Hans Magnus “Snah” Ryan (guitar/keyboards/vocals), Kenneth Kapstad (drums/keyboards/vocals), Bent Sæther (bass/vocals/guitar), Reine Fiske (guitar/keyboards/vocals)
Motorpsycho are one of Norway’s finest bands today. Being active for 25 years now, they have been revolving around the progressive/psychedelic hard rock sphere in the past couple of years. However, they are renowned for their occasional musical shape shifting and their vast discography tackles several genres including metal, jazz, pop and even country. Their latest masterpiece, Behind the Sun, was released at the beginning of March and the band started touring their homeland the same month. After a short Chinese stint, they will cross Europe starting May and June. Luckily, bass player and vocalist Bent Saether found some spare time to answer a few questions for Sputnik Music:
You’ve been playing together for 25 years now and that’s a hell of a long time for bands these days. How do you guys feel now as a veteran act? What kept you guys intact and going so strong?
It’s hard to say what the reasons for our longevity are, but I think a few of the following facts may at least partially explain this:
Musically, we at some point early on decided that ‘all music we want to play is Motorpsycho music’. This takes the matter of “staying true” to whatever musical style you happened to play when you started out of the equation, and enables you as an artist to utilize whatever musical style you feel…
For the last two months I’ve been trying to enjoy the new Andrew Jackson Jihad record, and at 4:30 this morning while standing in a parking lot somewhere in the decaying outskirts of Long Beach, California it finally hit me why I don’t. It’s because I’m selfish. I don’t want to empathize with Sean Bonnette, I want him to empathize with me. I’ve spent years inflecting myself into his own insecurities. It’s not that I can relate to his exact sarcasm and nervousness, but I can find myself in between his prose and then take it for my own. It’s sort of like what Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack sang almost a decade ago in “L.G. FUAD.” – “…the only way I have learned to express myself through other peoples’ descriptions of life…” It’s such a shitty thing to say, but I participate on emotional appropriation on a grand scale. I live vicariously through the grooves in my record collection, only I take what I need and move on. I completely discard its context and heart like trash pulled to the curb after a house party, feeding only off of the emotion behind the stories and taking them for my own. It’s cheap and absurd but that’s why music is such a personal thing. We build connections to lyrics and sounds based off of how they coincide with our own lives. We’re all guilty of musical colonialism and emotional conquest. Luckily art resonates differently in everyone, helping…
Just Mario from CHON and I chilling after the show, that's all.
When I heard instrumental progressive group CHON was touring across the United States- and alongside the unforgettable Animals As Leaders, no less- I felt that if I missed the Atlanta show, I’d never quite forgive myself. And I believe that to be true- even though this show happened two months ago, and I’ve been buried in work and studenthood ever since, I’ve thought about the show for awhile.
There were many great things about the show. For starters, I got to meet some fellow Sputnikers- contributor Matt Harrison (YourDarkAffected) and user Daniel Davis (Paradox1216.) We went out for drinks afterwards, and had a fantastic time just talking about music. And the show itself, for which there was plenty to discuss.
The concert headliners, Animals as Leaders, introduced many of their newer tunes with an energy I didn’t quite expect of them live. After all, you hear the stories of their live performances being a little messy and/or lethargic, but I certainly didn’t witness any of that. Tosin and company were having a blast throughout the occasion, and even played jammer “Physical Education” live for the first time. Even if the band’s music gets a bit tedious after about ten songs live, it was still a spectacle to see them perform their instrumentally taxing songs with such agility onstage.
You know who else killed it? CHON themselves. These kids aren’t…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 29, 2014. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.
Andre Obin – Ways Of Escape (Sky Council)
Ben Watt – Hendra (Unmade Road)
Brody Dalle – Diploid Love (Caroline)
Broken Twin – May (Anti Records)
Chad VanGaalen – Shrink Dust (Sub Pop)
Chris Robinson – Phosphorescent Harvest (Silver Arrow Records)
Damon Albarn – Everyday Robots (Warner Bros.)
