@Sargent House showing my photography some xmas love. Thanks!

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Rad Releases ‘11- Tera Melos

Continuing our Rad Releases feature is a band who have not only made our year here at Circuit Sweet but also been a regularly featured band throughout the past 12 months. We have the honor in speaking to Tera Melos to find out their top releases.

In June of this year Circuit Sweet had the honour of meeting Nick Reinhart after witnessing a tight engaging rapture bringing set from Tera Melos and being a part of their long overdue UK tour.

Following this we then had the privilege of getting even closer to Tera Melos; finding about influences, their live shows, highlights of their recent tour, their album, abominations and audio appeal in an interview with Nick Reinhart.  

The trio have had a very intense and incredible year touring. Earlier this year Sargent House also announced the first ever pressing on vinyl of the very first ever album by the band. It never had a name, it’s often referred to as The Melody’s , Untitled or Tera Melos but none of those are actually its name it simply does not have one. 

We catch up with Nick again to find out his favourites of the year.

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The Line6 Filter Modeller has become kind of iconic in it’s own right. A firm favorite amongst artists such as The Locust, Thomas Erak and Omar Rodriguez Lopez the FM4 (now discontinued) is set to become a collectable classic. The M4 series had the best intentions to save the time, effort and money of controlling multiple and mostly unreliable vintage equipment and combining the best of them into one unit.These include:

• Tron Down - Mutron III.
• Tron Up - Mutron III.
• Seeker - ZVEX Seek-Wah.
• Obi-Wah - Oberheim Voltage Controlled Filter.
• Voice Box - Mix of voice boxes.
• V-Tron - VoiceBox+Mutron III.
• Throbber - Electrix Filter Factory.
• Spin Cycle - Craig Anderton’s Wah/Anti-Wah.
• Comet Trails - Line6.
• Slow Filter - Line6.
• Octisynth - Line6.
• Synth-O-Matic - Moog Modular, Oberhiem Synthesizer Expander Module, Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, Arp Explorer-I Model 2900, and Studio Electronics SE-1.
• Attack Synth - Korg X911 Guitar Synth.
• Sytnh String - Roland GR700 Guitar Synth.
• Growler - Roland GR700 + Mu-Tron III.
• Q Filter - Line6.

There is a lot to choose from but as you can imagine some of it is junk. With the M4 series you can save presets. Thank God. These pedals can be very volatile and temperamental. The FM4 holds 4 presets as it does not have need for a tap tempo which is very cool for on the fly use - especially if one of your presets is aggressive and another one subtle. This pedal is for you if you want weird. There are a lot of proggy, unconventional sounds but some very useable ones too. Definite highlights: Seeker, Throbber, Commet Trails and The Growler.

The issues with these pedals are the same as all the M4 pedals. There is usually a volume drop when engaging the unit. The switches are cheap, a common modification is to change them. They also rest on the circuit board which means if you are heavy footed then you are going to destroy it. Specifically to the FM4, the MIX control is weak and works best at 100%. Overall you are getting a lot for the issues. All the best of these effects are included in the M9 so only from a collectors I would recommend this (I sold it down the river after M9) but be weary of volume drops!