Three Music Thingz with Superdestroyer
My my my. It's another Three Music Thingz, the blogseries where I ask musicians for three thingz that are essential to their music-making.
Today we feature Superdestroyer! Superdestroyer is an anonymous solo artist in Columbus, Ohio. He co-owns Lonely Ghost Records—slinger of so-left-of-center-they-might-actually-be-back-at-the-center-again music from artists like Cheem and exciting!!excellent!!—and puts out glitchy and curious electro-emo tunes of his own.
I last write about Superdestroyer when I was listening to a bunch of peoples' favorite songs of 2023, and one of the picks was "SadAsFuck.Crying.Wav", which I described as "a plaintive plea for a late night long-distance phone call fix, in the form of a blasted guitar freakout." (Am I allowed to quote myself on here? Very well then, I quote myself.)
Molly Mary O’Brien
i quote myself and i embed myself
Superdestroyer's latest release is yeah fine ok, a "multi-genre mixtape from the apocalypse" that operates as a bit of a shadow-self grab bag, including remixes, alt takes, and even a whole scrapped album. Some of the songs are quite short, some are instrumental. The genres swing all over the place, from noise rock to trap. It's a neat deconstructive approach to a musical release, and what I like most about it is its rawness.
Sometimes the rawness feels organic, like the squeaky guitar strings on "△ AU84" (featuring Analogue Heart) and sometimes it's heavily manipulated, like the Eichlers remix of "I'm Sorry I Ruined Your Birthday," which employs distortion so comprehensive that it wipes out all but the bald skeleton of the vocals. Regardless, the music often sounds like it's been ripped violently from the earth, like a root vegetable. It's awesome.
Anyway, Superdestroyer shared some wonderful thingz today, so you should continue reading the blog post and you'll learn what they are...
Superdestroyer
- The Mega Synthesis
Last month Sonicware released a synthesizer that recreates the synth sounds from the Sega Genesis. It has really bright, nostalgic voices and I am in love with this thing. I've been on a creative streak ever since I got it. It's been really easy to write with because it sounds so different from most of the synths I use. I'm working on a "segawave" album right now that is built around the Mega Synthesis and it's sounding really cool so far. It's also the first instrument I've ever bought where I recorded a majority of a song in bed at like 1am comfy as hell. I like that too. - Independent Music Blogs/Journalism
I own Lonely Ghost Records with a friend, and we were really fortunate to have some writers who were interested in the idea behind the label and the bands that we had on our roster. That was huge for helping us grow, especially when we had no platform. A lot of that was from independent blogs that focused on DIY music. Those blogs worked like threads that tied the scene together, especially for people who were just getting into DIY. They were invaluable in helping us find out footing and meet other people.
There's so much value in the passion of someone with a developed taste. Music criticism is important to the integrity of music as an art form, because without it, music becomes a hyper consumable and disposable product. So I think it's great to see people circumvent the industry and do things on their own terms. I think that's where things inevitably have to go. Check out For the Punks, Swim Into The Sound, Left of the Dial, Rosy Overdrive, Small Albums, The Alt, Music Shelf With Mustard, I Thought I Heard A Sound, Merry-Go-Round Magazine. Those are all great places to discover new music! There's also a lot of great podcasts out there. - Weird YouTube Videos
I find a lot of inspiration from the weirdo depths of humanity that can be encountered on the Internet. My YouTube algorithm was a perfectly tuned machine in 2019-2020. Now they have it all fucked up. But people are weird and I think there's something about that is infinitely fascinating. Our entire existence is this cultivated reality that is designed to make sense and feel controlled and organized, but then you go on YouTube and you speak behind that curtain and see it's all actually chaos and there are universes between our human experiences. Everyone is a fucked up weirdo and that's actually pretty cool for the most part.
Thank you Superdestroyer! Go listen to yeah fine ok right now. And thanks for reading I Enjoy Music—if you like the blog, tell a friend.
