Circle (the Finnish band): S/D

OK, so the news is out and I'm incredibly pleased and excited to announce...

Circle's forthcoming 'Serpent' live album, recorded at the Croft in Bristol in October 2011 and due on Ektro Records in a few weeks, will rather prominently feature my photographs of the band from when I met them in Birmingham on the same UK tour!

This is the cover, I believe, but just wait until you see the full fold-out poster/booklet!

http://www.ektrorecords.com/gfx/jaetut/ektro-071_270px.jpg

That was a great show too. Much better IMO than the SSonic one.

On Hydra Head?!?! Nice. Should make it a lot easier to track down.

So is Hollywood pretty much the worst Circle record to date? I was so disappointed in that one.

awesome news, bring it all on! congrats Krakow!

Part of my problem with Earthworm is that the song Earthworm is soooo great and I always wish I could hear it given the proper studio Circle treatment that the live versions hint at. Which isn't necessarily fair I admit.

I definitely prefer Hollywood to Earthworm. Of course it has 2 Earthworm songs for some random reason?! I think it would be stronger with out them and also without the last two songs which I think are epic failures. The 4-5 songs in the middle are all really cool methinks. But overall i think the best stuff with Duff are the songs he sings on Out Of Darkness. He seems much more comfortable in that overt metal context. And unlike IV, OoD is an honest to god balls to the wall heavy metal album.

I think it would be stronger with out them and also without the last two songs which I think are epic failures.

I totally agree with this, actually. It's really jarring having those two songs shoehorned in there. And the last two are literally failed epics, yo. I'm going to have to check out Out of Darkness, sounds like it might be right up my alley.

Panic - I finally drew some conclusions about this album after listening to it for a few years. It's like Circle dissected... By dissected I mean Mika Ratto has been separated from the band completely. It feels to me as if we're getting a glimpse of a Circle that might have existed in some strange alternate universe where they never meet Ratto and the world is some kind of scary police state where everyone has a choice of playing either punk rock or atmospheric electronic music!!! The first 3 songs appear to be Mika's tunes, and solo. They're all minimalist sequenced synth driven minor key atmospheric excursions along the lines of the group Tangerine Dream. They are excellent! Then all the sudden the biker punk anarcho stomp of the rest of the band explodes into the speakers and they proceed to blaze through a bunch of one or two minute genuine hardcore punk rock songs in ten or twelve minutes. I feel like Ratto is absent but there IS some kind of bizarre and aggressive noisy synth filter-swooping away in the background of all the hardcore tunes so who knows? Incidentally, this mystery synth appears again in a 2007 live Pharaoh Overlord set from the Roadburn festival where it functions much the same way!! Further supporting my theory that Ratto is laying out on these punk tunes is the fact that when these songs are played live Ratto just jogs in place!!! Of course the liner notes, like most NWOFHM tagged releases, feature pseudonyms so it's impossible to say for sure who is doing what... ANYWAY, Westerlund is the vocalist and at his most demented/unhinged. Leppanen once again proves himself to be just about the best drummer in the universe by handling lightning fast d-beats with the greatest of ease. I'm not good at judging punk tunes, but these all seem well enough written? The normal Circle repetition is absent at any rate. When the hardcore songs abruptly end we get a VERY long (10+ min) brooding bass throb drone song that is barely audible! And then out of that bit of seriously dedicated atmosphere an equally narrowly focused klause schultze type sequenced synth excursion appears and just kinda hovers around, pulsating hypnotically for 14 minutes and gradually fading out (the same sequence would later be used in a Katapult song to much better effect!) Every once in a LONG while this last song has a kind of sonar piano ping that chimes off but other than that its pure sequencer with nothing going on! Wtf? I'm still scratching my head five years later! Panic is kind of a weak offering overall, but I think it's worthy for the pure strange incongruity of it all!