Devil You Know – The Beauty Of Destruction (Nuclear Blast America)
Edguy – Space Police: Defenders Of The Crown (Nuclear Blast America)
Floor – Oblation (Season Of Mist) Fennesz – Becs (Editions Mego) – Raul Stanciu
Helstar – This Wicked Nest (AFM Records)
Howlin Rain – Live Rain (Agitated Records)
Lindsey Stirling – Shatter Me (Lindseystomp Music)
Maria Minerva – Histrionic (Not Not Fun)
Nels Cline – Macroscope (Mack Avenue)
Old 97’s – Most Messed Up (ATO Records)
Olga Bell – Krai (New Amsterdam Records)
Ought – More Than Any Other Day (Constellation)
Pattern Is Movement – Pattern Is Movement (Hometapes)
Pink Mountaintops – Get Back (Jagjaguwar)
Pixies – Indie Cindy (Pias America)
Ramona Lisa – Arcadia (Red Distribution)
The Revere – Behold, The Sea Itself! (Rock Ridge Music)
Rodrigo y Gabriela – 9 Dead Alive (ATO Records)
The String Cheese Incident – Song In My Head (Loud & Proud Records) Whitechapel – Our Endless War (Metal Blade)
Wye Oak – Shriek (Merge Records)
It’s easy to write off something with a name as silly as “shallow house” as a stupid idea. And, in many respects, it is. The term was created “as a joke” a few days ago on the nigh-omnipotent hydra-like centralized collection of websites that is Reddit, intending to poke fun at the current comment war between people calling artists like Tchami and Oliver Heldens “deep house” and people for whom “deep house” means more than just groovy, bass-centric 4×4 music. Both sides have an understandable position, of course. Most of those in the former camp are dissidents from the big-room house movement which is currently exerting significant control over the global dance scene, disenchanted with the uncreative, poorly-produced slop they’ve heard for too long. They’re enchanted with the infective, funky bass and shocked at the relative sparsity of the compositions, and seeing Beatport and various ill-informed music blogs refer to the music as “deep house” (a phenomenon which I don’t entirely understand) they take it to be the correct term. In the latter group, of course, are the veteran house-heads. They’ve seen the primarily gay and black house sound of the Chicago and New York days appropriated and desecrated for profit by major-label execs eager to promote the easy-to-swallow house of everyone associated with labels like Spinnin’ and Revealed (including Heldens and Tchami), and having their soulful, colorful deep house reinterpreted by a bunch of young white guys (and yes, most of the new…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 22, 2014. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.
Archie Powell & The Exports – Back In Black (Team Cool Records)
Asher Roth – RetroHash (Pale Fire)
Augustana – Life Imitating Life (Razor & Tie)
Death – Death III (Drag City)
Eels – The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett (Pias America)
Francesca Battistelli – If We’re Honest (Warner Nashville)
Hot Victory – Hot Victory (Eolian Empire)
Iggy Azalea – The New Classic (Island/Def-Jam)
Jerry Leger – Early Riser (Latent Recordings)
Justin Rutledge – Daredevil (Outside Music)
Keb Mo – Bluesamericana (Kind Of Blue Music)
Kelis – Food (Ninja Tune) The Menzingers – Rented World (Epitaph) – Channing Freeman
Modern Rivals – Cemetery Dares (Modern Rivals) More Than Life – What’s Left Of Me (Holy Roar) – Jom
Neon Trees – Pop Psychology (Island/Mercury)
Sebastian Bach – Give Em’ Hell (Frontiers Records)
TEEN – The Way And Color (Carpark Records)
To Kill A King – Cannibals With Cutlery (Xtra Mile)
Trophy Scars – Holy Vacants (Monotreme Records)
The Whigs – Modern Creation (New West)
Wumpscut – Bulwark Bazooka (Metropolis Records)
Sunday is when the choices really start to gnaw at you. Choices like: “do I really need to wake up in time to see Surfer Blood at their surprisingly early Outdoor Stage time,” (no) or; “will this beer bong really help me reach my goal of not being utterly exhausted as I leave for the festival?” (yes). It’s also the day when the thought of braving particularly large crowds doesn’t hold quite the appeal it used to. While I was jazzed to see Los Angeles production duo Classixx at the Mojave, the filled-past-capacity mass of hollowed out youths and individuals fresh off two days in the hazardous waste dump that is the campgrounds on a Sunday made it a short set. Better were Starfucker, who, playing on the Outdoor Stage, made up for the searing heat with a wide expanse of glass to collapse on while watching their spacey brand of indie-pop. A relatively mundane, if nevertheless very catchy, band, Starfucker stepped up their festival game with a wide array of costumed freaks running about and several dozen blow-up dolls sporting impressive erections that they released into the crowd.
