MISADVENTURES

say no to disco stu

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 17:12:00 -0800

here’s a cool interview i did for WLFM radio in wisconsin. -nick

Addy Goldberg: Say something new and interesting about Disco Stu.

Nick Reinhart: i can’t honestly think of one interesting thing to say about Disco Stu, and i think the whole band feels that way. actually, i guess the truly interesting thing about him is how anyone thinks he’s funny, or how the writers/creators of the show could possibly think he’s remotely as great as every other character on the show. i went and referenced a couple disco stu vids on youtube just now to make absolutely sure that this is how i felt. confirmed. he just randomly walks into a scene, does a butt wiggle, then says “disco stu.” he’s a dud, not a stud.

AG: What is the composition process like for the band? Is it largely one or two people writing material themselves and then bringing it to the rest of the group, or is it a collaborative jamming process from the start, or what? Has it changed over the years, in relation to styles/formats of the band/all that? I’m assuming material for the demo, for example, was written fairly differently than how Patagonian Rats was written, which is different from how X’ed Out was written.

NR: the genesis of a song generally starts in my bedroom, just playing guitar. i’ll start to hear some interesting things, figure out ways to transition a couple of ideas, come up with a few variations, roughly paste it all together and then record it. when we first started we would “jam” in the practice spot. maybe someone would come up with an idea on the spot, or bring a few solid guitar or drum parts in, then we would spend up to months refining things (well, as refined as we could physically get them, which sometimes wasn’t very much so, haha). we don’t really do that anymore.

i’ve found that i write/discover my favorite material after playing by myself for long periods of time. by the time nate or john even hear one second of guitar demos, i’ve already put hours and hours into making it not sound like garbage. whereas when you’re all together in a room playing you’re basically throwing piles and piles of shit against a wall and hoping that something will stick. it gets frustrating when you drive 40 miles to the practice spot for 4 days a week and don’t see tangible results. then multiply that by months and months. so i come up with ideas, bedroom style, then send out these rough outlines and everyone can play to them on their own time and throw as much shit at the wall as they see fit,.then we can get together and modify everything we’ve worked on, individually, and get it sounding like a tera melos song.

i think those guys have a really good level of trust in me and the musical stuff i bring to table. i can’t think of too many times where either john or nate have said, “yea, uhhh that’s really not that good.” it’s likely because i’m my own biggest critic and had already told myself, “jesus, that sounds awful, back to the drawing board” many times before i’ve emailed any songs.

AG: I’m gonna quote back to you something that has been quoted back to you before, hopefully in a new context: “this is the first fully realized, focused record we have made. everything sounds intentional and the way we wanted it to sound. there are no cringe moments for us. in a lot of ways we look at it like it’s our first album. it is 100% honest and not catered towards anyone. it’s tricky making a record that way, it’s even trickier structuring a band that way.” That was about Patagonian Rats, your last record. How does X’ed Out feel to the band? Now that you’ve already made the album you’ve been wanting to make for a long time, what new feelings have been motivating the creation of this new album?

NR: well in addition to patagonian rats being the record that we’d wanted to make for a long time, it was also the way we wanted to make a record for a long time. so we applied the same process to this album. it’s probably just a matter of knowing what we want and choosing the right paths to accomplish that. it took us a long time to get to this point where we’re happy with how we sound and perform. everyone that’s been in the band made it their top priority and focus. it took years of hammering out ideas and playing nearly 1,000 shows to get this to where we can fall asleep at night without obsessing over how to make everything fit. i think we’re all really happy with our current state.

AG: You’re big pop music fans. Do you consider your music essentially similar in nature to the more straight-ahead pop stuff out there? Do you consider the more “straight ahead” music you listen to “exceptional,” in any stylistic way? What, if anything, unites Tera Melos and Madonna?

NR: hm, i mean we just like all types of music. i don’t think straight forward music is in any way more exceptional. not at all. it’s all just personal preference. i think when we were younger and discovered non “straight ahead” music it was really fascinating and new and fresh. now i don’t get the same exclusive rush listening to it that i did when i was 22. now i can get that rush from lots of different types of sounds. it’s funny you mention madonna, because i can get goose bumps listening to old madonna songs. the production, the melodies, the vocals etc. in fact, just yesterday i was playing drums along to a madonna playlist on my ipod.

i think it’s just a musical growth thing. like when you’re young and discover punk music- it’s this big revelation and takes over your mind. then we came across more technical, outside the box music and it was the same feeling. now that we’re adults and have further developed our brains we can appreciate all types of music and not feel limited.

AG: Where is that tour documentary, people? Those are such great trailers that have been kicking around for a while now.

the truth is that the documentary was finished, we saw it and weren’t happy with it. it was no one’s fault, it just didn’t have the right content for what we were hoping for. we don’t feel comfortable releasing something that we don’t stand by 100%. so we brought another friend along for a few more tours to gather more footage to eventually put something together that we were all stoked on. it will definitely get finished. as a side note, i literally- LITERALLY -as i was writing that last sentence just got a text message from our friend spencer at Sargent House saying they just got the hard drive with all the tour footage and want to get together to start re-editing. so that’s good news.

we’re really glad that people are that interested in our band to want to see the doc finished. even though we try to be really interactive with people and work towards dismantling the “wall” between fan and artist, i think a lot of people want to get further inside to see how it all comes together. i have no idea what the vibe will be- could be a fugazi “instrument” type thing or a pantera “home videos” kind of movie. we’ll see.

