrary exercise. For my user-usage adjusted average ratings, I assign a weight of 3 to the count of a user’s reviews, 2 to lists, and 1 to comments
So, with the blessing of those who will not be named though know who they are, our lovely expose on the users of Sputnikmusic shall make a bi-weekly return to no remarkable avail; with little haste on my end, the first of the revived series ended in a crossfire of three reviews that all took a trip to the ~features~ queue, but in the end, TheBoneyKing won an all-expense paid trip to meet yours truly for a one-on-one interview that ultimately revealed Boney’s level of thinking to be far superior to my pea-brained self and by proxy, all of Sputnik. In a way, he really made me think! And with such a fierce appetite for knowledge, Boney has an equally voracious hunger for Indie and Americana (or alt-country idk); his review of Brandi Carlile’s By The Way, I Forgive You can be read here.
~Boney’s true form~
Let’s start with the beginning of the user known to all as TheBoneyKing: how did you come to find sputnik in the first place? What drew you to this wonderfully outdated music website and its community?
I remember when I was first falling down the wonderful rabbit hole that is music, I spent a lot of time reading about albums on Wikipedia and Sputnik reviews would often be linked on those pages. Usually these were klap or SowingSeason reviews due to the kind of music I was exploring at the time. So I was aware…
That moment when you first hear a song, and you can’t fight the beginning of a smile. Uplifting music has sort of become a lost art, at least to me. I’m always searching for the next earth-shattering revelation, as if a song is going to help me understand the universe or something. I don’t often take the time to stop and appreciate the most basic benefit of music: making you feel good.
For me, I don’t ask for much: I just want something upbeat, catchy, and entertaining. I’m not sure why, but lately I can’t seem to stop finding these kinds of tunes – and in places I wouldn’t necessarily expect. These are not radio staples or bangers from female pop stars…they’re mostly intriguing pop-rock tracks from artists that haven’t really made it “big time” yet, which is perfect because it keeps with my theme of discovering under-the-radar music in 2018. Here’s 3 songs that lately have been making me want to dance through the day – or at the very least, be okay with the shitty realities of everyday life.
Enjoy.
(1) Mother Mother – “Love Stuck”
It’s like a ‘Mr Blue Sky’ or ‘You Make My Dreams’ for this generation. I dare you to listen to this and have a shitty day.
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of February 23, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
Featured Release
Cabal: Mark of Rot Genre: Blackened Death Metal/Djent // Label: Long Branch Records
Background:
Cabal is an upcoming band from Copenhagen, Denmark. Their sound is like a marriage between Meshuggah and Ulcerate with black metal synths. Mark of Rot succeeds because it manages to blend the varying influences into one seamless sound that mixes rhythmic riffs that are huge in sound with an oppressive atmosphere that transitions between black metal and industrial influences. The vocals, too, run the scope from guttural death metal to black metal shrieks.
“Blackened Soil”:
– Full List of Releases: February 23, 2018 –
All The Luck In The World: A Blind Arcade
Genre: Folk // Label: Self-Released
Check out our Staff Review courtesy of SowingSeason.
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Avslut: Deceptis
Genre: Black Metal // Label: Osmose Productions
Stream Deceptis here.
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Cabal: Mark of Rot
Genre: Blackened Death Metal/Djent // Label: Long Branch Records
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of February 16, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
Featured Release
Senses Fail: If There Is Light, It Will Find You
Genre: Post Hardcore // Label: Pure Noise Records
Background:
Senses Fail started out as an equal blend of pop punk and post hardcore, but with each subsequent album they slowly dropped the pop elements and increased the hardcore. Despite this slow build up, the sound of their fifth album, Renacer, was still a shock for fans. Suddenly, any hint of pop punk or even the friendlier side of post hardcore was missing — Renacer and it’s follow-up Pull The Thorns From Your Heart, were pretty much metallic hardcore with barely any clean singing or catchy choruses to speak of. As much as Renacer was a sudden swing in style, If There Is Light… is just as drastic, but in the opposite direction. Sounding like the golden era of Let It Enfold You and Still Searching, If There is Light… is the return of what most fans probably loved most about Senses Fail — huge hooks, pop punk vocals coupled with hardcore shouts, and enough emotional baggage for any three other people.
