Circle (the Finnish band): S/D

I've never heard Tivol, will have to check them out, any band compared to Amon Duul is a band I want to hear. From looking at the discogs site it doesn't look like they're actually related to Circle. Nightsatan is pretty fun, I think the only connection there is that it's at least one member of Steel Mammoth and mastered by Jussi. I only have the 7" and of course it's impossible to say for sure who's who with a lot of the NWOFHM stuff because of the pseudonyms!

Thanks for the kind words Art Arfons.

the nightsatan vinyl is out now on svart i think. cd was last year. i need to pick up the vinyl.. Tivol really are awesome.

Only two today, but two good ones. I decided I needed to explore Guillotine in depth...

Elcric 7"- The title is Circle spelled backwards and the two songs here are totally out of this world awesome. As far as I know this was recorded along with Guillotine and Vesiliirto in one massive studio session. Both songs showcase the more relentless and motorik side of Circle and both are heaped in distortion and fuzz guitars. Both have riffs to die for, miniature crescendos and all sorts of weird slowed-down sounds buried way back in the mix. Bizarre sparse vocalese, two lean mean rocking psyche machines. Turns out the mature Circle is a killer singles band. Who would've thought?

Guillotine - With Guillotine, Circle finally and shamelessly embraces the weirdness they've only flirted with up until now. The concept of songs becomes a little less important for the next few albums... songs are now vehicles for exploration, the starting point, the launch pad. The edges blur, overlap, jumble. Every note sounds carefully considered and organic. This is my favorite album of theirs, period. I also consider this to be the ultimate krautrock album, they've learned their lessons well and bettered their elders in every way. It's an epic journey from lightest light to darkest dark and back again. The first song gets things off to a perfect start, a song that only Circle could've made. Chiming fender rhodes, lightly fuzzed and acoustic guitars, killer echo effects, tasty and dare I say jazzy motorik drumming topped by Ratto's most effervescent and effective elf vocals to date. The song builds to an amazing climax with a long tambourine roll and a big epic riff from Westerlund before gently cascading back down to the lightly churning propulsive ostinatos we started with. Amazing song, another career high!

In fact there are only three real songs on this album... the rest is jumbled confusion. The next few songs are acoustic workouts of the Amon Duul I variety, sans actual riffs for maybe the first time ever in Circle's history. These three songs are lo fi, too, another first and quite obviously a deliberate aesthetic choice. Hazy and demented. The first weird one, song number two, is all tangled acoustic guitars, sometimes accompanied by insistent hand drums that sound like they're on the verge of falling apart and all sorts of bizzarre, whispering, muttering and mewling vocals. Really way too cool, seriously. The third song features an ancient sounding melody, seemingly older than time itself and backed by demented half speed laughing!! Then a pulsing arpeggiated synthesizer appears, like some kind of aliens have arrived in this strange caveman world Circle has conjured up. The fourth song is more twisted acoustic guitars, an epic laid back guitar solo backed by even stranger vocal acrobatics - hissing and spluttering.

Then the second real song appears, another career highlight, called Teraskylpy. A twelve minute extended journey through the dark side. A lurching and demented ostinato riff played on both bass and guitar stomps through an underground cavern, pinned down by Leppanen at his most insistent and consistent, surrounded by cavemen banging together bones and rattling teeth. More primitive vocals are buried in the mix, giving the impression of primordial peoples dancing around some black magic fire pit. This is a place where language has yet to be invented... The song builds and builds, getting more distorted and wild, but the riff holds everything together. It breaks down, the riff continues but the cavemen chill out a little with the clattering and Jussi intones a bunch of strange otherworldly doo-wop in a gravelly near whispered voice. The riff continues on, unstoppable. We build up again, the dancing continues, growing more frenzied with every pass. Way back in the mix, the alien synths reappear, strobing and beaming the song up, tearing apart the very sound molecules themselves. Finally a big drum fill brings the song to a close and the synths are left with the vocals to exist in this new dimension...