Vaahto - Another 7" single. These are two typical five+ minute long Circle songs, one each per side. Typical as in guitar riffs that never end, ostinato clockwork drumming, strange mixing and insane singing. Both tunes actually kind of sound like they're on the wrong speed - it sounds good, but not quite right, on both 33 and 45 speeds!!! I personally can only tell for sure which is correct because of the pitch of the vocals. These songs kind of have a Guillotine/Forest vibe with similar synth work and some recycled sound effects in the background. The first song is a strong mid-paced composition with all the right ingredients for a killer Circle tune but doesn't really add up to anything in the end. The second tune is more interesting, with a rad insistent riff and heavily slowed down and processed singing from Jussi. There is also an off kilter synth melody in the middle and the end that I really like. I'm not a fan of Ratto's harmonica playing, which luckily usually doesn't make it onto the studio albums, but on this song it's used effectively enough. So overall a good bordering on great little single, but not nearly as perfect as the immaculate Elcric of a few years earlier.

Katapult - Katapult, Miljard and the two dvds Saturnus Reality and Man With A Video Camera all came from what appears to have been an epic recording session at Jussi's parents vacation home somewhere in the north of Finland. Katapult is half successful by my reckoning. It sounds really great for a home recording, although the mix is very dominated by all the overdubs and the original tracks are more or less buried. It makes for a strange listen with the drums and bass greatly minimalized; unfortunately this weakens the music quite a bit since Circle is such a rhythmic band. There is however a LOT of neat sounding percussion stuff in every song which takes up the slack. Interestingly, Westerlund gets the bass credit here and Jussi the guitars! It's all shorter songs and it's all very busy with a sort of black metal prog bend. There is a LOT of singing on this one. The black metal vocal approach seems quite serious and well intentioned but the end result is pretty ridiculous a lot of the time! I actually sort of think it would make more sense labelled as a Ratto Ja Lehtisalo metal album. There is a lot going on here but it's a little unfocused sometimes compared to their usual offerings, short songs that are sometimes a little aimless. This is an album that seemed very strong at first but as time goes by I'm less and less interested in it. These are all songs that seem to have largely been sculpted in the overdub process, so it's more focused on the synths, vocals and percussion than usual. We have a lot of metal riffage usually contrasted with clean chimey lines a little farther back in the mix. The highlights for me are Ratto's layered synth masterpiece Four Points of the Compass, Torpedo Star Throne with the relentless machine drumming courtesy of Leppanen and Understanding New Age, which features a majestic Mika Ratto vocal in the middle section. This might be a good one for people with shorter attention spans who like a lot of variety and shorter, more colorful songs.

Miljard - This 2xcd extravaganza is something else entirely, a truely exceptional oddity in a catalog where oddities are the rule of the game. Like I said somewhere above, it sort of sounds to me like frozen notes floating in an isolation chamber somewhere in Antarctica. All atmosphere, soundscapes and disembodied sounds cushioned by some excellent ear candy reverb effects. Still and calm are the rules of the game, along with rubato time. That is to say that the tempo is as slow as possible and supremely flexible. There is a general pulse in the place of the usual strict rhythm, and the notes are laid out in time with utmost freedom so this album is kind of like Circle at their most expressive or emotional, riding on pure instinct and guided by purest feelings. Ratto's piano dominates throughout and he gets a producer credit for his efforts. It seems during the session they recorded a lot of slow formless songs like this and Ratto took them and sculpted them to completion on his own. According to an interview with Jussi, Ratto calls them "piano pieces" and indeed, there is a LOT of digital piano here. These songs feature all sorts of pinging, ponging, tinkling, well placed low notes and little melodic squiggles distributed tunefully throughout. There is very little percussion, Leppanen seems to have limited himself to some little synth work way in the distance, and sometimes free stuttering percussion hits on the rims of the drums, both performed with admirable restraint. There is a lot of great tangled-sounding clean guitar work and also tons of tasty slow bass improvisation from Jussi. Some of it is even quite smokey and jazzy! The only tune that resembles a normal Circle song, and only remotely at that, is the final song. This 20+ minute long tune, Viitane, is a definite career highlight and is seriously, righteously awesome. Leppanen plays some tasty propulsive clip-clop percussion with toe tapping rimshots wayyyyy in the background giving it that inmitable Circle motorik vibe so lacking in the rest of the album. It's not at all clear what Jussi and Westerlund are up to, however, as the main backing track mostly gets mixed out! This is all Ratto's show and he delivers the goods with gusto. It's one of the scariest and most menacing Circle songs, conjuring up all sorts of hellish imagery with super low dissonant piano notes drenched in some incredibly atmospheric reverb. In fact, it's almost a study in the psychological effects of the tritone note! The mixing here is remarkable, nothing stays still and the different sounds all seem to have taken on lives of their own. There's really not much going on here except tons of deep synth drones, blurred piano ostinatos, the occasional bass piano notes and some wheezing sound effects but it never gets even remotely boring. A sort of zen masterpiece, really. Without this song, the album would be much weaker but with it Miljard becomes an indominatable shapeshifting monolith of droning noodley ambience, a yin yang mirage of minimalism; pretty and simplistic on the surface but hellish and dense when you truly listen. A truly special Circle album, one you can take home and play for your mother even!