AG: I think I noticed people stopped describing you guys as “jazz,” once Vince left the band and once John joined. It’s always been a misnomer anyway, but can you relate to that descriptive shift? How do you feel about how you’ve been described, in general?

well vince definitely came from a jazz background. our old guitar player actually met him in a jazz band class at a junior college. he had a very open, fluid approach to how he played drums in the band. when john had joined we were already heading in a bit of a different direction musically, one that jazzier drums might not be completely appropriate for. lucky for us john came from a punk background and brought a very different sound to the band. i think we initially got tagged with the jazz label because there were elements present for sure- weird timing, syncopation, ride cymbal twiddles and lots of 7th chords. i never really agreed with it, but it sounded cool. seems like people generally have a difficult time describing our music, which i think is a really good thing.

AG: What about improvisation live? On some old blog posts I remember you saying how much you liked it when bands change up their live sound, when they make mistakes, when surprising moments happen (yes, I remember those blog posts). It seems you consciously cater your live sound to that type of surprising experience. Is that about right? What motivates a very technical band like yours to take the risks involved in improvising every night?

NR: the improvisation is a result of a few things- wanting to have fun with songs and make them feel fresh to us, making mistakes and rolling with the punches and probably just a sever case of musical a.d.d. so for instance, if i had a photo of a dog and wanted to do 100 separate paintings of it, each one would be a little different. i’m sure after about ten very similar pup paintings i’d probably want to switch it up and make the dog’s eyes melting or something. naturally i’m sure there would be subtle differences in each one. then, because i’m not a super accurate, professionally skilled painter, i’d probably accidentally drip a fat blob of yellow paint onto the dog’s face. so i’d have to figure out some way to work around that. in the end, there would be 100 similar, yet fairly different paintings of a dog. that just seems natural to me. i don’t see why you’d do it any other way.

AG: Also, listening back on some of the bootleg recordings you posted on that old blog, it seems like you’ve been sitting on some material for a while – Kelly, specifically, which is titled “kelly, phone ya” Live From Atlas Clothing. Is it often that you’ll sit on material for a while, and wait for the right spot in an album to open up for it? Are we going to see some more “old” material popping up on X’ed Out?

NR: a lot of times there are just songs from the past that never got recorded, or didn’t come out the way we wanted, or that we just simply really liked and wanted to rerecord for fun. there’s a couple older pieces of material that pop up on this record. “melody nine” is a redone version of a song from our split with by the end of tonight. the original version was electronic based. we’ve been playing a live version of it for a couple years now. then the main riff for “sunburn” is one that i’ve used in a few songs that never really got a fair shot at being developed into a real part. i think i’d used that riff in 3 or 4 songs previously. that’s actually kind of neat. i not ashamed to admit that i’ve pirated my own guitar part, haha.

AG: Can you give us an interesting road anecdote? Something that characterizes Tera Melos’ interaction with audiences around the world?

NR: there’s this guy we know, he goes by “panda.” don’t know his real name. he lurks around the atlanta area. he’s this really far out, bizarre, awesome, critter dude that brings us bags and bags of random stuff everytime we come through town- broken guitar pedals, hats, tea, bags of pubic hair, cassette tapes, action figures, sidewalk chalk, video, furbies etc etc. you name it and he’s probably brought it to us. very odd. i think we have given him this music that’s very important to him and helps him out through life, so he just wants to give something back to us and contribute to our world. i know for a long time he didn’t know how to pronounce our name properly either. so that was funny. we’re misunderstood by even those that understand us the most. haha, deep.

AG: At a few points you had some somewhat eloquent things to say about pirating music. What are your current thoughts on this trend? Does a wide audience satisfy you more than money with which to scrape by? Or is music being widely distributed an investment on people showing up to shows later, or some other rationalizing logic? Is bandcamp solving the problem posed by music piracy?

NR: shoot i don’t really know. look, we want as many people to hear and enjoy our music as the universe will allow. but we’re also all pretty much 30 and would like this to be a sustainable source of income. so the question is where do we draw the line on how people hear/enjoy our music. if we’re playing a show that costs $10 and there are 5 people outside that don’t have $10, then without question we would want for them to be able to come in and watch us play. but then at what number of people without $10 do we say, “i don’t think so.” i mean, honestly, if there were 100 people that couldn’t afford the show, i’d want them all to come in for free or whatever they can afford. i think a lot of our fans know our vibe and that we’re not making fistfuls of cash playing in this band. if someone pirates a record then chances are they’re gonna buy a shirt. which i’m fine with. but actually, why not just buy the album and the shirt?? i don’t know, i get trapped thinking about this stuff. a solution to that particular situation would be- dude downloads record for free from a torrent, comes to the show, buys a shirt AND a vinyl, which comes with a download card anyways- then all is right in the world.

we also do the barter system- if someone can’t afford to pay for a show then they can bring us something cool and we’ll put them on our guest list. we’ve gotten cool music gear, razor scooters, video games, simpsons stuff and lots of other cool goodies that were probably just sitting around collecting dust in someone’s closet.

we just want lots of people to like what we’re doing and come to shows and help us afford to keep doing this. i don’t know how to make all of that fit. bandcamp definitely helps for sure. it puts the artist in control and let’s fans have a lot of access to music. buy music if you can, if you can’t- then take it, but you owe us one!