TalonsOfFire here – This is the second of a series of staff on staff interviews. Arcade and I decided to keep things conversational, but in the interest of clarity, my posts are bold. Enjoy!
I’m glad to finally see someone else enjoyed the new LCD Soundsystem as much as I did. Why do you think it got such a mixed reaction from so many fans that were initially excited that the band were back?
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t under the impression American Dream was doing too poorly until they cancelled their Australian tour recently and chalked it up to ‘scheduling conflicts,’ or some other code for ‘nobody’s buying.’ It’s especially jarring considering the hullabaloo around a year or 2 ago that made it seem like this was meant to be the next big comeback. Blogs were hyping this as a bigger deal than the Guns n’ Roses reunion, and now here we are, with what is probably their worst album yet.
But (and I hate to say this because it’s actually the stupidest thing to say and doesn’t articulate very much, but whatever I’ll say it anyway) that’s still pretty good, considering Sound of Silver and This is Happening are meant to be classics of that whole David Byrne soundalike New York thing that was inexplicably big about 15 years ago. In that sense, I think American Dream was sufficient synth bullshit for that audience of guys in their 30s with receding hairlines and a evangelical love of New…
The first month of 2018 proved to be a little slow for under-the-radar releases, as it typically is for any music in general. When We Land’s Introvert’s Plight was a pleasant surprise, offering up a very consistent indie-rock record that contained moments of lush folk amidst more sprightly, upbeat melodies. I initially gave that a hype rating of 7 (70%), and it actually earned a 3.8 (76%). On the other hand, EDEN’s Vertigo was underwhelming in just about every way. It did have some unique draw-ins, but they were never successfully strung together in a way that would make it worth revisiting. That album came in just short of it’s 5 (50%) projection, garnering just a 2 (40%) in my recent review of it. All The Luck In The World’s Blind Arcade is still set for a 2/23 release, and it’s very much near the top of my radar. Expect a review for that album soon after it drops!
Anyhow, it’s time for another batch of albums that I have at least some level of interest in. If you’ll recall, I am limiting my 2018 reviewing scope to artists who could be categorically “under-the-radar” – be it on Sputnik or in general. Some of the below artists do have more name recognition that what I’d typically aim for, but none of them are by any means popular and will likely only end up with a handful of reviews across the greater web. Thus, without further ado, here’s Sowing’s Hype Machine…
By 1975 in New York City, the first wave of punk had floated to the top of the underground, seeping into pop culture and making small doomed stars of its first insurgents. CBGB in the East Village had become a bastion of young iconoclasts re-shaping rock music into something decidedly more septic. Both the New York Dolls and Detroit’s Iggy Pop (fresh off the Stooges imploding) had become havoc-prone headliners through the city’s club circuit. And Lou Reed and Patti Smith had been flung onto the ambo as gutter sibyls, performance visionaries who seemed to know something most didn’t. Malcom McLaren had taken the bug across the pond and birthed the Sex Pistols and the fever caught. It was all happening, and new eager bands were springing up like lice. By ’77, in the midst of that mass push to forge froth-mouthed, frenetic rock n’ roll, a small seed of a meta-revolt was brewing inside punk’s inherently meat-headed tendencies. Stray architects who were looking to do away with glam-blam flash and the charming lobotomy of Ramones, to make music that was as agile as it was intellectual, all the while avoiding sounding sterile and over-meticulous, a pratfall that occasionally haunted both Television and Talking Heads. These were young kids who loved both the stylish hollowness of the French New Wave and the undiluted freedom that punk was crawling with before its first commercial take-over. Artists like Richard Hell, David Thomas, Lizzy Mercier Descloux and the like, were chasing the…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of February 9, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
Featured Release
Son Lux: Brighter Wounds
Genre: Trip-Hop/Electronic // Label: City Slang
Background:
New York City composer Ryan Lott returns with his 5th full-length LP. The album is available to stream in full courtesy of NPR, or you can simply check out the lead single “Dream State”, below.