Saturnus Reality DVD - A quasi-documentary about the Circle recording session which produced the Miljard and Katapult albums. I say quasi because much of it is staged and there isn't much playing at all! There is a lot of music of course, the music is in fact a main character, we just don't see them play it!! Overall it is not what you expect necessarily (although it is rather tripped out) but is actually a very beautiful film documenting the friendship of four musicians and how their friendship strengthens their music. The best part is a cut up slow motion segment towards the end, when the film becomes pure montage. In this segment you pretty much just see Jussi and Ratto goofing off! There is some of the prettiest Miljard music backing their hijinks and shots of daylight and the car journey home through the beautiful landscapes are intercut with it all so that a truly inspiring sense of nostalgia is evoked. Also worked into the film at various parts are old family films in 8mm or 16mm and the contrast is very nicel; we see how this is a kind of family film documenting the band members' friendship at that exact point in time. The filmmaker didn't get much out of the band as far as soundbites go, but Ratto has some wisdom which gets repeated as a kind of thematic motif to tie the film together. He speaks of rituals and how our lives are composed of rituals, we're always repeating our mundane daily tasks, and upon reflection it's all very relevant to Circle's music and why it works so well... good stuff, indeed! The Saturnus Reality DVD is unfortunately light on footage of the band actually playing but you do get to see Jussi recording the vocals for the Katapult song Saturnus Reality on the front porch in the middle of the night! Then they all discuss how it isn't commercial and the people abroad won't be able to understand the lyrics! Haha, okay guys! There's only two truly killer jams of any length, the first is a Forest type tune - Leppanen plays some crazy awesome ethnic/tribal robot drum patterns, Westerlund riffing it up on a banjo (!), Ratto alternately speaking in tongues and playing some demented harmonica (which is gripped between his teeth!!!) while also playing rattling percussion with his two hands... all the while Jussi plays an open bass guitar note with one hand and also rattles percussion (or sings into a mic he picks up) with the other!! The second longish jam is also a Foresty one but also with elements of free jazz in the drumming, like one of the Vesiliirto songs. After they come to a stop we see Leppanen grinning and nodding with pleasure and then Jussi reaches over to rewind the cassette recorder so they can listen to it!!! Really cool, if ultimately only a curiosity for non fans!

Man With A Video Camera DVD - This is a film by (i think!) the editor and one of the camera operators on the Saturnus Reality DVD. It's a documentary about the maker of the SR DVD, a bearded old head named Esko, and it is more an examination of his and Mika Ratto's personal creative process in the making of the aforementioned film. I think it's a bit more richer/rewarding the SR proper, but not as interesting an artistic statement. It is a more candid, that is to say less staged, look at the week-long recording session and the working artistic processes of Ratto are quite illuminating. Ratto is a full partner in the endeavor, it turns out, and neither of the film makers has any clear idea what to do with the concept of a Circle documentary. It's a great companion piece to SR and offers an interesting alternate perspective of the earlier DVD. It might have worked better as an extra on SR, but it's fine on it's own too assuming you've seen SR or have a vested interest in the band. There is also a bonus short film, scored by Circle and quite good really, about a Japanese restaurant owner who's shop is in Finland and how he has to close it down.

two things:

1) will rather prominently feature my photographs of the band from when I met them in Birmingham on the same UK tour! of course! your photos are the best, it was only a matter of time. congrats!

