Little Snake – Juno Daily In The Mix & interview with Amon Tobin
Our guest editor Amon Tobin selects Calgary maverick Little Snake to get In The Mix – and then grills him for answers
pic – Julian P Gagnon
When Amon Tobin signed up to be our guest editor for the week, Canadian producer Little Snake was an obvious choice for the In The Mix section. His productions for Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder are vivid, manic, complex and disorientating, and his DJ sets – like the one for the LP launch for Amon’s Two Fingers album – are no less visceral.
“This mix is a reflective experience on what it is like to truly and creatively find yourself after a long time alone, mixed with a blistering desire to have a room of sweaty people mosh,” says Little Snake, real name Gino Serpentini, “Consisting of almost entirely unreleased music from me and my friends, it spans a wide array of genres and sounds at a nauseating rate. It is the direct recording product of missing rage. Side note: If the mix needs a name call it Little Snake: Miss The Rage.”
So, enjoy the mix and scroll down to see Amon grilling the man himself in his own inimitable style
Tracklisting:
JIMMY EDGAR – CROWN
FLYING LOTUS – USING WHAT YOU GOT (LS EDIT)
SOPHIE X JIMMY EDGAR– METAL
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
DMVU – ID
DMVU – YELLAH TAPE
ALEXANDER PANOS – DEREALIZE
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
BRODINSKI – FAST x G JONES – TIME (LS EDIT)
LIL WOP – WOKSTAR (LS ACID TRAUMA EDIT)
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
MODESELEKTOR FEAT. FLOHIO – SOCIAL DISTANCING (LITTLE SNAKE REMIX)
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
G JONES/EPROM – WARRIOR (VIP)
GLEESH – PEW PEW (SABROI EDIT)
HOODRICH PABLO JUAN & JOSE GUAPO – CANT STAND IT (PROD. JIMMY EDGAR)
MR CARMACK X SALVA – ID
ID – ID (LS RECONSTRUCTION)
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
LITTLE SNAKE – ID
LIMBO – CONTROL (LITTLE SNAKE REMIX)
Amon: I’ve often thought music gets caught between art and entertainment. sometimes being both and sometimes being neither. more often than not though it’s one or the other as the two things serve different masters. would you say it’s the artist or the listener who decides and where do you see your music sitting on this spectrum?
LS: Really good question man. I’ve always said that most of my music sounds like dying on acid with no concept of time or space and suddenly a couple of lex luger snares and ad-libs come in. I don’t know. People don’t always wanna be serious and obviously neither do I, and sometimes the worlds collide. I think at the end of the day you have no choice on what mood somebody is in so you might as well just be free to explore what you like with no limitations, because that seems to be the generalized expanded culture of music now.
Amon: Do you think there is a link between the monetary devaluation of music and the cultural shift towards casual istening? i.e listening while doing other things rather than listening as an activity in itself.
LS: Definitely, but I think the ultimate devaluation process came when we jumped full force out of physical record sales into streaming. The link is that we can stream instantly and agonizingly scattered in how long we listen to a composition, but it also gives us the accessibility of materializing beauty out of thin air.
Like, when we wrote ‘Loophole’, there was clearly zero notion of what would sell but it nonetheless did ok on streaming platforms.
The advancement of technology really is just a reflective microcosm of the chaotic and lawless nature of our being, so tropical house vs. polyrhythmic breakcore will ultimately do as well as it truthfully speaks to us.
Amon: Do you think there’s a link between casual listening and casual production? i.e. music which is transient in value and appropriately disposable as implied by the nature of streaming platforms?
LS 100%. It’s so often spotify will recommend me some trap beat with a mix that sounds like it was sterilized by a dentist but also I get so excited when they come on sometimes that it ends up being my whole week in the studio.
I see what you’re getting at here. Streaming is definitely producing a lot of volatile cycles of garbage. But I literally order take out every night and do the same thing so, like I said, it is ultimately reflective of the capitalistic human to propel this issue. I think streaming is dope otherwise.
Amon: if you had a car accident and weren’t insured.. and as a result were bankrupted by hospital bills.. which lead to a daytime drinking habit, chronic depression and eventually homelessness… what’s the one synth you’d keep?
LS: Very specific question Amon thanks for sharing. As you know I’m almost entirely in the box. I thrive under the immense pressure of only a broken laptop. That being said, a 303 or any clone rendition is something dear to my heart. It just makes every song better.
Amon: : Do you think 2020 might have been more bearable if people like us had stopped broadcasting how much fun we were having in our studios?
LS: A common misconception about these broadcasts is I wasn’t having fun. It is hell for me. Every day I wake up and receive emails. Studio time is nothing but a mere vessel to float me through dystopia.
Amon: How are babies both fascinating and boring at the same time?
LS: It kind of relates back to the reflective microcosm analogy of streaming. It is pure nature. Human essence, concentrated. And for that reason, it’s deafening.
Amon: Do you see NFT’s as a fad or a viable road to sustainability in music?
LS: I have a lot of people close to me that will hate me for saying this but no. There is a lot of byproducts of crypto and minting that could eventually be sustainable functions of society but we jumped into the NFT thing so fast it really was a gold rush and nothing but. Cool shiny stuff tho.
Amon: Do you ever read reviews of your own music and if so how would you characterize the experience of someone describing something you made back to you?
A: Yea they are out there. Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Remember the deafening echochamber of the wondrous perception of babies? That’s how y’all sound describing my tunes.
Amon: Who the fuck is satoshi?
I am like 99.99% sure it’s a Papa John’s dipping sauce.