Longtime Rust collaborator and audio heavyweight Josh Kipersztok is no stranger to a diversity in composition. His established works under Smigonaut have their tendency to veer towards high-brow sound design and high fidelity engineering, but that’s never stopped him from exploring whatever musical nooks and crannies he finds an interest in. His latest collection of work, the Epitome LP, takes a departure from the crystalline profile that his mixing hygiene holds in the limelight. Taking cues from breakbeat, house, and midtempo bass music, the record is the most expansive collection of Smigonaut music to date.

With such an exploratory and arguably atypical release on its way by the end of the month, we wanted to catch up with our longtime friend and cohort to get a taste of what powers this Epitome, and where Smigonaut finds himself with relation to his musical output nowadays.

The Rust: You've had your nose to the grindstone for a few years now, churning out a wider and wider array of compositions. Talk about your current influences, what has you on the move, musically?

Smigonaut · Epitome - The New Album, Out Soon

Josh: To be honest I've been taking a lot of inspiration from my early rock influences, bands like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Incubus, as well as some new bands I'm only just getting hip to now. I've become obsessed with Deftones over the past year or two and can't stop listening to the new album they just put out. I've developed a love for shoegaze-adjacent rock music similar to some of the ones I mentioned, bands like My Bloody Valentine, Hum, and things like that. I love the soundscapes in atmospheric rock music and definitely tried to incorporate that a bit into this album. As far as influences from the electronic world, I was thinking a lot about Tycho, Boards of Canada, and Bonobo while making this record, also some of the more cerebral Machinedrum stuff like Vapor City. The newest Tycho album is also fantastic and has been on repeat over the past year or two, as well as the latest ones from Justice, Washed Out, I've also been copping inspiration from poppier acts like Charli XCX or Tame Impala. The songwriting and production on their last couple records is so unique. It's been a lot of non-bass music. I'm still continually inspired by the many talented artists in the scene who I'm grateful to call my friends and peers, but I also think that there is a lot of stale music in the scene as well that sorta bores me and it's kind of led me to reach out of my immediate subgenre and incorporate a lot of other influences from different styles, both within electronic music and otherwise.

The Rust: Epitome easily blends your classic tempo choices with some more contemporary spins on the Smigonaut sound. Did you always intend for the project to be so expansive?

Josh: Sort of. Before starting the record, I knew at least one thing, that I wanted to make a 'downtempo' record inspired by my favs like Tipper's Broken Soul Jamboree or Boards of Canada's The Campfire Headphase. With that initial goal in mind it kinda just organically manifested from there. It was honestly a blast making this record, it felt very freeing to approach this tune from a perspective of 'what am I trying to say with this' vs 'how hard is this tune gonna bang onstage'?

The Rust: You've got plenty of collaborations stuffed in here; how do you balance your creative profile with their input?

Josh: I think it is a case-by-case basis. With each collab I had a general idea of what I was looking for in terms of contributions. For example, on Distant Shores I knew that I wanted to incorporate some live drumming, and who better to ask than ZONE Drums. Working with Phil/pheel. was somewhat of a last minute decision, Hive-Minded was just screaming for some scratches over it and before Phil cut his tracks on the single I was attempting to make some scratch-like sounds in Phase Plant but eventually it was just like, 'what is better than the real thing?' So I hit him up and he graciously lended his prowess to that one in the final hour. For the GUNK and DREWIDD collabs, these were more of a co-production approach to the collaboration. I am so grateful that I get to represent both of my side projects on this album with GUNK and DREWIDD (together we go by DeeZNauts) and for each of those we worked closely together on the vibe and ambiance of each tune, as well as the sonic palette and sound design. In terms of balancing things with their input, I am an open book and have welcomed any and all ideas from them for the tunes we worked on together. I think it's important to let ideas from others in, being an electronic musician can be weird sometimes because you're often the only one making decisions and its so important to bounce ideas off your fellow creatives and leave room for collaboration. I try to do that as best I can when working on a tune with others, even if its for 'my' release, technically.

The Rust: With full release of Epitome right around the corner, where is your head now? What are you feeling about this record now that it's out of the cradle?

Josh: I am on cloud 9 honestly. The response has been fantastic even with just the singles that have been released, so I'm very excited for the whole thing to finally be out there. I've said before and I'll say again, I truly love this album. It is the first album I feel like I've made for myself, if that makes sense. I can only hope others will resonate with it. It has been a surprisingly emotional process too. This year has been a tough one for me, and I think there was a lot of catharsis that went into making this one. I made it with the goal of creating a body of work that can hopefully help people improve their day if they're having a bad one, or enhance an already good day. This isn't a sound-system record, but it was definitely mixed to sound nice on the big rigs at festivals as well, so I'm hoping it can kind of fill both roles as something that peeps can listen to at home in their headphones or in their car or while exercising, as well as something you can play in front of a big crowd on a fat system at a festival.

With the release of Epitome right around the corner, we’re incredibly excited to share this particularly direct and raw interpretation of the Smigonaut sound. Keep your eyes peeled on all major platforms on September 30th for the full length release.

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