2) i am listening to the Tower LP, which I just bought today on a whim. The clerk had exactly 0 comments about my purchase, which i am chalking up to inexperience on his part and not lack of discrimination on mine ;) anyway, it's super mellow and really perfect for the twilight hours.

Thanks very much La Lechera!

I have started to tweet Circle-related news-type things here, just in case anyone is interested... https://twitter.com/#!/NWOFHM

shit, thanks Krakow, didn't know about this Split Cranium thing!

Getting my first listen to the Split Cranium 7'' right this instant!

nice! pretty curious about this one but def not spending $9 plus shipping on a 7".

It's good! Fast & heavy. A lot going on in under 3 minutes, it moves quickly. Some nice screaming guitar work.

http://splitcranium.bandcamp.com/

Is it just the one song?

Mixed by Kurt Ballou!! Always nice to see his name!

Yeah, one song & a Daniel Menche mix on the 7''. There is an album in a couple of months too, around March time.

New Jussi solo album out on LP at the end of the month via Full Contact/Svart, see the usual Ektro websites...

placing an order from Profound Lore, and thinking about getting 1-2 of these Circle records from the distro section. what's best of these??

- Rautatie
- Rakennus (live)
- Taaatumus

from searching this thread, i see LOTS of love for Taantumus, not so much for Rautatie (new 2010 album?) and not a peep about Rakennus either way. Taantumus it is.... still would love to hear some chatter though! are the other two any good?

I'm absolutely in love with Rautatie nowadays! It has some amazing hard-rocking catchy tunes on it, for example this absolute stormer... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblGXkf2LdY

Rautatie = a prog rock explosion, with their most intricate compositions and 3 guitars all tangled together. I LOOOOOVE it, but it is a grower.

Rakkenus = has one KILLER live song, a version of virsi, but otherwise is a straightforward live album that is sorta warts-and-all like a Grateful Dead dick's picks or something

Taantumus = classic, classic, classic and lots of songs/colors

Am rally looking forward to another Jussi solo! Rotta is a wonderful cloudy atmospheric journey

I second liam on all of that.

haha the giant picture of Tuomas is almost too much krakow

not quite though, i want to hang it on my wall! Album rules, too

Thanks liam! It's a belter!

Oddly enough, after being off work for a week, I returned to the shop today to find that a certain Jussi Lehtisalo had bought a CD from us via Amazon marketplace! It certainly livened up the potentially blue first day back at work for me!

Love the record although tbh I remember Here Come The Warm Jets being far straighter on the evening.

i sold a bunch of DVDs today and bought the taantumus LP!
haHA!

can't wait to properly listen to it

I just clicked the button on an exciting, but almost certainly financially foolish, plan that has been bubbling away for several months now...

I'll make my own announcement as soon as feasible, but in the interim...

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/558084_10151427547415022_837550021_23334627_1322737226_n.jpg

avant-AOR, ha. Dilation!

Is Hydra Head going to issue Manner in a non-limited way outside of RSD? I know my chances of snagging that are super slim, but I really want to hear it, especially after the positive review in the latest Decibel.

is that your eye?

I read that same review jon and I'm really excited about this one. particularly want to hear the zeuhl (!!!) track.

Haha, one of my friends also asked that Lechera! I am maintaining the possibility! :-)

Thanks for the tip on the review as well folks, it has me even more excited!

new Ratto Ja Lehtisalo is pretty great/crazy! The atmosphere and theatrics have been dialed up considerably and Leppanen is back on board.

A friend told me you can reserve Record Store Day albums in advance? I'm emailing the local store about Manner right this second. I don't know what the deal is with RSD really but I guess I'll just have to be extra-vigilant if I can't reserve a copy. I feel bad for people who don't live near record stores thought!?

You CAN'T reserve record store day items, it's part of the strictly enforced rules of the day. Registering interest with a shop is totally cool though.