AG: How do you see yourself in the music world? Do you consider yourselves an active part of a very specific music scene (*cough* math rock *cough*), as much of the coverage of your band would like to portray? Or are you just a handful of dudes playing some weird music that happens to be similar to other handfuls of dudes playing some roughly similarly weird music?

NR: i’ve definitely given a lot of thought to our position in the music world, but i don’t think i ever come up with anything that satisfies me. i think it’s best for us to not think about that sort of stuff. we just create music that we enjoy and hopefully the rest of it all works out.

i know we’ve been pretty outspoken about the math rock thing and how we don’t prefer it. i think it’s mostly because we generally don’t really care for stuff that falls under that particular genre and most of it feels unrelatable to what we’re trying to accomplish. in 2001 we were all still in punk bands. fugazi had already started to shift some of our musical perceptions, but it was all still very much a “punk” context for us. then we discover bands like hella, dillinger escape plan and king crimson. those were all very big deals to us. once that switch is flipped there’s no really going back. then we start this new band. drummer shows us how to play in odd time signatures. everyone has fun. and that’s that. i do remember hearing the term math rock thrown around once or twice, but it was likely just in passing.

i guess it also seems like the current quality of math rock is definitely not what it was 10 years ago. it used to be a real musical subculture with deep roots, and now it’s just commonplace. feels like it’s been diluted, big time. when we saw bands like hella, the locust, botch or dillinger for the first time it was jaw dropping. like, shocking. it’s a bummer that the generation after us didn’t really get to witness such massive shifts in the music world like the ones we saw. i really don’t mean for that to sound pretentious. it just seems like the bar has been lowered for that kind of stuff. so maybe the internal problem i have with being labeled a math rock band has something to do with a fear of being a band playing under the “bar” that, for me, was set so high and blasted my mind open. we want to keep our band fresh and exciting. i still LOVE the idea of a community of bands that exist on the fringe and is working to move music forward. that’s what i want to be a part of.

AG: I’m now beginning to realize (being an oblivious east-coaster), that Tera Melos formed in a very interesting music scene. Can you wax poetic on your local scene of yesteryear? Are you considered the group that made it big from among them? What bands did you wish you were still playing shows with? How important was that scene to the band you are today?

NR: when we were younger nate and i were in punk bands that played around sacramento. there were some pretty crazy musical things happening (unbeknownst to us) up in grass valley/nevada city (about an hour north east of sacramento). bands like legs on earth (zach hill/spencer seim’s first band) were starting to play and freak people out. but it seemed pretty insulated and didn’t really trickle down into the sacramento punk scene. not that i remember at least. so in high school it was pretty much strictly punk and hardcore shows that we found ourselves hanging out at. at one point, in 2001, a friend of mine wanted to go see a band called chrime in choir. they were sort of this keyboard based, live electronic band. i think that’s how they were described to me. my friend told me they had this crazy drummer that could play drums like no one we’d seen before. i was really skeptical about that because there were a lot of great punk/hardcore drummers that we were really into. so we drove to a coffee shop in placerville (about 45 minutes outside sacramento) to see chrime in choir. turns out they had to cancel for some reason and instead a different band that shared the same drummer was going play. the band was hella (which would be zach and spencer’s second band after legs on earth). they played and just totally destroyed. from that point pretty much everyone in sacramento was shaken up. you’d even hear the crustiest of the punkers talking about these weird ripper guys from nevada city. there wasn’t really a local scene for that stuff yet. so hella played with punks bands, hip hop groups, hardcore bands etc. it was really trippy.

i don’t think we’d be the same band had we not come out of punk music. having that foundation was important in developing into an interesting band and how we allow it to breathe and exist. one of my all time favorite bands was this local band called diseptikons. they were a really fast hardcore punk/thrash band. they had this black flag/dri/early metallica vibe that was just paramount. incredible musicianship and great lyrics about the morals and ethics involved within the underground music scene. miss them for sure.

AG: Any parting words?