“Dream State”:
– Full List of Releases: February 9, 2018 –
The Atlas Moth: Coma Noir
Genre: Sludge Metal // Label: Prosthetic
Long Island alt-rock/indie outfit The Republic of Wolves have made new details available surrounding their upcoming third LP, shrine. The record now has an official release date of March 27, 2018, and will feature the below artwork and tracklist. There will be three bonus tracks on the album as well, with titles that are as-of-yet TBD:
01. The Canyon 02. Bask 03. Sundials 04. Birdless Cage 05. Mitama 06. Dialogues 07. Northern Orthodox 08. Colored Out 09. Ore 10. Worry If You Want (Yume)
Two of the songs from the above tracklist have already been released. “Mitama” and “Northern Orthodox” can be heard here. A version of “Birdless Cage” was also created for NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, although it allegedly differs from the version that will appear on shrine.
“Mitama“
“Northern Orthodox“
Additionally, for those who haven’t been following the most recent developments, the group has also been releasing studio updates regarding the album. These installments can be viewed below:
“Bit of a dark spiral with no end, I thought” – Algeria Touchshriek
For brevity’s sake, I’ll leave my thoughts on the first three decades of Bowie for another time, except to say that his 70s output is among the greatest run of any artist in history and his 80s output is… not. Even in his worst decade, the man remained a fascinating enigma, screaming his lungs out over Japanese spoken word and Robert Fripp’s angle grinder on one album, giving us “Let’s Dance” on the next. His tacky 80s pop set the stage for a massive comeback that wouldn’t really come until The Next Day or Blackstar, if it came at all; which leaves the 90s and 00s as somewhat stopgap decades, a time period most Bowie purists consider to be when he released stuff that was better than Never Let Me Down but worse than most of the rest. Conversely, though, this stopgap holds two of Bowie’s absolute best; and the first of the two sounds little like pretty much anything else.
So: Outside, or to be pedantic, 1. Outside. A frustrating listen from the outset, if you go in with the knowledge that it’s the first in a pentalogy that was never completed, one inspired by the fear of the upcoming millennium and built on a concept about art crime serial killings investigated by a noir detective who talks out of the side of the mouth. Even writing it makes it sound like a Blade Runner…
To be fair to CHVRCHES, I’m not entirely sure what progression for them sounds like. Does it sound like some backwards adoption of analogue synths and sound collage as an experimental form? The alternative to that would be to go bigger, less subtle, and more infectious with their pop songs, and I don’t know if they’re capable of that. They’ve already perfected vague ennui and a handful hooks for a few years now, and so the success of their songs relies almost entirely on their quality, rather than they do the scope or breadth of their ambition.
Which is why it is difficult to assess “Get Out,” because on first listen it’s just not very good. The verses aren’t especially memorable, which automatically robs them of a place to put at least one good hook, and the chorus is only memorable because it’s basic, not because it’s familiar. You’ve heard it before, but it’s not nostalgia; it’s just another pop rock song in a litany of others. But fans of Every Open Eye can make the credible case that, as it became clearer and clearer that CHVRCHES weren’t going to be doing much other than writing a few good songs, it slowly revealed itself as a decent enough album. There exists the possibility that the same might happen for “Get Out,” and so I won’t go too hard into its faults (moreover, it being boring). The fundamentals of the song remain the same, however; its melody isn’t impressive, its instrumentation is lifeless, and…
Hello voters, and welcome to a post about a long running music poll. The Pazz & Jop Poll is a year end Album of the Year list scored by votes tabulated from an assortment of elite music critics. In fact, the most elite music critic (outside of PSH’s character in Almost Famous, I guess), Robert Christgau, created it and has voted in it for every instance since its inception — even after he was fired from the Village Voice.
About it’s scoring methodology… without realizing it, I essentially copied the Pazz & Jop scoring system for our very own end of the year user list. Each voter gets 100 points to allot to ten albums, the max an album can be given is 30 points and the minimum is 5 points (which is where P&J diverges from the scoring system I implemented for the user vote, since our minimum was 1 point). The methodology for the best song portion is that each voter gets to pick 10 songs, and the count of mentions decides the ranking (much like our Staff year end song list was scored… or was it?) So, voters of sputnik’s year end poll, you voted just like all the titans of music criticism you looked up to your whole lives, but how similarly to professional music critics did you guys/gals vote?
From 2008 to 2016, Glenn McDonald oversaw the scoring and other analytics for the P&J poll. On his site, he has all the data of each…
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