If anyone wants the Manner LP and can't procure it from a local independent record shop (which I do encourage you to do) then get in touch with me, as I may end up with spares...

Okay thanks a lot Krakow. Put me on the short list for a spare? I'm gonna go and be there right when they open first thing in the morning but it'd be awesome to have a backup plan!

think i'm just going to end up holding out for a non-RSD release. i'm not going to go stand in a two hour line to not be able to buy this.

Ah, wait, what, you have to wait in a 2 hour line!? I'm very confused by all this, I'm way way out of the loop guys, sorry... surely you get some kind of ticket and at least get to go browse or something in the meantime at the very least? I thought this was supposed to be fun!!!!

i'm sure its different at some stores, but the one nearest my house last year made everyone wait outside while the line slowly shuffled to the front of the store where you were allowed to point to the remaining releases that hadn't been crossed off the master list already. no browsing allowed. it was horrible and has pretty much put me off RSD completely. i'm sure there are many record stores that handle the atmosphere much better, but i've yet to have an RSD where i get even 1/10 of the releases i want. i don't like to spend a lot of extra time in a crowded record store to be letdown.

I wouldn't necessarily expect the Circle LP to sell-out immediately, certainly not everywhere, so you should be able to visit many a shop at your leisure later in the day on RSD to pick up a copy.

I've ordered a lot of copies, because of my personal obsession and its crossover with/spillover to a lot of my friends who will be picking it up, but I do expect to have some left after RSD is finished.

We run the queue system for the first few hours, only letting in as many people in as we can serve at one time (with all four staff members on), because otherwise it descends into absolute mayhem and genuine fighting and only a couple of people can browse the RSD-specific racks at one time anyway. By the time the main queue has gone down, which is a couple of hours, things are basically back to a busy version of normal.

seattle's a big vinyl & indie record store town, but i've never seen anyhing like that here. long lines, sure, but browsing encouraged. stores just get CRAMMED for a few hours early in the day. then again, i didn't go last year, so maybe everything's gotten exponentially worse, i dunno...

well, to be fair, i am talking about the first couple hours they were open, i'm sure it was better later in the day. but i was about halfway into the line and they were already down to about 10% of the list actually available by the time i got to the counter.

i mean, i don't want to crowd up the awesome circle thread with this, but i really hate the way the RSD focus is now just all about people on a scavenger hunt for specific, artificially limited items instead of just celebrating record stores in general.

Thanks all for the info! My local store's getting a few copies so I'm sure it'll work out.

The new RjL is righteously awesome, with a very eclectic and experimental prog feel!!! A lot of the songs resemble stuff from Mika's main band, Kuusumun Profeetta, only super-powered by Jussi's relentless riffage and Leppanen's usual ultra precise drumming. Ratto deploys a lot of different keyboard sounds, particularly organ sounds and the fender rhodes also makes a few appearances. The album is soaked in reverb and there's a lot of experimenting with nifty effects and of course pop hooks galore. All and all, a very rich tapestry and a nice progression from the colorful UUmama.

Plus there's a lightning fast barn burner of a song seemingly about Anne Frank!!!!

I love "Le Mans", but am still waiting for the CD to hear more...

I picked up the RSD release 30 min before the store was about to close and the clerk was like "Hey, I think they played here earlier today" (this was at Reckless) and I looked at him like o_O really? And he insisted and then we realized that he meant Circles. Anyway, I think they had other copies JVC, if you want one.

I didn't know it had a cover of HERE COME THE WARM JETS on it!?!?! Packaging is beautiful too.

Anyway, that's my update.

I managed to score one of these, as someone had (deliberately?) hidden it amongst the stack of stock for some other band. The eyeball sticker on the LP is torn, which is a tiny bummer, but other than that - Jesus, it's gorgeous. The vinyl is white with red vein-y swirls!

Only spotted black vinyl here in the UK. If anyone finds spare copies of the 'red eye' or 'eyeball' coloured versions, then I would love them, please!

I got mine at Rough Trade East, so some of them made their way over here. I didn't know there were multiple versions.