A double-punk bill of Frank Turner and Superchunk followed in the Gobi tent. While I’m not a big fan, Turner’s energy was infectious to a crowd that was largely dispersed and lying prostrate across the tent ground. “Welcome to show number 1376,” he announced as he launched into yet another rousing, furiously strummed singalong. Working 1376 shifts…
The worst part about Coachella 2013 was easily the dust storm that turned Sunday into a set piece from the Depression and choked the life and easy visibility out of a struggling Red Hot Chili Peppers closing set. 2014’s storm wasn’t nearly as bad; for the most part, walking around during the day Saturday felt like you were travelling on a strange, ominous alien planet, the sun reduced to a weird, haunting half-light and the wind picking up curlicues of dust seemingly at random while bits of sound escaped intermittently over the fields. That creepy feeling was magnified by the fact that everyone seemed to be running from one destination to another, as if constantly striving to avoid the almighty wrath of the weather gods/the narc chasing them. It was how I imagined walking on Mars might be, if everyone on Mars was really, really fucked up all the time.
Of course, God being the sick bastard that he is, Saturday turned out to be my favorite day of the festival. When you kick things off with a blogger’s wet dream of Foxygen, Ty Segall, and CHVRCHES on the Outdoor Stage, it’s easy to ignore the fact that your choice of t-shirt and board shorts for the day will prove quite uncomfortable against pelting sand and an insidious wind chill. Like Friday’s HAIM set, Coachella is made for a band like CHVRCHES, not quite on the verge of widespread popularity but certainly on…
It wasn’t the shift to two weekends that convinced me, nor was it the prevalence of EDM as a driving force in lineup selections. It wasn’t the 2012 rainstorm, the first in Coachella history, or the 2013 sandstorm, or the (slightly more tolerable) wind and dust that marred this past Saturday. It wasn’t even the waves of heat that fried me Friday like an egg as my nails curled inwards to the sound of Grouplove’s vocalist butchering Beyonce’s“Drunk in Love” as 4:00 turned into 5:00 at the main stage – the performance artist/Grouplove superfan doing a bizarrely well choreographed dance with a staff, and the internal debate of actually exerting myself in the unholy temperatures or ritually murdering everyone in the band being the only things occupying my otherwise exhausted mind. Friday, mind you.
No, these are all the things we’ve come to expect at Coachella, the beautiful scenery made hazy by the weather and the bands determined to make their own legend notwithstanding. It was more the press releases I received every day informing me of the latest updates at the festival, groundbreaking events like: “Fergie and Emmy Rossum, who had both stopped by the Samsung Galaxy Owner’s Lounge yesterday, came back to cool off in between shows and posed for photos together. Both were perfectly clad in festival gear with Emmy Rossum rocking a flower crown and denim and Fergie sporting a black hat and fringed purse,” or; “Both Emma [Roberts] and Dianna [Agron]…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 15, 2014. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.
The Afghan Whigs – Do To The Beast (Sub Pop)
Amps For Christ – Canyons Cars And Crows (Shrimper Records)
August Alsina – Testimony (Island/Def-Jam)
Banner Pilot – Souvenir (Fat Wreck Chords)
Big Sugar – Yardstyle (Bread & Butter Productions)
The Birds Of Satan – The Birds Of Satan (+180 Records)
The Both – The Both (SuperEgo Records)
Brandon Michael Williams – The Pride Of Titanic (Brandon Michael Williams)
Breathe Carolina – Savages (Fearless Records)
Chet Faker – Built On Glass (Downtown)
Chuck E. Weiss – Red Beans And Weiss (Anti Records)
Cult Leader – Nothing For Us Here (Deathwish Inc.)