...a new dimension where everything is wrong, causality is meaningless, time is suspended, rules are rewritten. Now we have a number of songs that start weird and proceed to get even stranger before gradually winding down. Just about every weird sound you can think of, and a few more you can't think of, is thrown into the stew. A veriteable cauldron full of murky madness. Slowed down tv news broadcasts and laughing are the most memoreable sound in this long stretch of album; in fact everything is slowed down - synth drones, voices, voices, voices, bent guitar notes, squeals, cymbal hits, tip tapping drums, clattering drums, half speed bass guitar that sounds almost like a tuba! This whole part of the album is extremely hard to grasp and extraordinarily bizarre. Eventually it slows down to a crawl, until it's almost unbeareable...

...and then the bubble bursts and we're back to the chiming fender rhodes motorik-style krautrock world the album started out with! The third, and very long, proper song on the album is two alternated bass notes and lovely bubbling electric piano melodies over a patented Leppanen minimalist march time drum rhythm. They cruise along, taking their time, just existing and enjoying this hard-earned and quite wonderful green-white-blue sound world. Eventually Ratto starts intoning what is apparently a long story in Finnish. Since I don't understand Finnish, I just bathe in the strange and sublime sound of his voice and enjoy the way it floats above the airy music. The song doesn't really go anywhere although it does in fact keep building in intensity the whole time until the end. They've mastered the art of staying still yet always changing.

A final bizarre song features Westerlund muttering strange broken english over top of an atmospheric plink plonk synth chord progression, a strangely fitting coda. In closing, this album is insane and amazing. A major statement. It's also difficult but extremely rewarding. When I had a conversation with Leppanen in 2007 we talked about our favorite Circle albums (yes I'm a nerd! his favorite was Miljard!) and I told him Guillotine was 'it' for me. He was really surprised; he told me no one ever says that! So my tastes might not line up with the average listener, even the average weirdo Circle fan, but I hope everyone interested in the band will give this one a chance. Magic stuff.

That single is so good. Feeling very regretful over not catching them on their last couple of trips to the states.

A twelve minute extended journey through the dark side. A lurching and demented ostinato riff played on both bass and guitar stomps through an underground cavern, pinned down by Leppanen at his most insistent and consistent, surrounded by cavemen banging together bones and rattling teeth. More primitive vocals are buried in the mix, giving the impression of primordial peoples dancing around some black magic fire pit. This is a place where language has yet to be invented...

underground primordial black magic fire pit cave dancing -- i can't wait to hear this!! grooveshark appears to only have various tracks from guillotine, but fortunately this is one of them. i don't know how else i would be able to hear it anyway, so i guess i'm thankful for scraps.
lurching demented scraps.

http://www.nrgm.fi/wp-content/themes/nrgm/icache/g/i/f/giffaa114circle2gif-660x700-non.gif

Actually pilfered from an "up-the-arse" thread on another board.

yikes!

was that board dffd?

The trio of standout studio albums (guillotine, forest and tulikoira) are all deserving of the full treatment in my mind and I can't resist looking at them in depth. I'm going to go back to more capsule reviews for all the others (except for maybe the Rautatie/Infektio knockout combo!), so please bear with me.

Forest - This was an album that was truly astonishing to me the first time I heard it. They are still in neato black magic caveman krautrock mode, only now they're approaching it from a more minimalist and highly rhythmic angle. Forest is a very apt title; this is a very dark album, sinister sounding and mellow. Aquarius records described it as a combination of Goblin and Can and that's not innaccurate. John Carpenter is a good reference point, too. There are very funny instructions printed on the actual cd: Play Loud! Synthesizers (specifically the Roland Juno 60, I think) appear as the prominent instrument for the first time, coupled with a heavy emphasis on unusual percussion. Drumset is absent, the percussion is performed with hand drums, rattles and shakers. Each of the four songs has a distinct flavor and unique compositional approach. The singing is perhaps the most surprising of all, Westerlund takes the lead for the entirety of the disc, with Jussi contributing some far away painful-sounding howling, coughing, throat clearing and other weirdness here and there. Ratto keeps entirely quiet! Westerlund sort of has a bluesy and massively cool laid back broken-english drawl here, with the words spaced out and freely disregarding and trampling over the prominent instrument rhythms like they don't even exist, to very cool effect. I don't think there is any bass on the whole album, Westerlund and Jussi seem to both be playing acoustic guitars.