NR: “a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man” -jebediah springfield

x'ed out / sex'ed out / text out

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:42:45 -0800

new song up there ^^^

nice words about new song ^^^

older new song here ^^^

cool new poster drawn by garrett vander leun right there ^^^

headlining tour with this town needs guns down there vvv

Apr 18, 2013 - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
Apr 19, 2013 - Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile
Apr 20, 2013 - Vancouver, BC @ The Media Club
Apr 23, 2013 - Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium
Apr 24, 2013 - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue 7th Street Entry
Apr 25, 2013 - Appleton, WI @ Lawrence University
Apr 26, 2013 - Chicago, IL @ Subterranean
Apr 27, 2013 - Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theater/The Magic Stick
Apr 28, 2013 - Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
Apr 29, 2013 - Montreal, QC @ Il Motore
May 1, 2013 - Allston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
May 2, 2013 - Brooklyn, NY @ Knitting Factory
May 3, 2013 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Fire (two shows)
May 4, 2013 - Washington, DC @ DC9
May 5, 2013 - Raleigh, NC @ Kings Barcade
May 7, 2013 - Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
May 8, 2013 - Jacksonville, FL @ Jack Rabbits
May 9, 2013 - Miami, FL @ Bardot
May 10, 2013 - Ybor City, FL @ Crowbar
May 11, 2013 - Orlando, FL @ Will’s Pub
May 13, 2013 - Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
May 15, 2013 - Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon
May 16, 2013 - Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s
May 17, 2013 - Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
May 18, 2013 - Austin, TX @ Red 7
May 19, 2013 - San Antonio, TX @ The Korova
May 20, 2013 - El Paso, TX @ Low Brow
May 21, 2013 - Scottsdale, AZ @ Pub Rock
May 22, 2013 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
May 23, 2013 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
May 24, 2013 - Santa Ana, CA @ The Constellation Room
May 25, 2013 - San Francisco, CA @ The Bottom of the Hill

doing a headline tour this spring working on some remixes for x’ed out ~ nippon edition gonna...

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:16:13 -0800

doing a headline tour this spring

working on some remixes for x’ed out ~ nippon edition

gonna do a bunch of vids with behn fannin

track list for new record:

1. Weird Circles
 2. New Chlorine
 3. Bite
 4. Snake Lake
 5. Sunburn
 6. Melody Nine
 7. No Phase
 8. Tropic Lame
 9. Slimed
 10. Until Lufthansa
 11. Surf Nazis
 12. X’ed Out and Tired

very stoked about this record and excited for you to hear it

ROLLING FREAKIN STONE

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:57:18 -0800

somone is getting fired at rolling stone because somehow our new song ended up on their site! or wait, it’s definitely possible that we made a cool new record and they like it. in any case, AWESOME.

59 shows in 60 days

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:43:51 -0700

we’ve been talking about doing this since our very first band practice. it’s time to grind our musical souls into the pavement.

thank you to back from outer space and chase from sargent house for making this happen!

EU/UK 2012
Apr 26 - Prague, (CZ) @ 007
Apr 27 - Poznan, (PL) @ Klub Pod Minoga
Apr 28 - Halle, (DE) @ GIG -Ganz im Gegenteil
Apr 29 - Copenhagen V, (DK) @ KB18
Apr 30 - Stockholm, (SE) Firestorm Festival @Klub 43 *ACOUSTIC SET
May 01 - Stockholm, (SE) @ Kulturhuset Lava
May 02 - Malmö, (SE) @ Moriskan
May 03 - Oslo, (NO) @ Parkteatret
May 04 - Stavanger, (NO) @ Folken
May 06 - Leipzig, (DE) @ Null bis Unendlich
May 07 - Bremen, (DE) @ Stubnitz
May 08 - Oberhausen, (DE) @ Druckluft
May 09 - Reims, (FR) @ Le Killbery
May 10 - Milan, (IT) @ Cox 18
May 11 - Arona, (IT) @ Meltin Pop
May 12 - Postojna, (SI) @ MCP
May 13 - Vienna, (AT) @ Rhiz w/ This Town Needs Guns
May 14 - Graz, (AT) @ Generalmusikdirektion
May 15 - Zagreb, (CT) @ Tvornica Kulture
May 16 - Dornbirn, (AT) Soundsnoise Festival @Spielboden
May 17 - Bolzano - Bozen, (IT) @ Rock’n roll Club
May 18 - Yverdon les-Bains, (CH) @ L’Amalgame
May 19 - Limoges, (FR) @ La Fourmi
May 20 - Toulouse, M-P (FR) @ Connexion cafe
May 21 - Castellon , Vaa (ES) @ Veneno Stereo
May 22 - Madrid, (ES) @ Wurlitzer Ballroom
May 23 - Porto, (PT) @ Maus Hábitos
May 24 - Zaragoza, (ES) @ AVV Arrebato
May 25 - Clermont-Ferrand, AUV (FR) @ Raymond Bar
May 26 - Paris, (FR) Indie Air Festival @ Espace B
May 27 - Brighton, (UK) @ The Green Door Store
May 28 - Leicester, (UK) @ The Cookie Jar
May 29 - Liverpool, (UK) @ The Shipping Forecast
May 30 - Dublin, (IE) @ Button Factory
May 31 - Galway, (IE) @ Roisin Dubh
Jun 01 - Limerick, LIM (IE) @ The Blind Pig
Jun 02 - Cardiff, (UK) @ Buffalo
Jun 03 - Nottingham, (UK) @ Chameleon Arts Cafe
Jun 04 - Edinburgh, SL (UK) @ Sneaky Pete’s
Jun 05 - Lancashire, (UK) @ The Grand
Jun 06 - London, (UK) @ The Old Blue Last
Jun 07 - Bristol, (UK) @ The Fleece
Jun 08 - Canterbury, (UK) @ The Farmhouse
Jun 09 - Milton Keynes, (UK) @ The Craufurd Arms
Jun 10 - Kroningen, (NL) @ Vespro
Jun 11 - Nancy, LOR (FR) @ Caveau du Grand Sauvoy
Jun 12 - Brussels, (BE) @ Magasin 4
Jun 13 - Liege, (DE) @ Inside Out
Jun 14 - Berlin (DE) @ Marie-Antoinette
Jun 15 - Darmsdadt, (DE) @ Oettinger Villa
Jun 16 - Ceske Budejovice, (CZ) @ Velbloud
RUSSIA
Jun 17 - Saint Petersburg, (RU) @ Arktika
Jun 18 - Vologoda, (RU) @ TBA
Jun 19 - Moscow, (RU) @ Gogol
Jun 20 - Nizhniy Novgorod, (RU) @ Freedom
Jun 21 - Kazan, (RU) @ Zheltaya Kofta
Jun 22 - Samara, (RU) @ Krater
Jun 23 - Togliatti, (RU) @ Kultura
Jun 24 - Ufa, (RU) @ Rock’s Cafe

