Tim Clarke (Hidden Shoal Recordings - co-manager)
1. What are your top five albums that were released in 2014? (In order 1-5)
- Adult Jazz – Gist Is
- Timber Timbre – Hot Dreams
- Owen Pallett – In Conflict
- Deerhoof – La Isla Bonita
- Daniel Lanois – Flesh and Machine
2. What band did you discover in 2014 (can be a brand new band or an older band) that had an impact on your life? What made them significant?
I listened to Adult Jazz’s debut album Gist Is on repeat for about 2 weeks straight. It put me in a trance. It felt like listening to something truly original and miraculous, but also totally natural.
They're amazing and unique. It was also wonderful to re-discover Broadcast. I hadn’t listened to them for ages, then spent a very enjoyable few days reacquainting myself with their discography.
3. How will you remember 2014? (In terms of music)
As the year in which Deerhoof returned to form. They went off the boil with their last two albums, which was a massive disappointment, but now I'm eagerly awaiting their return to Australia so I can hear them play the new songs live. I'll also remember it as the year in which I made a concerted effort to buy more music rather than just streaming stuff and moving right along.
Streaming services like Spotify and SoundCloud are an incredible discovery tool, but it’s easy to forget that you can further support an artist you love by purchasing a download or CD via Bandcamp or at a bricks ’n’ mortar record store – if you can find one!
4. What can we look forward to from you in 2015?
Besides an amazing array of follow-up albums from artists on our roster, we also have some very exciting new signings that I have to stay hush about right now, which we’ll be announcing over the next few months. Expect to see a lot more of the catalogue in film and TV placements as we continue to build our licensing and publishing business. We also have some very cool label projects, including a versus remix series and an imaginary film soundtrack series.
5. What records are you looking forward to most in 2015?
The debut album by Viet Cong and hopefully a new Radiohead album.
6. What trend will you forever associate with 2014 in music?
The omnipresence of streaming – and how this affects people's engagement with music. I think the main thing I realised about listening to music in 2014 is that how much pleasure I derive from listening to music is only partly down to what I'm listening to – the rest is determined by the mood I'm in, what device I'm using to listen on, what kind of day I'm having, and what I'm doing at the time.
In addition to co-managing Hidden Shoal I also work in an office, so a lot of my music listening has been pretty passive, streaming stuff on Spotify in the background while I work. My favourite albums have been those that really grabbed me if they were on in the background, so I had to save them for later and listen with focused attention, either on headphones during my commute or blasted in the car.