The first tune is one of the more unique and atmospheric songs they've done. It's so insanely cool sounding. It's built around a twisted drum rhythm from Leppanen and a badass synth melody that is extremely hard to grasp (I figured it out once, but I forget what it is now and can't be bothered to count, I think they subtract a beat every other bar so it's all off center sounding) The rest of the band seems to all be playing percussion together in a straight 2/4, syncopating their beats and creating a tapestry that compounds and cushions the wacky melodic rhythms on top. Eventually Westerlund starts his demented broken english vocalising and then synth washes begin to overtake everything.

The second song is built around a very cool sounding acoustic guitar ostinato, backed by more twisted rhythm stuff; a strange sounding bass drum, hand drums and random percussion hits that sound almost like someone hitting a dinner plate with a metal spoon or something. Eventually a maze of delayed synthesizer arpeggiators overtakes the acoustic guitar, washing over everything and giving the track a very sci-fi feel that contrasts nicely with the overall acoustic vibe. More cool singing, "lookout..."

The third tune is the only one that sounds like a normal song, and a bluesy back porch one at that! The back porch is built into an evil alien space ship fueled by some seriously weird sounding synth work, but still... there are two sections to this one, in 3/4, a low key acoustic guitar riff and more weirdo mumble singing and then the acoustic guitars shift to a more insistent rhythm punctuated by backwards synth melodies and distant sequencer rhythms. Janne is singing all sorts of strange stuff with lyrics like "keep the booze, and the chemicals, too". This is a less ambitious song compared to the others, but it's a nice change of pace.

The fourth tune, Jaljet, is another monumental achievement, and another high point in the ouvre. This is a 17 minute long journey through supremely hypnotic rhythms that sound almost like gamelan! This one is overwhelmingly cool. This is the only song on the disc where they all play their instruments like normal, more or less. All the sounds are blended together into one writhing, pulsating, living mass of shimmering hypno-bliss. I honestly can't even tell what the hell is going on here for the most part, it's so well blended. They just coast along, effortlessly, sculpting the sounds, concentrating on the smallest of details. I think there is a tongue drum ostinato that holds it all together. Leppanen is playing the raddest sounding rim shots ever, and about halfway starts in with some ride cymbals. Jussi and Westerlund are playing insistent acoustic guitar rhythms. Ratto is playing a plink plonk synth ostinato and also wonderfully sporadic melodies that sound very futuristic and utopian. Every now and then Westerlund plays some slippery and twangy two or three note melodic guitar lines and/or sings. Way in the back are what sounds like heavily reverbed burping sounds and grunts (not to mention more slowed down laughing!) Out of this world.

Seek this out, post-haste, all ye fellow connisseurs of the weird, wild and wonderful!

guillotine and forest are such a strong (but creepy and wild) combo. love them.

forest was the first circle lp I ever listened to. bought it after a tremendous show in full NFOFHM mode and was deeply perplexed but the contrast at first.

*uh, NWOFHM

it appears that the last time they were in my neck of the woods it was 2007, so i guess i don't feel too bad for missing that. not like it was 4 months ago or something.

This is a good thing you're doing, Liam. This stuff doesn't lend itself to easy description.
First Circle I heard was Raunio and it's still something of a sentimental favorite but I haven't listened to it in ages. Interesting to know they had a guest on drums. Forest is in my listening queue. November seems like the perfect month for it.

Yeah, didn't think of that, Forest is pretty much perfect Halloween music.

Alan N, I can't even begin to imagine what it'd be like to see them and then hear Forest as your first album! The live show is a completely different experience, with completely different goals, I'm planning on discussing that when I spend some time with the live LPs. I imagine a lot of people had your experience. The 2007 show I saw was really well attended, as many people as you'd see at a Mogwai show and considerably more than you'd see at, say, an Acid Mother Temple show. I still have no idea where all those people came from.

yeah, I've grown to really love forest but I was initially baffled!