the greatest lyric ever written: SHIT IN A BAG, LIGHT IT ON...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:42:20 -0700

the greatest lyric ever written:

SHIT IN A BAG, LIGHT IT ON FIRE, OPEN THE DOOR, THERE’S A BAG ON FIRE

fIREHOSE was awesome! check out this shirt from ‘87. lots...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:24:57 -0700

fIREHOSE was awesome! check out this shirt from ‘87. lots of super nice older dudes coming up to us last night and being stoked on our band.

keeping it surreal

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:45:00 -0700

2006

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 11:24:44 -0700

clovis, new mexico 2006. jeff worms (possibly doing “The Worm”).

whoa, we’ve been doing this a long time. thanks for the photo Elisa!

SAX:XAS

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:02:00 -0700

so stoked on this.

jason “chinbone” boggs played saxophone on patagonian rats. he’s been a staple of the sacramento music scene for many years. he sang/played sax in Filibuster.

RIP AIDS WOLF

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:24:00 -0700

so AIDS WOLF have (has?) broken up. that is a bummer for a number of reasons. we don’t really know much about aids wolf. i don’t think any of us have ever owned their records or really looked into their history as a band. i know they’re from canada, they play very out-there music and they seem intimidating. and i mostly know all that from playing a show with them once in 2009. before you get further into this wormhole of a post you should click that link and read what they had to say. even if you know less about their band than we do it’s still a really interesting piece. in the event that you find yourself saying aloud, “TL;DR,” it can be summed up like this- they were a band trying to do something interesting and no one really seemed to give a shit, and even then they kept grinding it out on tour and in the studio and finally after 9 years they said “fuck it.” actually it’s even deeper than that, so you really should just read it. it’s written by their singer, chloe, and it’s pretty sad. she just seems really bummed out.

i’m pretty sure aids wolf was an extremely polarizing band. we played with them in san jose at an arcade on march 29th, 2009. there’s youtube vids of both of our sets. i remember them all looking pretty strange- weird haircuts, messed up clothes etc. their music was even stranger than the way they looked. even stranger than that was the way they acted towards us at the end of the show. we kindly introduced ourselves to them and the singer, chloe, did this weird thing where she VERY aggressively shook our hands for an extended period of time with a big, possibly antagonistic??, smile and and acted very odd in general. i recall thinking, “ok, ok, cut the shit, i’m trying to tell you that i liked your band.” what’s interesting about that is that in her post she mentions how they were often treated rudely by other bands that they had played with and that “attempts to chat with one of the opening bands got us eye rolls.” hm, sounds familiar. looking through this Exclaim! magazine post, particularly the comments, it is very obvious that people loved or hated this band.

regardless of how you feel about their music or about them as people- they were a unique band that were honest about what they were doing and really went for it for 9 years. for the most part, tera melos no longer has to drive to the middle of nowhere and play bar shows to 10 drunken idiots not paying attention to us; making us feel embarrassed about the time and energy we have put into our band all to (not) entertain people that couldn’t care less. we have been there many, many times. although, to say that we were embarrassed is probably not entirely accurate- a lot of times those shows ended up being the most fun- guitars ended up in trash cans, noise sections got even longer and we’d all have a good chuckle about it in the van. it still sucked though.

chloe mentions being 34. none of us have quite hit 30 yet, but we’re all awfully close. had we been playing guitars-in-trash-cans shows for 9 years and all of the sudden i’d hit 34, i’d feel pretty weird. i mean, we feel pretty weird now and we’re in a position 100xs greater than trash can show-style.

