As the countdown to the end of 2014 has now hit us, we’ve spent the past week taking a personal look back on familiar names, features and musicians’ best releases of the past 12 months. Circuit Sweet will be featuring the featured artists of the site with their personal top 5 releases of the year.
In our end of year special we let our favorites take over the site to tell us the records that have made their end of year lists, their favorite events/gigs and what we can look forward to from them next year.
As it’s just turned New Years Day we hand over to our final rad release of 2014. The lovely Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos, takes over the site to tell us his year in music and plans for the next 12 months. Lets be honest now, Tera Melos are no strangers to our site, we’ve covered 3 Tera Melos tours since their first set of European dates and we’ve attended many shows across the UK. We’ve had the privileged in interviewing the band on countless occasions and yet we find ourselves desperate to find out more, to hear more and to be part of that melos atmosphere that each live show/ each record entails. The enigmatic Sacramento based 3 piece Tera Melos are one of our favourites.
hello. i am writing this on new year’s eve, so it is truly my absolute end of the year list.
favorite releases:
Aphex Twin, Syro
not his most daring record, but melodically it’s completely insane. it was worth the wait. i’ve listened to this many, many times. there had been a live, new aphex track floating around for a few years. it was a favorite among the aphex twin nuts, myself included. it was known as the “metz” track. the track was assigned the name from venue at which the song was performed and bootlegged from in 2010. there was a lot of talk about it. anyways, on my first listen to Syro i discovered that the metz track had been included, it’s proper name being “xmas_evet10 (thanaton3 mix),” which was very appropriate because it felt like a christmas gift. i remember getting teary when i heard it.
Dot Hacker, How’s Your Process
this record was released as two eps, but it’s all from the same session and when i first heard it it was sequenced as a full length, so i consider it one album. the song writing and playing on this record is fantastic. it would be really cool to have the stem tracks from this recording, so you could fully digest what’s happening from every which way- it’s really that layered and interesting sounding. probably worth noting that the four dudes in the band collectively have a musical resume that stretches to the moon and back, from beck to hella to pj harvey to red hot chili peppers to gnarls barkley to broken bells and so on and so on.
Deerhoof, La Isla Bonita
when i was thinking about my favorite records of the year i realized, “oh shit, i haven’t heard the new deerhoof yet!” so i cruised over to itunes and snagged La Isla Bonita. it’s really good. every deerhoof record is really good. right off the rip i picked up on some darkness on this one. some dissonance, some heaviness and some real dark weirdness, juxtaposed against some very classic deerhoof-y quirkiness of course. i made a record with greg (deerhoof drummer) and mike watt and nels cline right after La Isla Bonita had been completed. i remember greg saying he’d just finished mixing the new deerhoof album, like a day before or something. not sure how that affects ourtime recording together one way or the other, but somehow it seems kind of cool to go straight from deerhoof land to our world. it was really interesting listening to this record after having gotten to know greg on a musical level, it kinda gave me a new perspective on deerhoof. pretty neat.
The Nels Cline Singers, Macroscope
sort of another interesting record for me, since i can listen to it in a pre-knowing-nels way and a post-knowing-nels way. as a guitar player this record is especially rich with stuff to think about. it’s the kind of thing that makes me want to go pick up a guitar and just start moving my fingers around in an attempt to discover something remotely as cool as some of the stuff on this record.
The Bad Plus, Inevitable Western
another really cool record by these guys. i got to see them recently for the first time. it was completely mind blowing. they mostly played songs off their new record (which i hadn’t yet heard), maybe just one older song, and in this case that was great because the songs were all really really good. it’s the perfect blend of jazz/pop/weirdo, VERY melodic too.
The best show i played would probably have to be our last Tokyo show with Lite- June 20th at Liquid Room. going to Japan is always a very special thing for us. it was a big, sold out show. so many friends. Melt Banana came to see us. it was emotional for sure.
The best gig i attended was The Bad Plus. it was just a few weeks ago actually. as i mentioned, i had never seen them, but had been a long time fan. in some ways it felt like the first time i’d seen Hella in 2001. just really magical.
2014 highlights-
Touring with pinback, one of my favorite tours ever
making more music with zach hill
big walnuts yonder finally happening
earthquaker devices + dwarfcraft + mantic concepts + digitech + fuzzrocious
tera melos + pete and pete
facebook campus tour with the legendary Otis “O” Barthoulameu
smashing a mosquito and his guts + my blood spraying all over our rental van
halloween show in houston with by the end of tonight
saw dillinger escape plan play like 20 times. also one of my favorite tours
cool stuff in 2015-
death grips
plans for new year-
tera melos stuff
big walnuts yonder
a band with rob crow
hopefully a bunch of other stuff i’ve been talking about for years
fun paul frank art collaborations
find the perfect jazzmaster
thanks for reading! happy new year :^B
It’s always such a pleasure to chat to Nick, thank you for finishing the end of year feature! We wish you all the best for next year, looking forward to more TM, Big Walnuts Yonder and this new band with Rob Crow. Have a great new year!
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