Circle/Acid Mothers Temple split 7" - This one is pretty new to me. It's from the Sunrise lineup of the band, with Teemu Elo. It gets off to a very promising start with a very low key slow burn motorik section with lots of tasty rimshots from Leppanen and Ratto mumble ranting with his scary old man vampire voice. Then a bunch of exceedingly strange guitar stuff just suddenly appears and the song goes in a completely different and unexpected direction. The drums go to the bottom of the mix and we're assaulted with waves of siren like guitar wailing doing battle with noodly fuzz guitar doodles. In the background vocal howls gradually gain prominence until everything just stops on a dime and all we're left with is the strange singing. Overall it's kind of whatever song, unfortunately. The AMT side is pretty ridiculous, even for them, but not especially noteable. Wall to wall trip out, standard stuff for them. The song title (tombstone phantom drifter) is probably the best thing about it!

Tulikoira - Circle with big time studio production! Pro tools and all! Well, I don't think there's autotune... but they use every other trick in the book. This is a tremendous album, a metal-hippy-techno-occult ritual. The sound quality and production values on this disc are top notch, Circle really outdid themselves this time. They took all the fancy tricks available and bent them to their own strange and ecclectic will. This is another disc that was just astonishing to me the first time I heard it. It's another album where they approach each song with a different and very specific compositional agenda. The dazzling percussionist Janni Tuomi (who plays with them live quite a bit) is credited as a full member on this disc. He contributes all sorts of colorful clattering percussion stuff, adding a lot of sonic interest and texture. His performance is very much appreciated by this listener. If I remember correctly, this was the first album to feature the New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal tag (in gigantic letters, in fact) and it has yet to be, and probably never will be, surpassed. It doesn't actually have much to do with metal... and that's probably the whole point. It's Circle dressed up in metal clothing (specifically spikes and studs as evidenced by the live show!) This whole album is like one epic high point in the catalog! There aren't enough superlatives in the world for Tulikoira.

The first song starts with an occult ritual, effected babbling sounds bathed in reverb, slowed down chanting, strange chiming sounds, controlled guitar feedback, incredibly ominous synth drones and deep, distant, drum thuds that sound like they come from the depths of hell. Then the rather nice sounding wave of feedback builds up and they burst into a thematic up and down melodic bass riff punctuated by choked cymbal crashes which is repeated eight times. Then a big drum roll and our heroes explode into an astonishing hypno-metal deep space part. This section consists of a freaking blast beat (!) at hyper speed along with furious riffing backed by epic synth strings! They break down again to more of the occult ritual stuff with a little more drums this time, very dramatic! Another big drum fill, back to the theme and blast off! The grindcore drums come back, only now Mika is singing like a galactic overlord, sadly contemplating the fate of the universe. The guitar riff is now augmented with chiming synth melodies and the sheer power of the sound is almost overwhelming. Finally they break down once more to a brief feedback coda and the song ends. It's a very long song, but it goes by quick. A tremendous "tune" and some of the only music I've ever heard that could be described as genuinely cinematic.

The second song, Tulilintu, is an actual metal song!! Sounds very much like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest on the surface, although it's naturally heavy metal from another galaxy and filtered through dimension Circle. Ratto's vocals here are double tracked, each layer with a different strange effect, borderline shrieked and overall super cool and unique sounding. The song has a KILLER breakdown guitar solo section that sounds like glittering chrome and laser beam powered hot rods drag racing through outer space (I have very vivid visuals like that when I hear this one on certain substances!). A short and furious song that gets played live a lot, fittingly.

The third track is the only song here that works like a normal Circle song, built on an infinitely repeating bass riff. It has to be one of the most deviously simple, clever and badass riffs ever conceived by man. It's a common 3+3+2, easy enough, but turned around so it's backwards, 2+3+3. So cool. Of course the riff is just the beginning... This is one of my favorite Circle tunes. So many amazing weird synth sounds, crazy cool tape echo effects, perfect mechanical precision drumming, a bass tone to die for. Bizarre percussion plays a prominent role here. Ratto's singing is like a lifeless magical intonation from a zombie wizard, performed inside a neon pentagram drawn with blacklight paint in the middle of a graveyard in the dead of night, complete with wheezing. The whole tune is strobed by alien synthesizer tractor beams, lifting us up, up, up. Strobed is the word. There is a stunning breakdown about halfway, and when the riff comes back the UFO's Ratto has summoned appear in the sky and reality melts down enitirely except for the relentless riffage from Lehtisalo and Leppanen. Then, just when you think it can't get any better, Ratto plays a wonderful sci-fi melody on the synth that elevates the track to a whole other level of awesome. The song comes to a stop and we launch into the fourth and final song.

