by John Glab (@glabglabglab_)
Nightosphere seem to have found themselves at a certain stage in being a band. After several years of playing and performing together, they’ve defined a sound and identity for themselves to stand on. Katabasis, their album from last year, contains the downtrodden slowcore sound fit for many of the wide open, grey expanses found in the Great Plains area. This though, is enlivened through dark, western sounding flourishes, and an eerie but reassuring etherealness that transudes throughout its runtime. It’s expressive and has a feeling of resolution.
They’re now an established band in the Kansas City scene. They’re now looking out at the precipice towards all the opportunities that may present themselves. It’s an exciting situation for any band to be in. Nightosphere is about to embark on their second tour with Chat Pile, going through several cities in the Southeastern portion of the United States.
The band consists of Claire Hannah and Brittany Sawtelle, who exchange the responsibilities of guitar, bass, and vocals both on the record and in the live setting, along with drummer Dekota “Hop” Trogdon. The three of them called in to talk about their upcoming tour, the environment they formed in, and the general expressions in their music.
photo credit: Lindsey Yoneda
JG: First off, how did you guys meet, and form as a band?
Claire: We kinda have just been bros for a long time. Honestly the band just kind of started out of friendship, I guess.
Hop: We all met through music.
Brittany: We just liked hanging out with each other, and we collaborate well with each other, so it all just fell into place.
Claire: Hop and I met at a DIY festival in Nebraska. Brittany and I met at one of Hop’s shows I think.
Brittany: Actually, it was an art show that I think we first met, but yeah just seeing each other at shows.
JG: It just kind of felt natural to start a band between you three?
Hop: Pretty much. It was just after the pandemic, and none of us had anything else going on. You know how everyone had the tight circle of people they were able to cough on? That’s what it was like between us.
Brittany: Claire and I had each been doing things right before lockdown, and we were kinda wanting to have a group, and it felt natural to start playing with each other as a group.
JG: There’s a few other slowcore bands in the Kansas City area. You guys specifically have collaborated with Flooding and Abandoncy. What’s it like working with them, and having that friendship?
Claire: Working with them wasn't really thought out. It was also just like we were all bands coming up at the same time in the same scene. We were all friends with each other and enjoyed each other’s music. It felt like something we should do because we were sharing space, community, and appreciating each other’s art. We were lucky because they were people we were already friends with, so it wasn't a difficult endeavor to work along with them.
Hop: We all started getting whatever traction we could get around the same time. It made sense to try and share it with each other.
Claire: I feel like there was a pretty distinct change in the music scene post-pandemic in Kansas City. It felt like to me that things were a lot more alive than they had been previously, and there were a lot more different types of genres popping up with new people entering the scene. All of our bands came out of the context. That collaboration was a reflection of that time and place.
JG: How would you describe the difference in the Kansas City scene between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic?
Hop: To put it bluntly, from my perspective, the punk kids suck less. I consider myself a punk, but not a leather, chain, cocaine punk. A lot of the draw in the Kansas City music scene was just d-beat type punk music. People generally wouldn’t come out if there wasn't a fucking punk band on the bill. I think when the pandemic happened, people started to miss live music enough, that they were willing to listen to other things. Which is dope.
Claire: It felt like people were willing to make different kinds of music too. It’s probably true nationwide, or worldwide honestly, but I think being locked down in that way, and having creativity and music change so much once we came out of it, had people excited to try anything and be in a community together. There’s just a different energy. It felt a lot more welcoming, with a lot more excitement, and just a fresh perspective. We’ve seen and are still seeing a lot of new projects come out of that which is really cool.
Hop: It’s a lot less exclusive, and more diverse post-pandemic.
JG: What other things are there from the Kansas City area outside of your guys’ kind of stuff that you all come across?
Hop: We’ve got it all baby. There’s a ton of good metal bands, hardcore and punk bands obviously, there’s a lot of good hip-hop here too. Some noise projects as well.
Claire: This is something we joke about internally a lot, and it’s like a known thing in Kansas City, but even with the diverse genres, louder, heavier music tends to do better here in some of the DIY scenes. There’s still things that exist outside of that. There’s some really cool country and folk adjacent projects that I like that are based here.
Brittany: There’s some projects that like to have mixes of performance art with their music too, which is exciting and fun to see in different spaces that the older DIY scene probably wouldn’t have flocked to pre-pandemic. That’s been cool to see the experimentation, and the folding in of other art forms into the music.
