Miljard
Circle
| Available Formats | No. of Tracks | Price | Buy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Download Album (mp3) | 10 tracks | £5.99 | ||
| Download Album (flac) | 10 tracks | £6.99 | ||
| Download Album (wav) | 10 tracks | £6.99 | ||
| Download individual tracks | N/A | from £0.75 |
Circle - Miljard
The kings of the new wave of Finnish heavy metal have thrown down their guitars, kicked aside their Krautrock leanings and picked up the piano to sculpt out a series of horizontally leaning and deeply pensive pieces closer to say Willam Basinski or Deaf Center than Neu! or Can. Conjuring up perfectly the icy Northern European landscapes of their homeland, the band dispense with riffs altogether in favour of looping textures and haunting field recordings. The first disc, across its one hour duration explores quite magnificently the piano, with compositions and improvisations edging on the subtlety of Goldmund’s ‘Corduroy Road’, yet adding layer upon layer of haunting drone and worrying atmospherics giving the tracks a great weight. In fact there’s much in common with Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ score, or even the classic soundwork on David Lynch’s similarly gloomy ‘Eraserhead’, it’s a common reference to say that something is Lynchian, but Circle manage to share a common vision with Lynch here, managing to achieve darkness without being camp and a dense atmosphere without breaching on the industrial. This is only further confirmed when you reach disc two, the most powerful of the two parts, which uses what sounds like church bells and crackling old records to push the atmosphere level to 11. Parts of the disc even lean toward the classic work of pianist Harold Budd, or even Vangelis’s seminal crackly gem ‘Memories of Green’ from the Blade Runner soundtrack. By the time you reach the final track, the 22 minute long shimmering masterpiece ‘Viitane’, you will have probably ordered the band’s entire back catalogue; ‘Miljard’ is a bold and intense statement from one of the world’s most interesting acts, and should hopefully win them an even more sizable fanbase. It seems like they can master every style they approach so here’s to another 20 years. Incredible stuff…
Reviews
"Miljard is quite an unusual release in the ever expanding catalogue of Finnish stoner rockers Circle. Actually, after Miljard it is quite doubtful whether you can still put Circle in the stoner rock genre. On the whole two hours of the CD, you hardly hear any single guitar chord. At some points, Jussi Lehtisalo plays some bass and there are a few guitar notes by Janne Westerlund, but the large majority of the album consists of piano playing, although the piano is funnily not listed as an instrument.
In term of repetitiveness and meditative qualities, hardly anything can beat the latest Circle album. The two CD set features 5 long tracks per CD ranging from just under five to over 20 minutes. There’s hardly any real development on any of the all instrumental tunes. Everything slowly moves forward, patterns are repeated over and over again with very little variation and it’s impossible not to drift far far away to this music. Miljard is so pleasing to listen to simply because it’s so slow. And despite all the repetition, there’s still something new to discover on any of the disc’s ten tracks at every new listen. Circle fans might be startled by Miljard, but with releases like that the band just shows how versatile they are. 8/10 -- Stephan Bauer (29 January, 2007) – Foxy Digitalis
Tracklisting
Download Album (EKTRO-040DD)
- Circle - Parmalee
- Circle - B. F. F.
- Circle - Duunila
- Circle - Manni
- Circle - Salenius
- Circle - Sophie
- Circle - Mühle
- Circle - Cornelia
- Circle - Bakkis
- Circle - Viitane
Top