Circle

zhao

there are no accidents
I mentioned that these crazy Finns were the sole saving grace of the promising but dissapointing Arthur-Fest.

it was literally worth the 90 dollars just to see these guys play for 30 minutes. it is very rare to find good and relevent rock bands these days, and to find one that blows me away is next to impossible. frankly I didn't think bands like this existed.

anyone else seen them live? what the hell is the vocalist / keys player supposed to be? some kind of gay biker gang leader / count dracula cross-over? and the alternating between Future-Days era Damo Suzuki-esque dispassionate muttering and high pitched operatic screaming... over the motoric psych propulsion... ace.
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
David Keenan got them spot on recently when he said that none of their records have lived up to their utterly incredible live shows. Undoubtedly one of the most amazing bands I've ever seen, going from really sublime Popul Vuh esque spiritual passages to hammer of the gods riffage. The vocals are indeed weird, making the band a sort of cross between Can and Judas Priest. They used to have two guitarists, but one of them called Jyrki has now left to do other stuff (Hot Guitars, some other projects), and they still sound mighty with just one guitarist.

Their lack of anything studio based that measures up to the live experience means they are more or less the Finnish equivalent of Acid Mother's Temple. By the by, Circle have been going for years, haven't they?

I may have a live recording somewhere. Well, my mate's recording, I tried to record them and the microphone dropped off during one incredible passage.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Diggedy Derek said:
none of their records have lived up to their utterly incredible live shows.

so right! I bought 3 recordings since that show and was a little dissapointed in comparison to what I heard live. Forrest, the one before the latest, is very nice though. can't wait to check out the new one.

Acid Mothers... jesus. just last weekend saw them play their unrecognizable version of In C at the Terry Reily 70th birthday concert, and they were total clowns. to the point of being embarrassing. it was a stubbornly repetitive guitar noise thing the kind of which can either be either a sublime epiphany or torturously boring, and this time it was falling hopelessly in the later category... and the main dude was a joke, doing his eyes rolling up, hair flailing hippie dance with one finger on a Chaos Pad... I love what they stand for, and I'm sure they've played many many amazing shows, but this was NOT one of them.
 

Loki

Well-known member
bang on about circle...love them; especially the fact that their music seems accidentally psychedelic - sometimes you feel that they've just love to get down and thrash out the Judas Priest covers but then somehow it all goes wrong and they end up locked into a mesmeric Krautrock groove from which they cannot escape... and their vocalist is simply the best 'metal' / psych singer ever... truly fried but with a twinkle in his eyes...i.e. not syd barrett fried...
 
Circle are amazing, particularly Forest. Their music seems to have such conviction, maybe its something to do with spending half the year in darkness and the other in constant light--I can't imagine anybody in the UK producing it. They played in Bristol this summer, but I only found out after the fact :(

There's a live session by them here: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/16445
 
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