JG: What are some of the specific bands that you all like?
Claire: There’s this project Warren Burns that Hop and I particularly love. There’s a newer band coming out of Lawrence, which there’s a lot of cross over between Lawrence and Kansas City since they’re only 45 minutes away, but they’re called Virga, and I really like them a lot. It’s kind of folk elements, with shoegaze, and they’re really dynamic.
Brittany: It’s really beautiful songwriting, and they just put out an album last year.
Claire: Something I saw for the first time recently was a one-person project called God’s Computer. That’s a pretty awesome live show. It’s pretty genre-bendy, and somewhat performance art, and a one man persona type of deal. It’s very involved, and theatrical in an entertaining way.
JG: You are going on tour with Chat Pile, and have toured with them before back in September. What was that experience like?
Britanny: Incredible. They’re super nice, and fun people to be around. They’re live shows are so high energy every single night. It’s a blast.
Claire: They’re really awesome people, like they took really good care of us on the tour. They were super supportive of our music, which isn’t something you always get, but is a plus when you’re touring with a band that’s bigger. If they make you aware that they are actually a fan of your music, it’s so much more fun, because you actually feel supported. We had a lot of trepidation about how we would be received by their audiences, just because we’re very different from them sonically. All their audiences were also super supportive and receptive of us, and just really really welcoming. So yeah, we had a great time.
Hop: I think to an extent it takes a bit of an open mind to get into Chat Pile, so I think that helps us out. After the first show, I was nervous about it too, if it was only going to be just aggressive people in Wisconsin, being ‘fuck you where’s Chat Pile,’ but it wasn’t like that. They thought it was cool.
Brittany: They were really attentive and nice. We get quiet in a lot of our songs before we get loud again. To me it’s always a good sign when we can get quiet, and no one is talking during it, and that never happened during that tour.
Hop: We had a hard time getting to that first show, and we showed up late. When we set up on stage and got ready to play, there was this big bald dude in the front row with a shirt that just said ‘queef’ on it, and we were just like ‘this is not our audience.’
Claire: We were scared. We weren’t certain how we would be received, but we were pleasantly surprised.
JG: Did they approach you for that tour back in the fall?
Claire: Yeah, they did. Stin specifically reached out to us, which again was awesome, because it was kinda unexpected, and very much came from a place where he very much listened to our music and enjoyed it.
Brittany: That was wild to me, because we had been listening to Chat Pile for a while before we had any communication with them at all. It’s kinda wild to go from ‘oh yeah, this is the band that I listen to all the time when I have a shit day at work, and it gets me through,’ and now we’re playing shows with them, which is so wild.
JG: Was it the same thing for this upcoming tour, they reached out to you to join them?
Claire: Yeah, because we were supposed to do some dates with them last November, when they went on their West Coast tour. We had to drop off that tour because of some medical things. I had spinal surgery which took us out of things for a while, but it turns out, spinal surgery is a good thing.
But, it was always a conversation that we wanted to team up again on something in the future if it was possible. Then they reached out to us a few months later and asked about this tour, which we were all really excited to do. I think in general, from what I’ve seen, they’re really good at lifting up bands that are smaller than them, which I think is a super sick move, because it’s not something you have to do when you’re a band at that level. I really appreciate that they seem to go out of their way to do that.
Hop: They’re definitely setting an example for me, if I ever get to a band of that size.
Brittany: It’s important to do, to keep lifting others up.
Claire: It’s better for everybody. It’s better for the music community and scenes, because you’re constantly getting in fresh bands and faces, and the established audiences are getting exposed to things they might not other be exposed to. I think it’s beneficial for everybody, really.
JG: Nightosphere is an Adventure Time reference. How did you decide on that as a band name?
Hop: Well, we needed a name.
Britanny: Yeah, coming up with a band name when the internet is available, that’s not already taken, is really hard.
Claire: We had like two separate band dinners where we’re like ‘okay, here’s all of our ideas, let’s hash it out.’ I kid you not, out of a list of like 40 or 50 names, every single one was taken in a significant way. At this point we’re like walking around our house, looking at plants, and we’re like ‘nobody’s named Euphorbia,’ and there is a band in Australia named Euphorbia. So, Nightosphere was something that we landed on that was available, and a name that we liked.
Brittany: We do all love the show, so it’s a common interest, I guess. To the people who don’t watch Adventure Time, it doesn’t matter, it’s not gonna be exclusionary or anything. You don’t have to be in the know to get it, but people get excited when they realize the reference.
