Circle (the Finnish band): S/D

*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!

Krakow is right, Ektro is very, very good. CD's are quite cheap for shipping, but LPs are very expensive. Everything always comes pristine although US wise it usually takes two weeks en route after Jussi drops it off at the post office. I always order everything straight from him, it's worth it. But I'm a freak for this stuff...

My friend got an LP recently and it was bent in transit and Jussi sent him another copy the next time he did an order. He also threw in a free Circle Noiduttu cassette! Jussi is truly a good dude, he cares about this stuff as much as we do! Another good (amazing!) thing Jussi did: same friend was asking me a few years ago how he could find some of the rarer Circle albums. I suggested he just ask Jussi. He sent off an email and Jussi said he'd look around... a few months later he got an email, Jussi had been in a used cd store and found copies of Surface and Fraten!! They set up a trade (Jussi wanted Grateful Dead Dick's Picks!!! Ha ha!) Then like a year and a half later Jussi emailed him again randomly, he'd found a copy of Zopalki! This was like six or seven years ago, before the Ektro webstore, but still... amazing guy!

Thats awesome, think I'll be placing an order tonight!

Taantumus on 2xLP with 3 bonus tracks and Circle featuring Verde 'Tower' (previously a CD on Last Visible Dog) on LP are now on pre-order from Ektro.

Taantumus has black and brown vinyl variants.

oh, nice.

'tower' is a pretty underrated record imo. that thing is gorgeous, like they're channeling terry riley.

Yeah, I like that one a lot! Too bad I'm broke.

Tower is indeed killer. Terry Riley + In A Silent Way!

i lost several hours to this band yesterday!
can't wait to hear Tower -- terry riley + in a silent way 0_0 yes pls

Wow, Tower is great. Not at all what I expect from Circle; great chillout music.

Next you might want to check out Miljard, which is so chilled it's borderline ambient, kind of like frozen notes floating in an isolation chamber that is set up in the middle of Antarctica. Complete with a blizzard swirling in the distance, far away across the tundra.

this thread was one of the big ones that I had missed during our sandbox times...