Circle (the Finnish band): S/D

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...

^^^

Just got a package in the mail yesterday from aquarius with the Meronia, Prospekt, and Soundcheck reissues.

I started a thread on the sandbox because I missed this one, but it didn't really go anywhere iirc
No place like home.

that was a really good thread LL; I was just talking more about for reference purposes, as in having access to Liam's rundowns again.

I've saved it to my hard drive now though so it should be all good...

Riot Season just got hold of a small batch of the 'Empire' LP that they put out back in 2004. It's available from them here for £15 + shipping: http://riotseason.bigcartel.com/product/circle-empire-vinyl-lp

It's generally out-of-print and not readily available, so this is a good thing if you're missing that one.

Hey all, nice to be back! Ahhh, so what was in the sandbox thread? I missed it!

In case anyone is on the fence about any of the newer vinyl releases I would like to take this opportunity to say that PO Horn is crazy awesome and I've been listening to it everyday for like a month straight. High energy rock and roll mayhem! The Circle Maxim LP is also exceptional if you like the freakier and more free form side of the group. Leppanen is absent and Janne Tuomi just does his thing to great effect.

Anyway, I want to blitz through what we have left, which is still quite a bit naturally so it will still take some time. Going to mix the RjL and PO stuff in with the rest now since they all start to blend together as time goes by anyway.

Earthworm - this was a real curveball! Recorded at the same time as Tulikoira but with vocals and guitar solos grafted on in LA by a guy named Bruce Duff who was in a strange metal band called Jesters of Destiny that Jussi is a BIG fan of. I say "grafted" on because they totally don't mix with the music at all! Later releases (Hollywood and Out of Darkness) feature a much more integrated performance from Duff but on this one he just sounds awkward, like he doesn't really understand Circle's modus operandi yet. But that's okay, really, it makes for an interesting little EP! Bruce spits up about a million lyrics on top and kinda misses the point of it all. He also plays what sounds like chromatic guitar solos that have nothing to do with the key the band is in so that's a little strange although it mostly works out. Over time I've grown to like this EP for what it is but it was a little disappointing coming after Tulikoira!!! The first song, Earthworm, is one of Circle's best live songs with an absolutely insane uptempo syncopated drum part from Leppanen and a killer bizarre guitar riff with the accents all reversed. The Circle website currently has a streaming live version of this song that is about 18 minutes of intergalactic meltdown and shouldn't be missed.

Arkades - A great live document from the 2005 USA tour. Recorded at WFMU radio station in NJ with very good sound. This is 2 long tunes that showcase the improvised slow burn atmospheric side of the band with a lot of twangy subdued guitar noodling and an emphasis on electronics, synths and fender rhodes sounds. The artwork has a kind of wild west theme that fits the soundscapes conjured therein. The vinyl version came first and then a few years later we got an awesome 2xcd version with a bonus disc of a second live set also from 2005. This 2nd disc is quite worthy! One can only wonder how much of this quality stuff is locked away in the Ektro vaults! Features 3 long krautrocky songs, one of which is almost like techno with synth arpeggiaor, delay guitar and with Leppanen doing a kind of drum strip tease with blazing fast hi hat work. More please!

Pharaoh Överlord - IV - Note the umlauts! This is a different band! Well sorta. Technically. There's an interview with Jussi somewhere in which he stated that they now have 2 different identities, namely the one with the umlauts is heavy metal and the PO without, uh, isn't! The umlaut PO has a new guitar guy, a genuine 80s style metal dude named Jussi Kangas who is killer and unlike Mr. Duff on Earthworm, he is integrated perfectly. Kangas also sings a bit on most of the songs and approaches each one from a different angle/style and I really appreciate the variety. I LOVE this album. It's like chilled out metal, an overdose of layered riffage and with Leppanen just grooving along with light tom tom work and rimshots galore. Jussi plays some of his simplest and devastatingly effective bass ever. All the songs are extended workouts with a plethora of carefully arranged tripped out sounds and effects. Oh, and it's fucking funny! In the song Ridin we get a gnarly motorcycle revving up sample and the song See Me Evil sees the band playing in a huge arena complete with cheering audience and flashbulbs. A real trip. There's even a really great legato metal guitar solo that takes you on a little adventure. Insanely recommended assuming you have a sense of humor (it's their most cartoony album for sure!!!)

Tyrant - A live pristine sounding radio recording similar to Arkades except perhaps scarier sounding with three 15 minute long excursions, two of which are pretty dark and skittery and the third is an epic thematic type thing that is actually in a major key I think! They really indulge in the dissonance and the tortured vocalisations here. Also a lot of burbling synth arpeggios. The first song is pretty impressive with, believe it or not, a chilled out blast beat from Leppanen where he pushes himself to the limits of endurance and delivers the goods admirably. This one is less memorable than all the other improvised live albums from this time period but you still probably don't want to miss it if you like this side of the band.

Pharaoh Overlord - Live in Suomi Finland - Yeah baby! This is the normal version of PO. It's a live album from 2006 and they are mostly playing the old standards from the albums I and II. We have some intriguing new additions to the sound that make this one absolutely essential... namely the two guitar playing brothers (Julius and Pekka Jaaskelainen) from Westerlund's band Plain Ride are now on board so we have three guitar guys riffing it up relentlessly. These two brother guys have since worked their way up to joining Circle proper and they are awesome!! One is on the left stereo channel and one is on the right, usually, and they blend together in a really wonderful way like siamese twins or something. They really beef up the overall sound and now there are much more interesting little tangled deep details to listen to winding in and out of the basic riffs. ALSO Hans Joachim Irmler of the legendary band Faust is here playing organ and sound effects!! Fucking right! This albums is really super cool with very good sound, especially the drums, although it mostly sticks to the tried and true PO formula. The standout tune is a new long ass one, divided into two tracks, where the two brothers really shine.

Hey all, nice to be back! Ahhh, so what was in the sandbox thread? I missed it!

In case anyone is on the fence about any of the newer vinyl releases I would like to take this opportunity to say that PO Horn is crazy awesome and I've been listening to it everyday for like a month straight. High energy rock and roll mayhem!

Ha - I started the sandbox thread because I was so excited about buying this record and wanted to tell someone how great it was, but there was nowhere to put it. I'm not sure a whole lot else got accomplished while you were gone, but I think we made a convert or two?