Dan Wilson – Love Without Fear (+180 Records)
Deleted Scenes – Lithium Burn (Park The Van)
Emmure – Eternal Enemies (Victory Records)
Heartsrevolution – Ride Or Die (OWSLA)
Ian Anderson – Homo Erraticus (Kscope)
Ingrid Michaelson – Lights Out (Cabin 24 Records/Mom + Pop Music)
Jack Bruce – Silver Rails (Esoteric)
Jamie O’Neal – Eternal (Shanachie)
Jason Derulo – Talk Dirty (Warner Bros.)
Jim Byrnes – St. Louis Times (Black Hen Music)
Megafauna – Maximalist (Danimal Kingdom)
NEEDTOBREATHE – Rivers In The Wasteland (Atlantic)
Odonis Odonis – Hard Boiled Soft Boiled (Buzz Records)
Pharmakos – Nude (Pharmakos/Bandcamp)
Plague Vendor – Free To Eat (Epitaph)
A Pony Named Olga – The Land Of Milk And Pony (Saustex Media)
Rodney…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 8, 2014. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.
Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks – Enter The Slasher House (Domino Recording Company)
Black Label Society – Catacombs Of The Black Vatican (Entertainment One)
Chuck Inglish – Convertibles (Federal Prism)
Consider Me Dead – Young At Heart (Standby Records)
EMA – The Future’s Void (Matador Records)
The Faint – Doom Abuse (SQE Music)
Flutronix – 2.0 (Flutronix Records)
For The Fallen Dreams – Heavy Hearts (Rise Records)
Highasakite – Silent Treatment (Inkind Music)
Incan Abraham – Tolerance (White Iris)
Ital Tek – Mega City Industry (Civil Music)
Joan Osborne – Love And Hate (Entertainment One)
John Frusciante – Enclosure (+180 Records)
King Dude – Fear (Dais)
L’Orange – The Orchid Days (L’Orange/Bandcamp)
Martina McBride – Everlasting (Alliance)
The Mary Onettes – Portico (Labrador/Universal)
MercyMe – Welcome To The New (Fair Trade Services)
OFF! – Wasted Years (Vice Music)
Ratking – So It Goes (XL)
School Of Language – Old Fears (Memphis Industries)
Sleepmakeswaves – In Today Already Walks Tomorrow (Monotreme Records)
SOHN – Tremors (4AD)
SoftSpot – MASS (SoftSpot)
Split Single – Fragmented World (Inside Outside Records) Squarepusher – Music For Robots (Warp Records) – Hyperion
SZA – Z (Top Dawg Entertainment)
Teebs – E S T A R A (Brainfeeder)
Thus Owls – Turning Rocks (Secret City Records/Universal) Todd Terje – It’s Album Time…
It’s been a busy year for Comeback Kid. The Toronto-by-way-of-Winnipeg based hardcore act have released their fifth LP Die Knowing and are currently in the opening months of a year of touring that will carry them around the world. Before their set at Rock City Studios in Camarillo, California, I had that chance to talk to vocalist Andrew Neufeld about their new record, the band as a whole, and keeping things fresh after over a decade of being one of hardcore’s premiere bands.
I’ve been listening to Die Knowingfor a couple months now, and I’ve noticed that you have incorporated everything that falls under the guise of “hardcore” over the last twenty or so years into the sound of that record. You cover everything from crew pit parts, to big Ignite hooks, to just pummeling the listener on the heavier end of it all. How do you go into writing a record like that? Is that something where you say you’re gonna cover all this ground, or does it come out naturally?
It just kind of… we just write a bunch of songs, really. Actually with this record it wasn’t until we had a whole mess of them written we sorta sat back and said. “wow,” because there’s a lot of heavy songs on the record. In my head the record is kind of split, a little bit, because it starts off with “hard” hardcore, ya know — well, maybe not the opening track, but the song is going…
As the champion of Malaysian Flight Simulator, I have a keen understanding of how music can fall off my proverbial radar undetected.