This one is a true show stopper and is also a regular feature of the live set. This is a tune like the song Alotus, a theme, breakdown to rhythmic improvisation and rubato and then back to the theme. The live version is simplified, but they elaborate on the theme much more in this studio version. All sorts of neat stuff happens in this more elaborated version of the theme, strange "hey, hey, hey my nameo" vocals from Jussi, cool insistent chiming synth repetitions and lots of heavy metal riffage. Then there is a hilarious looney-tunes sounding fake orchestra melody (!!!) that leads into the metal riff theme proper and we reach the fully improvised section and things get truly confusing. The riffs vanish, forgotten, replaced by synths and sequencers and clean guitars. Imagine the Grateful Dead... making Techno. Yes, that confusing. This song is truly and righteously twisted. Also, like the song Alotus, this very long stretch of album sees Ratto playing skittering drums around Lepannen's forward motion rhythms (might be Tuomi on the album, impossible to say!) I've never been able to grasp the sequence of events in this song, everything blends together, shifts, morphs, parts bleed into each other, drums collapse, wind down, start up again. Sometimes they're going forwards, sometimes they're just hanging out, sometimes they disappear entirely. There are pulsing sequencers driving synths that oscillate endlessly, coming and going randomly. Guitars are everywhere, wrapping around each other, noodling and arpeggiating. Everything is draped in a cloud of percussion and sonic wizardry. In the middle, hard to say exactly where, there is a part where the haze clears and Ratto simultaneously plays and sings a melody that is almost tender and quite moving. Jussi's bass is in the higher register, sometimes playing melodic riffs and sometimes improvised noodling. When you least expect it, after about twenty minutes of confusion and madness, there is a big drum role into the metal riff theme which repeats eight times and then the song ends! Fantastic!

i'm starting to think of this band as a space to occupy rather than something i am listening to
every time i listen to them i lose track of time and it's more like being somewhere than hearing something
not sure if that makes sense but whatever

That's how I feel too, it especially becomes apparent if you load up a whole lot of their stuff, particularly the live things, into a playlist and put it on random.

oh yeah another side project is Krypt Axeripper

Who sound pretty much like Steel Mammoth which is jussi again

and here's some others http://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Jussi_Lehtisalo/65540

I'm not into Steel Mammoth at all, their sound wore thin really fast for me. Krypt Axeripper is pretty funny. I totally flip over the Full Contact label NWOFHM vinyl-only things: Traktor Pulling, Motorspandex, Arkhamin Kirvasto and Mercedes Hell. Completely off the charts.

i loved the steel mammoth. not heard Traktor Pulling, Motorspandex, Arkhamin Kirvasto and Mercedes Hell so im going to have to d/l some!

I just got my "Steel Mammoth Nuclear Barbarians Official Fanclub" membership pack this very morning!

I will wear my Nuclear Barbarians patch and 'True Finnish Poser Metal' sticker with pride!

i love that laconic phil lynott thing steel mammoth do.
that n the homemade guitars vibe

I do dig the first 2 Steel Mammoth releases, particularly Atomic Mountain. The other albums that came after just sound like more of the same to me, no evolving and the songs are kind of bland. I didn't hear the newest LP only one though.

I just re-listened to the Nightsatan 7" and that shit is way cool, especially recommended for anyone who like synthesizers, metal and the band Goblin. I think I need to pick up the full length ASAP. Care to comment on it Mr. Ratfucker?

id say you hit the nail on the head re Goblin. if you dig zombi et al you will love it

come to think of it, iirc ratfucker has played that in the outloud room, and i have loved it!

i have

Hope this works, lol:

Circle on drinkify

I'm listening to Guillotine, Hollywood, Rautatie and Infektio today. A lot to swallow at once, so can't really comment yet. Looking forward to more blurbs though!