so there’s a couple things to take from the disbanding of aids wolf- outside-the-box art/music is constantly on life support. we depend on YOU. creating music has intense intrinsic value. it’s self-satisfying. but in order to be a band that continues existing it’s important to maintain support from fans, aka friends. otherwise we all get jobs and become “weekend warriors” who go to the practice spot every wednesday night and “tour” on some weekends to the next town over. the other thing that aids wolf’s unfortunate demise brings is perspective-

HOLY SHIT, WE ARE NOT PLAYING GUITARS-IN-TRASHCANS BAR SHOWS ANYMORE!!! one million thank yous to you and your friends for being kind to us and helping our band grow and continue to exist. i promise that it did not take a cool band breaking up for us to realize this- it’s something that is constantly on our minds. it still feels very unreal to have people coming to our shows, knowing the songs and fully supporting us. we do this with the help of a few very cool people at our record label, Sargent House, and you. that’s it. this kind of music doesn’t get put in a mcdonald’s commercial which in turn makes thousands of squares at home watching american idol run to itunes to download the song they just heard. it’s completely independent of that. although, if we ever did get a song in a mcdonald’s commercial we would be fucking stoked. CHA-CHING!

Aids Wolf had a solid run. sucks to see another cool band bite the dust.

Goin for it

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:01:00 -0700

howdy. sorry for the lack of updates via this blog page. seeing as how facebook looks to be going in the direction of dogshit we’ll probably be using this guy a lot more. went to download the tumblr app for my phone but then there were tons of awful reviews. what’s up with that?? anywho, we’ve been recording lots. don’t wanna give too much away, but our new record is definitely sounding like Patagonian Rats’ older brother. i don’t even know what that means actually. sounds awesome. it’s looking like it will not come out until next year. crazy right?? the problem is that we won’t realistically have it done til mid summer- we’re taking a break from recording to go hang out with the legendary fIREHOSE and then we hop on a plane and go cruise around europe for a couple months- and ideally you don’t want to release a record between october and january. what happens is the album ends up getting overlooked because the holidays are a mess in the music world. so we want, what they call in the biz, “maximum exposure” for our new record and that means making everyone wait to hear it. so we will not have a “summertime record.”

“LIKE OMG, THIS RECORD IS TOTALLY SUMMERTIME FEEL GOOD HAHAHAHOOHOOHEE.”

tera melos is year round motherfucker. we don’t fuck with the seasons. what else is going on…? i guess that’s all i can think of. please be sure to bookmark this page. it will still get posted to the facebook feed, but something has been fucked up with our page. has anyone noticed? it’s rearranging our posts and making some pertinent junk disappear. whatever, that stupid zuckerberg has like a trillion dollars, he doesn’t give a shit about some noisy band. although perhaps he is a fan. can anyone confirm this?

below are our upcoming tour dates. hope to see you all soon. and for good measure here’s a picture of the second pedal i ever bought. i think i was 14 or something. got it at guitar center in hollywood. it’s a crappy phaser. it’s broken now. i modded it somehow and added a switch to the top. i think i played one show with it and blasted the switch off. alright that’s it for now, BE GOOD EVERYBODY!

fIREHOSE / TERA MELOS

Apr 05- Sacramento, CA (US) @ Harlow’s w/ fIREHOSE & Victims Family
Apr 06 - Portland, OR (US) @ Doug Fir Lounge w/ fIREHOSE
Apr 07 - Seattle, WA (US) @ Neumos w/ fIREHOSE
Apr 09 - Bellingham, WA (US) @ Wild Buffalo House of Music w/ fIREHOSE
Apr 10 - Eugene, OR (US) @ WOW Hall w/ fIREHOSE
Apr 11 - San Francisco, CA (US) @ Slim’s w/ fIREHOSE