To protect you from having the same fate, we’ve collaborated on delivering to you some first-quarter artist and album highlights from our personal highlight reels. From the avant-garde and the macabre to the uptempo, D&B, and “dad rock” genres, we’re confident that you’ll find something in our 27-song playlist that’s worth checking out here.
Featuring tracks by Tokyo Police Club, Nebelung, Calibre, Kamchatka, and Animals as Leaders, we hope our diversified showcase underscores that 2014 is off to a splendid start.
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About Tess – “Shine” (7:07)
Shining Listen if you like: BATS, And So I Watch You From Afar, Adebisi Shank Soundcloud | Purchase on iTunes
I don’t think this is intentional on my part, but I have such a Euro-Austral-‘Murica tilt in my listening habits that there’s a distinct lack of Asian artists per my RYM listening map (while I haven’t updated this in awhile, it’s probably damning that my only listed bands are Boris, The Black Mages, Orphaned Land, and Koji Kondo, who composes soundtracks for The Legend of Zelda…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 1, 2014. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.
Austrian Death Machine – Triple Brutal (Artery Recordings)
Band Of Skulls – Himalayan (+180 Records)
The Body – I Shall Die Here (Revenge International)
Chevelle – La Gargola (Epic)
Chiodos – Devil (Razor & Tie)
Christina Perri – Head Or Heart (Atlantic)
Cloud Nothings – Here And Nowhere (Carpark Records)
Combichrist – We Love You (Out Of Line)
Dan Croll – Sweet Disarray (Capitol)
Fartbarf – Dirty Power (Space Jumbles Music)
Hank Williams III – Ramblin’ Man (Curb Records)
Inventions – Inventions (Temporary Residence)
Jamaica – Ventura (Pias America)
Jon Langford & Skull Orchard – Here Be Monsters (In De Goot Recordings)
Kaiser Chiefs – Education, Education & War (ATO Records)
Lacuna Coil – Broken Crown Halo (Century Media)
Leon Russell – Life Journey (UMe)
Lost Society – Terror Hungry (Nuclear Blast America)
Mac DeMarco – Salad Days (Captured Tracks)
Manchester Orchestra – Cope (Loma Vista/Republic)
Matt Andersen – Weightless (True North)
Mike Oldfield – Man On The Rocks (Mercury)
Millie & Andrea – Drop The Vowels (Modern Love)
Mobb Deep – The Infamous Mobb Deep (Infamous Records)
Nickel Creek – A Dotted Line (Nonesuch)
S. Carey – Range Of Light (Jagjaguwar)
Saintseneca – Dark Arc (Anti Records)
Smoke DZA – Dream.ZONE.Achieve (Cinemtaic Music Group/Surf School Recordings/Priority Records) Sonata Arctica – Pariah’s Child (Nuclear Blast America) –…
With a little more than a month left until Finnish melodic death metal giants Insomnium release their highly anticipated, sixth full-length offering to the world, Sputnikmusic got an exclusive chance to peak behind the covers a bit, as Ville Friman, the band’s guitarist, sat down with me to discuss all things Insomnium. The following interview took place on March 19th and gives insight into the current state of the band, as well as what to expect from their upcoming album Shadows of the Dying Sun. Among other things, Mr. Friman also discussed the current state of the music industry, how nature affects him, and what he himself is excited to hear in 2014.
Good evening! How are you doing on this 19th of March?
I’m doing fine, it has been a busy day at work and I just came back home to do interviews, but it’s going well and it’s very nice to talk with you guys and see that you’re interested in our new album. So, I’m really good.
Has it been very hectic lately in the Insomnium camp? Have you guys been able to take a breather or two before your new stuff is released?
I thought that we would have a bit more spare time in our hands, but it has been quite hectic. When we got out of the studio, we started to mix the album right away, and after that we started with the (album) covers and all kinds of promotion. And last weekend…