Soon, gonna knock off a whole lot of live ones from 2003-2007.
I took this pic a few months ago (if I can figure out how to post it right)
Collect them all!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocketshipinfinity/6089341193/

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6070/6089341193_b68b7a2d3e.jpg

BTW, is there some sort of secret way to edit stuff on this message board by any chance?

Thats fucking impressive and I am super jealous.

I want more like "Sunrise."

Played "Kollekt" yesterday as promised a while ago, it's a compilation of their first 3 7" EPs "Point", "Silver" and "DNA" plus a few bonus tracks. You can hear the Stooges influence a lot more on these tracks, but even at this stage they were twisting it into something far stranger. It reminds me of bands like the Jesus Lizard or Cows, angular punk rock but driven along by a nimble rhythm section and topped off by Jussi's choirboy chanting in places. From a Finnish perspective I guess at this point they were comparable to now largely forgotten bands like Sweetheart and Radiopuhelimet, but the psychedelic droney-ness was what pulled them into more innovative areas in the end and you can hear the beginnings of that here. I'd give it 6/10, it's a good companion piece to Meronia. No idea if it'll ever get a re-release, your best bet would probably be to get onto Jussi and hassle him about it!

BTW, is there some sort of secret way to edit stuff on this message board by any chance?

Nice to see people who are willing to drop the cash for the entire catalog of their favorite bands. If you are not up for creating your own blog, with some editing, Jason Gross would love it for Perfect Sound Forever. You're also welcome to post it as a guest article on my site if you'd like.

Cool, I'll keep that in mind Fastnbulbous. Thanks! I've been thinking of trying to place it somewhere eventually once I get through the catalog and after doing some serious editing and formatting. It sure would've been helpful to me once upon a time.

Hades Bear, there really aren't any others like Sunrise. Which is the beautifully frustrating thing about the group. One of the newer ones, Rautatie, might be the closest.

Circle is quite different live, even more unpredictable than the studio albums, although it's a sort of calculated unpredictability. Controlled confusion. They sort of create a fallow ground that they then proceed to seed, nourish and cultivate. The coolest thing to see has been how the theatrics have become more and more integrated over the years, nowadays they almost seem like actors playing roles in a drama. The key figure to understanding what's going on live is the mixer guy Tuomas Laurila, who also contributes little things here and there to the studio work. He's the puppet master! The approach to the live shows starting around the time of Guillotine is sort of like a live version of the dub process used for reggae. What you hear coming from the stage isn't necessarily what is going to come through the PA speakers and mixer outputs. Tuomas is constantly tweaking the knobs, mutating the mix and adding effects. Sometimes the drums are loud on stage but what comes through on a recording is just quiet tick-tock sounds with the low end cut out, or the guitars are so treated with effects they don't even sound like guitars... Tuomas also seems to have a bunch of special pre-recorded disembodied sounds that he mixes in as he sees fit. You know, just to make things more confusing.

For a while I was under the impression the series of live LPs they did in 2004-5 were heavily overdubbed, but then I found a bootleg of the General show online and it sounded pretty much the same! Which is pretty nuts because this is some busy music with seemingly endless layers, albeit very hazy and kaleidoscopic. I've since come to the conclusion (supported by a few interviews with Jussi) that they have two types of performance: the normal song type show and the more or less fully improvised show where anything can happen. The song type ones are much more common, but the special improvised ones aren't exactly uncommon (or weren't, now that they've brought in the two guitar playing brothers things might have changed.)

Golem/Vesiliirto - A double LP, one live and one studio recorded during the same session that produced Guillotine. So, unsurprisingly, this one is very, very unusual. If you take both albums together G/V is quite vast and extremely hard to digest. However, like almost all Circle stuff, it is quite rewarding for those brave enough to explore it with open minds and ears. I'm going to tackle them separately, they sound quite different, but they are actually pretty complimentary after you get used to them.