TERA MELOS EU/UK 2012
Apr 26 - Prague, (CZ) @ 007
Apr 27 - Poznan, (PL) @ Pod Minoga
Apr 28 - Magdeburg, (DE) @ cafe central
Apr 29 - Copenhagen V, (DK) @ KB18
Apr 30 - Uddevalla, (SE) @ Apartment show
May 01 - Stockholm, (SE) @ Kulturhuset Lava
May 02 - Malmö, (SE) @ Moriskan
May 03 - Oslo, (NO) @ Parkteatret
May 04 - Stavanger, (NO) @ Folken
May 06 - Leipzig, (DE) @ TBA
May 07 - Bremen, (DE) @ Stubnitz
May 08 - Oberhausen, (DE) @ Druckluft
May 09 - Reims, (FR) @ Le Killbery
May 10 - Milan, (IT) @ Cox 18
May 11 - Arona, (IT) @ Meltiin Pop
May 12 - Postojna, (SI) @ MCP
May 13 - Vienna, (AT) @ Rhiz w/ This Town Needs Guns
May 14 - Graz, (AT) @ Generalmusikdirektion
May 15 - Zagreb, (CT) @ Tvornica Kulture
May 16 - Dornbirn, (AT) @ Soundsnoise Festival
May 17 - Bolzano - Bozen, (IT) @ Rock’n roll Club
May 18 - Yverdon, (CH) @ Amalgame
May 19 - Limoges, (FR) @ La Fourmi
May 20 - Toulouse, M-P (FR) @ Connexion cafe
May 21 - Castellon , Vaa (ES) @ Veneno Stereo
May 22 - Madrid, (ES) @ Wurlitzer Ballroom
May 23 - Porto, (PT) @ Maus Hábitos
May 25 - Clermont-Ferrand, AUV (FR) @ Raymond Bar
May 26 - Paris, (FR) @ Espace B
May 27 - Brighton, (UK) @ The Green Door Store
May 28 - Leicester, (UK) @ The Cookie Jar
May 29 - Liverpool, (UK) @ The Shipping Forecast
May 30 - Dublin, (IE) @ Button Factory
May 31 - Galway, (IE) @ Roisin Dubh
Jun 01 - Limerick, LIM (IE) @ The Blind Pig
Jun 02 - Cardiff, (UK) @ Undertone
Jun 03 - Nottingham, (UK) @ Chameleon Arts Cafe
Jun 04 - Edinburgh, SL (UK) @ Sneaky Petes
Jun 05 - Lancashire, (UK) @ The Grand
Jun 06 - London, (UK) @ The Old Blue Last
Jun 07 - Bristol, (UK) @ The Fleece
Jun 08 - Canterbury, (UK) @ The Farmhouse
Jun 09 - Lille, (FR) @ TBA
Jun 10 - Den Haag, (NL) @ 330 Live
Jun 11 - Nancy, LOR (FR) @ Caveau du Grand Sauvoy
Jun 12 - Brussels, (BE) @ Magasin 4
Jun 13 - Liege, (DE) @ Inside Out
Jun 14 - Bernau bei Berlin, Bra (DE) @ Marie-Antoinette
Jun 15 - Darmsdadt, (DE) @ Oettinger Villa Villa
Jun 16 - Ceske Budejovice, (CZ) @ Velbloud
TERA MELOS - RUSSIA / UKRAINE
Jun 17 - Saint Petersburg, (RU) @ Arktika
Jun 18 - Vologda, (RU) @ TBA
Jun 19 - Moscow, (RU) @ Gogol’
Jun 20 - Nizhniy Novgorod, (RU) @ Freedom
Jun 21 - Kazan, (RU) @ Zheltaya Kofta
Jun 22 - Samara, (RU) @ Crater
Jun 23 - Saratov @ TBA
Jun 24 - Voronzeh @ TBA

TERA MELOS: Tera Melos // BeatCast Coach Road Sessions

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:24:04 -0700

TERA MELOS: Tera Melos // BeatCast Coach Road Sessions:

teramelos1:

Tera Melos stopped by to record a session with BeatCast during their busy summer touring schedule, which has seen them play across Europe and the US, including shows with Sargent House labels mates Le Bucherettes and Adebisi Shank. They very kindly ventured into the wilds…

So Occult / Kelly VIDEO!

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:19:26 -0700

BORIS

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:56:14 -0700

we’re going on tour with japanese legends Boris! check out their new record(s). we’ll be pulling some new/old things out of the bag as a three piece for these shows.

BORIS / TERA MELOS US TOUR DATES 2011

Oct 07 - San Luis Obispo, CA @ SLO Brew *
Oct 08 - San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom *^
Oct 10 - Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater *^
Oct 11 - Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret *^
Oct 12 - Seattle, WA @ Neumo’s *^
Oct 15 - Denver, CO @ Marquis Theater * !
Oct 16 - Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room * !
Oct 17 - Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater * !
Oct 18 - Madison, WI @ Majestic Theater * !
Oct 19 - Chicago, IL @ Metro * !
Oct 20 - Oberlin, OH @ Dionysus Disco /Oberlin College * !
Nov 10 - Tempe, AZ @ The Clubhouse *
Nov 11 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah *
Nov 12 - Los Angeles, CA @ EL Rey *

* w/ Tera Melos
^ w/ Master Musicians of Bukkake
! w/ Coliseum

tour tour tour!

Mon, 23 May 2011 17:58:00 -0700

we’re super happy to announce that we’re going on a co-headlining tour this summer with El Ten Eleven! we played with these dudes years ago at the silverlake lounge is los angeles. they’re awesome. more info/dates soon, although you can probably do some detective work and get a head start on show details (yes, it’s a mostly full US tour. yes, florida is in there!) sorry dudes! the party is over before it started :(

we’ll also be configuring our set a little differently this time around. the patagonian rats tour cycle started in september and since then we’ve built the set around songs from the album. this time we’ll be focusing on new ideas, old ideas, restructured ideas etc, etc, in addition to PR songs. we’ll also be retrofitting to a 3 piece Tera Melos (evan will be working on his Family Room record and will rejoin us for our fall tour schedule.) so it should be a real fun, experimental, raging time.