Claire: It’s kind of a deep cut reference. Long story short though, it was available.
JG: Do you all have a favorite episode of Adventure Time?
Hop: I love the one where they find the truck.
Claire: This one’s been popping into my head a lot recently, and it’s really depressing too. It’s the one where Finn loses his sword arm, and then he finds the giant hole in the ground that sings a song, but you can only hear it if you like experienced a really significant loss. It’s really depressing, but I think it’s sweet. I love that he cries over his grass sword arm.
Brittany: I don’t know if this one’s my favorite, but it’s the first one that comes to mind. It’s the one where Finn gets amnesia, and there’s the deer that’s been licking all the candy people. It takes off its hooves and has the creepy hands.
Hop: Oh yeah, that one’s fucked up.
Brittany: Just that scene specifically lives in my brain. It’s the first one that always comes to mind. He’s nefarious.
JG: Mine is probably “Sons of Mars” because of its absurdity, and Abraham Lincoln as king. Katabasis is very dark, yet has an etherealness to it. What are the emotions are you all trying to convey with those tones.
Brittany: I think there’s a throughline in what emotions are being expressed. Those songs were written over a long period of time. Some are a few years old. Some were finished right before we started recording. There wasn’t an idea for the record. When we were trying to put it together, it was kind of like ‘what do we have?’ To me the common themes and emotions are like processing strong feelings of grief or self-reflection on a situation and moving through it. At least for the things that I wrote the lyrics for. I can speak to those. To me it’s very much wading through those feelings. Try not to get stuck in them or acknowledge it if you are.
Hop: I just play the drums.
Claire: He always says that, but it’s not true.
Brittany: He contributes a lot of ideas.
Hop: On the drums.
JG: What other ideas outside of the drums?
Claire: For one, he recorded all the samples that we currently use in our set, which he did on guitar, because he’s also an excellent guitar player.
Brittany: Naming the album Katabasis was his idea.
Hop: Oh yeah.
Claire: He also performed lap steel on the last song on the album. He’s a very multi-talented person.
Hop: I can fix the van.
Brittany: That is very valuable.
JG: Does it break down a lot?
Claire: Nah, just the one time with the new one.
JG: On stage, you guys switch between singing, along with playing guitar and bass. Is that reflective of how the songs are written, with you all switching between who contributes what?
Claire: Yeah, that was just something that happened because of the way we formed this band. Like, Brittany and I pretty much formed this band so we could both learn to play bass. Both of us had previously played guitar for several years in writing solo music, but we both had a deep interest in learning bass. It was like an exchange of playing bass on the songs each other wrote, and then we’re both forced to learn. Now the way we write songs is a little bit different. It’s not whoever is playing guitar wrote this song or is doing vocals.
Brittany: It’s more nuanced now.
Claire: Yeah, it was a canvas for us to learn the instrument.
JG: What makes the songwriting more nuanced now compared to the past?
Brittany: Part of it is that we don’t come to the group with a fully formed song anymore. We come together to start working on ideas at an earlier phase in the process. Instead of one person coming with a fully formed song, and everyone fills out their parts to the already existing bones. Now somebody would come in with a single phrase, or melody for a section. It’s more collaborative now that we’ve been playing together for a couple years now at this point.
Hop: The process changes, and I hope it continues to.
JG: It’s like it’s more fluid now, than having a rigid formed thing beforehand?
Brittany: Yeah, and for myself, I’m just more comfortable now with not being perfect right away. This is like my first real project that’s been going on for a while. I was always really nervous and hard on myself when I would show up to practice. I thought if I didn’t have a fully formed thing to present, it was going to be bad, and I can’t make anyone else listen to it. Now it’s more fun to come with just an idea, and watch it all come together as we all contribute, and create something new.
JG: Being a band together for so long, you all realize everyone’s open to your ideas?
Claire: Yeah, I think that happens for every band. You start out really worried about impressing everybody, even if they are already your friends. Then you get comfortable playing and writing together. It takes less effort too, because you’re more enmeshed and attuned to how each other plays and writes. It’s not as hard anymore.
JG: Within Katabasis there are these gruesome descriptions of maimed animals on the album. Where did the idea of that come from?
Claire: Well, the squirrel part was real. Brittany and I discovered this nest of naked, hairless baby squirrels.
Brittany: Like extremely fresh. Their eyes were still closed, and it was purple underneath their eyelids, and they didn’t have any fur yet.