Golem (live 2003) - This was our first official hint of what a monstrous and demented live band the mature Circle lineup can be. Tuomas' mixing isn't as radical as what is to come, but he's pretty liberally soaking everything in reverb and echo and the drums often disappear into the haze. Fender Rhodes is prominent and guitars are marginalized. Ratto plays some bizarre harmonica that sounds completely out of place here and there. The songs are long, very minimalist, improvised and featuring simple grooves but lots of dynamics. There are no recognizable songs here at all (although the mixing makes it difficult to say for sure!) All in all pretty cool, especially if you like the stranger Circle stuff, but falls short in comparison to the other live ones.

Vesiliirto - I really like this one! I truly hope G/V will get a CD release someday, it deserves a little bit more exposure. Golem is good, but Vesiliirto is better and a bit unprecedented, having a sort of completely freaked out cosmic groove jazz vibe for most of the duration. There are two and a half real songs here and the rest of the LP is padded out by weirdo stuff, like Guillotine, but not quite as effectively realized. The 2.5 tunes are killer though! The half song is a full on one note drone groove with relentless momentum, stumbling shaman percussion, wacky Westerlund vocals and a sort of freak-folk vibe. Very nice really, calling it a half-song probably isn't fair. For the other two ten minute songs, the Fender Rhodes piano from Guillotine proper is replaced by space organ and extremely wigged out synth sounds! These songs are very loose and groovey but also nightmarishly confusing. Some people might call them noodly and unfocused but I call them awesome. Leppanen plays amazingly precise mechanical clockwork drum rhythms, Ratto plays a second drum set that dances around the main rhythm and Jussi plays a lot of very satisfying melodic stuff on the higher notes of his bass guitar. The electric guitars hold everything together, with Westerlund playing some cool twangy guitar riffs. Basically these songs are very busy, eclectic and intricate, but at the same time sort of laid back and fried sounding. Cool stuff!

Telescope (live 2003) - This is a more recent release and it's random appearance was a very nice surprise indeed. This is Circle at their most freeform and sprawling, heavily jammed out songs that stay in the same place for very long periods of time. They are really concentrating on the drone here. This is an unusually long concert, two CDs worth of lean, mean and focused heavy psyche. Two songs from Guillotine show up and it's pretty cool to see how they work in a live situation with the stripped down instrumentation. Fender Rhodes is prominent on this one, like Golem, but unlike Golem this release is more song oriented and slightly less free form... the songs are just stretched out to infinity. Overall a very cool and fun cd although the stretched out nature of it all might make it a little hard to get into for neophytes.

Mountain (live 2004)- this one is pretty cool, one long song, and maybe the weirdest album they've ever done. What seems to be an energetic set shaped into something slow, murky and impenetrable by Tuomas. It's all very dark and disturbing, with hidden layers of beauty. You can hear the band playing riffs and rhythmic stuff at some parts, but they sound like they're at least a million miles away. The foreground is all sorts of percussion effects with a heavy dose of tinkly Rhodes piano. After about ten minutes of blissful stuff, it gives way to horror-movie atmospherics with heavily echoed rattling percussion, evil chanting and demonic screeching and wailing. It's got sort of a Forest vibe, but it's the darkest deepest area of the forest... For the second side it is a bit more apparent that there is actually a band on a stage playing this fucked up music, but it's still all very spooky sounding and confusing, just with more forward motion. It gets more and more twisted until once again we're in the strange caveman ritual place from the first side, with the chanting and tortured vocals.

Empire (live 2004)- This is probably the coolest of these live LP-only releases. Two songs, one side each. Janne Tuomi is here, and his contribution is quite prominent. He always seems to inspire them in the best possible way; they reach the highest peaks when he is around. I always think of this one as Forest junior. The first song/side in particular is a superb journey through that primitive percussion and synthesizer world explored on the Forest album. It's just a somewhat denser forest... It starts with what I assume to be a sample of a tamboura and gradually builds up to an awesome slow burn groove with cool babbling broken-English vocals from Westerlund. All sorts of ambient sounds wash over everything, weaving in and out of the maze of vocals and percussion. After a while a bad ass guitar riff comes in and they build up momentum and proceed to ride the wave like gnarly psychedelic surfers. Side 2/song 2 is built on and grows out of a cool acoustic guitar part and some more impressive Westerlund vocals. It stays pretty low key for a while, then Ratto comes to the forefront with some frenzied sci-fi synth soloing. The guitars become electric and sort of chimey with heavy reverb and Tuomas starts mixing and melting everything down, building upwards and then reaching a sort of stasis where time stands still. Ratto speaks in tongues and Jussi does some of his patented otherworldly gregorian chants as delay effects wash over everything. After a while they break down and Jussi plays some prominent driving bass rhythms over Leppanen's super subdued infinite propulsion drums. All the while Ratto is really putting his sci-fi synth to the test, sometimes playing rhythms but mostly doing a kind of intergalactic John Coltrane impression, a flurry of squelching notes utilizing the full range of the keyboard - with intermitten singing! This is a pretty great song. It's all action and energy, but mixed so weird that it seems mellow!

