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...
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