Claire: Clearly the nest had just fallen out of the tree.
Brittany: It was right next to our van, cause we had just gone back to grab something there.
Claire: Yeah, it was crazy because we were having a really beautiful time.
Hop: It was just us eating ice cream by the lake.
Claire: We were in Minneapolis, and it was a sunny day, and we had time to go get ice cream, and we came up with our ice cream all like ‘la la la.’ Then Britanny and I found this really sad nest of squirrels, and we didn’t know what to do because they were all still alive.
Brittany: They were breathing, but it was hard to tell.
Claire: We just decided to try to camouflage them. We kinda just covered them up a little bit, hoping that the adult squirrel that they belonged to would come back for them before a bird did.
Brittany: We had to move them out of the street too. I think Claire was the one who picked them up, I don’t quite remember.
Claire: Yeah, we just moved the nest trying to go without touching them. Honestly, when it comes to me and my imagery, in terms of imagery a lot of it is pulled from real experiences.
JG: Like the spider and the two-headed calf?
Claire: The two-headed calf is actually a reference to a poem. I think it's just called “The Two-Headed Calf”, but it’s just a poem I really love. I had reread it at the time when I was writing lyrics for that song. It felt really poignant to some of the things I was feeling. Spiders are a recurring thing for me in my life. I used to have a really scarry recurring nightmare when I was a kid regarding a horrible, large spider. So that one is and isn’t based on real imagery.
Hop: I did have an experience just like that once, a spider crawling down my arm. I don’t have any problems with spiders. I was doing a bunch of hallucinogens one time with another person, and there was a spider in the room, and they were really wiggin out. I was like ‘don’t worry’ I’ll go get the spider and take it outside. So, I grabbed it, and threw it outside, but it stuck to me with its web, and then came back around and crawed down my shoulder. The other person freaked the fuck out, and thought i was being really mean.
Brittany: Me and spiders don’t get along, but I moved into a new house a couple years ago. It’s actually where we recorded the album too, but that house is literally full of spiders and it’s a nightmare. Spiders of all kinds. Spiders in my bed. Spiders on my couch. A literal nightmare. For a lot of reasons, that place for me was a place of nightmares for a while. So, the spiders were literal and figurative ones.
Claire: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not afraid of spiders, or associate them with bad things necessarily. It’s more something that keeps on coming up in my life. I think spiders also mean different things to different people.
JG: I also had this reoccurring animal nightmare, but it was specifically an eel, and not a snake that would drag me around by my ankle. It’s a dream that’s come up at random times over the years since I was like 4.
Hop: I had a scorpion dream like that in my life. I was just like playing ball in a driveway, and then a scorpion came out of nowhere, and stunned my foot a bunch of times, until I fell down, and it stunned the rest of me. They’re freaky little creatures.
JG: They are. I recently saw a video of a fish attacking a scorpion, and the fish won too, but it freaked me out.
Brittany: Was the scorpion by the water I’m assuming? Tell me more.
JG: The scorpion was crawling around underwater all normal.
Britanny: What, no!
Claire: That’s not allowed. There’s already crabs.
JG: Maybe scorpions are just crabs. There’s like that whole theory in evolution where everything becomes a crustacean.
Claire: Yeah, that’s like the prime version of all of us is that we’ll become crustaceans.
Brittany: I cannot wait, that’s gonna be so cool. I would just sit around all the time. I would find a cool rock to just be on.
Hop: I would just scuttle about.
Claire: I mean crabs don’t have to have spinal surgery, so I feel like that’s fine. Like the human body makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint. We’re super fragile creatures.
Hop: But then every once and a while somebody falls out of an airplane and survives.
Brittany: Yeah, that kinda happens, like that guy who got a six-foot nail in his head and was just chill. It’s wild. Humans are indeed something.
JG: We got opposable thumbs, and big brains, and now we made jobs for ourselves.
Claire: Yeah, but what about our knees. Our knees don’t make any sense. We shouldn’t be walking around like this.
Britanny: We should be crawling around like cryptids instead.
Tour dates with Chat Pile:
05/09 - Memphis, TN @ Growlers
05/10 - Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5
05/11 - Chattanooga, TN @ Poor Taste
05/12 - Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle
05/14 - Orlando, FL @ Conduit
05/15 - Miami, FL @ Gramps
05/16 - Tampa, FL @ Crowbar
05/18 - Birmingham, AL @ Saturn