General (live 2004) - Recorded the day after Empire, in the same venue. It's very much along the lines of the second side of Empire, which is to say it's very good, a veritable treasure trove of creativity. If you liked Empire and Mountain, you'll like this. General has five songs, including Metsan Henget from Guillotine, but they're all kind of blended together by the wild mixing into one colorful musical organism. Janne Tuomi isn't on this one, but we don't miss him too much. The songs are a little sparser but no less bewildering! This one might best be summed up as a mix of Mountain and Empire. It's very good, Circle was a very consistently awesome live band at this point and the faux-dub mixing keeps things sonically interesting no matter what they do or where they go. Side two has a rad and memorable part where things get very stripped down and Ratto, Westerlund and Lehtisalo are all singing in tongues, all with different contrasting styles, while Leppanen hammers away as per his wont and Ratto shakes some kind of metal ritual rattle. Cool!

I need Golem/Vesiliirto, just in case anyone ever stumbles across the double vinyl in their travels, or has a copy that they want to part with. It's another one that I've not been able to find at a price I can afford for a wee while now, though I'm willing to pay a fair amount. Thanks.

Continue...

Hades Bear, there really aren't any others like Sunrise. Which is the beautifully frustrating thing about the group. One of the newer ones, Rautatie, might be the closest.

Thanks man, will check it out!

Mountain (live 2004)

I was in one of the support bands at this show (I think - recorded at a church in Leeds?). Haven't heard the record, but I remember the gig as the droniest set I ever saw them do, given the surroundings it was a very spiritual experience! The show in London a few days later was a bit weird as someone spilled beer all over the mixing desk so they only had about 4 channels, and they went for a Groundhogs / boogie rock set which wasn't wholly successful.

Yep, church in Leeds. You should definitely check out the record if you get a chance!

The Essence Music CD reissues of Prospekt and Soundcheck are now available for pre-order from Ektro:http://ektrorecords.com/shop/

These come in gatefold mini-lp type sleeves and should be really nice, as Essence have always done lovely packaging. Prospekt includes the previously vinyl-only bonus track.

Ektro also have a sale of some older CD titles during November.

Been waiting for these for a while. I have an AMT cd from Essence with a nice gatefold sleeve and when you open it a rad picture inside pops up like a children's book!

How expensive does the shipping to the U.S. end up being from Ektro? Have you guys smoothly ordered from them before? Hope I'm not coming across too newbie here, but I get nervous ordering from overseas labels at times. Up to now, I've alwaks gone through Aquarius to get my Circle fix - but I'm really tempted to order these two direct.

i've had trouble with soundway releases arriving within weeks of their release date, and i've often wished i had just gone to dusty groove to buy stuff, but in general i haven't had trouble buying from other labels overseas. i think i'm going to buy these for myself as a pre-winter gift -- thanks for the heads up.

Shipping from Ektro is just €1 per order for anything but LPs, which is a fantastic deal!

The LP shipping prices are listed here: http://ektrorecords.com/shop/shipping.php and I think are reasonable given how expensive posting LP packages overseas is (I assume it is similar in Finland to the UK).

Their service is really second to none. I don't think that I've ever had an order take longer than a day to be processed, with regular email updates on progress from them, and things arrive in less than a week, often beating stuff ordered from within the UK for me. Stuff is really well packaged too.

I've ended up ordering something every few months at least for the past few years and can safely say that Ektro is truly great for the mailorder.

And no, they don't pay me to wax lyrical about them, I just think that they should get their positive dues!