Trevor Shelley de Brauw (Pelican/RLYR/Let’s Pet/Chord-guitar)
1. What are your top five albums that were released in 2015? (In order 1-5)
- Bosse-de-Nage - All Fours (Flenser)
- Cloakroom - Further Out (Run For Cover)
- Beach House - Depression Cherry (Sub Pop)
- Vince Staples - Summertime ’06 (Defjam)
- Disappears - Irreal (Kranky)
2. What band did you discover in 2015 (can be a brand new band or an older band) that had an impact on your life? What made them significant?
I usually make a point of not including work clients (I’m a music publicist as my day job) in my year end lists, and I deliberately left Majical Cloudz off my top five albums because I did help work on the press campaign, but I would be remiss to not mention them here. In reality I ended up helping on the campaign after practically begging my officemate to let me help because I was obsessed with the album. I first heard it performed live start to finish as the duo’s performance at FORM, an intimate music and arts microfestival set in the Arizona desert at experimental architectural colony Arcosanti. The sparse electronic arrangements and simple, direct lyrics and raw, engaged performance style achieved a level of emotional affect that I’ve spent an entire career trying to attain via bombast.
3. How will you remember 2015? (In terms of music)
There was a tremendous glut of great music. I consumed nearly twice as much music this year as I did in the last several years (I’ve been keeping a tally. Because I am a nerd). I’d like to think that I’ll always remember this as a year where there was almost too much great music to go around.
4. What can we look forward to from you in 2016?
I have two albums set for release next year - the debut RLYR full-length on Magic Bullet by a newer instrumental rock trio that I’m doing with Steven Hess from Locrian and Colin Dekuiper from Bloodiest, and a solo album on Flenser that I’ve been working on it bits and pieces over an embarassingly long period of time. We’re also writing a new Pelican record, but too early to tell if that’s something that’ll be finished in 2016 or not.
5. What records are you looking forward to most in 2016?
No contest: after the Swans show that I saw last year that was comprised largely of unreleased songs I have been in a fevered pitch of anticipation for them to hit the studio. It’s the first time I’ve ever preordered a 3xLP before the band even stepped foot in a recording studio.
6. How relevant is the physical format record/cd/tape in 2015 and going into 2016? What do you see changing in terms of physical vs. digital discussions?
I think people will gradually stop thinking in terms of sales and start paying more attention to streaming metrics. I think the industry has been really slow to think in those terms and, in terms of popular music, they need to really reconfigure the charts to better reflect the public’s engagement with streaming platforms as a primary means of music consumption. I also think we’re going to see an even greater slide towards obsolescence with mp3 technology - the majority of consumers of digital music don’t care a whit about ownership as far as I can tell.
That said I am never giving up vinyl as my favored means of music consumption.
