Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:04:22 — 422.0MB)
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What’s up eye-crusted sleepy heads! After you wipe that sand from the corners of your eyes, I wanted to welcome you to another podcast interview where I have an in-depth chat with Ian Coarse, conjurer of the Sleeping Village Reviews webzine. Founded back in February 2018, Ian established Sleeping Village Reviews as an Instagram-only platform to provide snappy and succinct reviews of albums he adored. Through time and with a fervent dedication to his craft, his articulate writing began to amass a cult following of underground bands and avid readers who revel in the dingy, cobweb-riddled corners of obscure auditory gems. And as the popularity of Sleeping Village burgeoned so did the list of promos begin to mound toward the clouds. He found it difficult to stay on top of his then previously manageable music coverage, and thus, he began to recruit writers who reciprocated his intrigue and passion for the underground.
Around the time his writer enlistment became more full-fledged, Ian developed a website without losing sight of his dedicated Instagram audience. This opened the doorway to pen long-form reviews uninhibited by Instagram’s character count, and in a clever twist, it afforded him the opportunity to tinker with etching some medieval-tinged lore. Instead of opting to traverse the well-trod route of having each author use their real names in their respective album review publications, he characterized each writer as a scribe with a moniker of their own choosing (e.g., Ancient Hand, Loveloth). In the library or archives of this mysterious “sleeping village”, a review can be thought of as a transcription of timeworn text that expounds upon the sonic constructions of musicians relatively enigmatic. Though one could merely chalk these kernels of lore up to a gimmick, it does permeate a cryptic aura that makes the Sleeping Village feel like a lived-in cluster of cottages dimly illuminated by torch-fire.
In this episode, Ian describes the inception of Sleeping Village Reviews. He dives into how his taste in extreme music has evolved as Sleeping Village and its ranks have expanded, while also offering up a multitude of tips for smaller bands as to how they can get their foot through the door of the ever-spreading cellar of extreme metal outfits. There’s a whole hell of a lot more detail we go into beyond these points, however, I want to refrain from rambling too much (as I am wont to do) so that there remains a litany of insights for you all to unearth. I sincerely hope you enjoy our exchange. Thank you so much for tuning in.
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You can peruse all of the reviews published by Sleeping Village over on their website. Follow them on Instagram as Ian is sharing content there almost daily and it’s always a joy to engage with the questions he poses to followers. He also posts quite frequently on Twitter and Facebook, so if either of those platforms aligns with your preference of social media interaction, be sure to follow them there as well!
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