before this adventure we’ll be playing two shows with Sargent House fresh blood, Le Butcherettes and Adebisi Shank. June 27th at the Troubadour in LA and June 29th at the Great American Music Hall in SF. we’re headlining the SF show. wait- WHAT!? WE’RE HEADLINING THE GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL IN SF!!! whoaaa! we’ve seen lots of awesome shows there (dillinger, botch, deerhoof…) and now we get to play our own awesome show there. le butcherettes will just be coming off the deftones/dillinger tour and it’ll be adebisi’s first time in the US. these shows will be bananas. do. not. miss. these. (we’ll be playing as the 4 piece, patagonian rats band)

and lastly, before that adventure, we’re going to Ireland and the UK (as we have previously freaked out over). we’ll be playing a bunch of shows with Tangled Hair and some other really cool bands. there’s also a mind bending show on June 18th that we can’t talk about… yet.

well, that’s a lot to digest. too bad for you, cause here’s some more magical mind food to add to the glorious mound of shit building up in your brain’s intestine-

trailer #2 for the upcoming tour documentary

(panda, we love you, and you can say the name of our band however you’d like, but for anyone else wondering, it’s pronounced “tare-uh mellows” for the 1,334,443,455,001,666th time.)

Echo On The Hills Of Knebworth

Tue, 10 May 2011 17:54:47 -0700

when we finished tracking for Patagonian Rats at the hangar in sacramento, we had some additional studio time. so we decided to record a live, improvised piece for fun. we ended up with a 51 minute freakout (similar to that of the now infamous, often called out for during live shows, melody 8). after hashing out the pat rats songs for so long in the practice spot/studio , this was a welcome change of pace for us. stream of conscious playing (read: weird, messed up noise) has always been a big part of this band and our musical personalities.

the 51 minutes of music (?) has been sitting on a hard drive for a year now while we’ve contemplated a fun way to unleash it. being as that we are not big time rock and rollers, (and this track will further prove that), our first trip to the UK/Ireland has proven to be difficult and very expensive. so now seems like an appropriate time to release something new that’s fun and interesting to help and raise some of that green stuff to offset these costs. we’re asking for a minimum of $5, but of course you are welcome to pay what you’d like beyond that. every penny earned off of this, and really any way you support our band (shows, t shirts, records etc), is extremely appreciated.

the track is called Echo On The Hills Of Knebworth. i just listened to the entire thing while typing this. intense!

<a href=”http://teramelos.bandcamp.com/album/echo-on-the-hills-of-knebworth” _mce_href=”http://teramelos.bandcamp.com/album/echo-on-the-hills-of-knebworth”>Echo On The Hills Of Knebworth by Tera Melos</a>

UK/IRELAND *FINALLY **WHOA

Tue, 03 May 2011 13:11:00 -0700

after being a band for 7 years, hundreds of emails asking about it, two previously canceled euro tours and relentlessly trying to figure out how to make it happen- we’re finally flying across the pond.

for a long time it seemed like we were cursed never to get there, so we’re extremely excited to make this happen. it’s a short run. no additional dates will be added. who knows when we’ll be back. so pleaseee, let’s make these shows AWESOME. none of this “i have school that day,” or “i totally forgot about it.” we worked incredibly hard to make this happen and we just want everyone to have fun and help make rad memories that were worth the crappy wait.

we’ll have more info soon- show details, the “secret show” and a few fun things to help offset the astronomical costs we’re enduring to make this happen. GET EXCITED!

TERA MELOS UK/IRELAND SHOWS 2011

Jun 05 - Dublin, IE @ Forbidden Fruit Festival
Jun 06 - London, UK @ The Old Blue Last
Jun 07 - Brighton, UK @ The Hope (TBC)
Jun 08 - Bristol, UK @ The Cooler
Jun 09 - Manchester, UK @ Night & Day Cafe
Jun 10 - Nottingham, UK @ Bodega Social Club
Jun 12 - Leeds, UK @ The Well
Jun 13 - Birmingham, UK @ The Flapper
Jun 14 - TBA
Jun 15 - Cork, IE @ The Crane Lane Theater
Jun 17 - Ireland - TBA
Jun 18 - SECRET SHOW TO BE ANNOUNCED.

Full HQ set from Orlando coming soon!

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:34:29 -0700

our friend Erick Wilczynski brought along some buds and filmed our entire backbooth set in orlando (it was a rager). we’ll be releasing the whole set, one song at a time. so keep your peepers peeled! oh, and we played 40 Rods to the Hog’s Head that night. so between this and the upcoming TerrorEyes tour documentary, there should be whole lot of awesome vids to occupy you lil freakazoids for a long time.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT FEST!!!

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:52:40 -0700

now that we’ve scooped our jaws off the floor, jack hammered the permanent smiles off of our faces for a second and cleaned the shit out of our pants we can announce that we will be playing the forbidden fruit festival in dublin, ireland. with. APHEX. TWIN. AND. THE. FLAMING. LIPS. WHOOOOOOAAAAAA!!!!!!!!

not to mention BATTLES and YO LA TENGO + many others. our very show in europe will be with aphex twin and the flaming lips. WTF! our band would not exist without them. we’d be different humans. we will also be announcing some more european dates soon. in the meantime, just stare at this-

^^^ WHAT!? are you serious!??? incredible thanks to sargent house + richter collective for making this happen. INSANE!!!