Circle - NWOFHM

Circle on Pitchfork

25.06.2008

Circle had a chat with Pitchfork (scroll down, the Circle interview is the last one).

Triumph

17.06.2008

In 2006 Circle released Arkades, an album recorded live at the WFMU radio station in Jersey City, USA. When the band returned to the states in 2007, they once again dropped by at the station to record another live session for them. This session was originally broadcast on WFMU on September 25th that year.

Now, in a month or so, this radio session will see the light of day as Triumph, a glorious double LP released by Fourth Dimension records.

Circle in Skyscraper Magazine

10.04.2008

There's a Circle feature in Skyscraper Magazine's issue #27.

Rakennus now available

07.11.2007

Rakennus – approximately the seventh full length Circle release this year – is an hour-long snapshot of the band's recent tour of the USA. The concert (recorded in September in Charlottesville, Virginia) thunders and wobbles onwards with unprocessed autenticity. The recording effectively captures the full spectrum of Circle's contemporary live expression, revealing to us a glimpse of the spiritual landscapes of the most astonishing speedkraut pioneers of our times.

There's an abundance of ritualistic rumbling to be discovered between the twitchy hard rock show opener ”Uusi uhraus” and ”Kaappikellon kummitus”, the ravishing Rättö ja Lehtisalo cover song that closes the album. Rakennus displays the joy of playing music in its most pure form. (Eetormentor)

Out now on Ektro Records.

May the Circle Remain Unbroken

02.11.2007

Saturnus Reality (2007) is the Finnegan’s Wake of Finnish rock documentaries, and a fabulous cul-de-sac in a stream of consciousness. The film’s subject is Circle, the prolific Finnish experimentalists hailing from Pori, but it is a self-ironic vicious circle of a film that focuses on the curious world of the band and its musicians, shot on a home video camera. Jussi Lehtisalo, Mika Rättö, Janne Westerlund, Tomi Leppänen and Tuomas Laurila appear in the film as if they were acting out themselves.

The film is nominally centred on the recording sessions of Miljard, one of the latest albums by this extremely productive band, whose output includes 28 albums in 16 years. Starting out as a traditional rock documentary, the film soon runs loose on various sidetracks: to the depths of a forest, onto a frozen lake, into the darkness of night. The band’s primeval music becomes the soundtrack for magic rites performed in nature. The musicians meet the mysterious Oracle of the Reed Sea, a strange meteorite has landed in a snowy landscape, and so forth. What matters in Circle’s fantastic world is totality of vision, while details are treated somewhat generously. The new genre the band has coined, NWOFHM (The New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal), may just as well mean fragile atonal piano improvisation or catatonic one-note walls of sound. Inspired by the ritualistic films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, the film moves to the beat of double and triple exposures, the atmosphere balancing in the timeless opening between childish horseplay and reckless pathos. Enthusiastic live commentary can be heard beside the camera by the director/cinematographer, Pori’s multi-talented craftsman of the psychedelic, Esko Lönnberg. His earlier works include the splendid concert film with Doktor Kettu (also from Pori), shot through a distorting lens.

- Mika Taanila

Saturnus Reality
(Finland, 2007, 60 min, Finnish dialogue, English subtitles)
World premiere at Avanto Festival, Helsinki

Kiasma Theatre on Friday, 16 November at 7 pm,
second screening on Saturday, 17 November at 7 pm.

Live music and photos

02.11.2007

A live music clip from 2004 can now be listened to in the media section. The clip was recorded at Studio 24 in Edinburgh, UK.

There's some photos and another video from Circle's past in the media section too.

Rakennus

20.10.2007

Rakennus is an authentic Circle experience, a live album in it's most pure form. The album was recorded on Circle's recent tour of the United States, in Charlottesville, VA.

Rakennus will be released soon by Ektro Records.

A look through the Telescope

15.10.2007

Too much, too soon, two CDs!

German record label Sunhair will soon release Telescope, a double live album recorded in Würzburg, Germany on July 12th, 2003.

Meronia is out, Vaahto is coming.

01.10.2007

Meronia, Circle's debut album from 1994, has now been re-released by Ektro Records. This re-release has been digitally remastered and features updated album artwork.

There's also a new 7" single coming up on the Irish Trensmat Records label. For more information about the release, keep your eye on the Trensmat website!

The tour is over

01.10.2007

Circle made it safely back home after three weeks of intensive touring in the USA. Special thanks to all the friendly people we met, all the bands we played with and everyone who came to see the shows!

Many of you probably noticed that this website was down all weekend, since we managed to reach our bandwidth limit. We're taking precautions, this shouldn't be a problem again...

Here's a couple of recent articles regarding the group:
– Decibel magazine
– Express
– Time Out New York

An interview

15.09.2007

Circle was recently interviewed for Cleveland Scene.

The Blaze Game is out!

06.09.2007

The Blaze Game has been released!

SUNBURNED CIRCLE – The Blaze Game

09.08.2007

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN is a band in the loose sense of the word; it's better described as a banner under which a collective of musical freaks have gathered. So when they toured Europe in September 2006, and ended up in the same room as Psych/Kraut/Hard-rockers CIRCLE in Tampere-Finland, they decide to jam together and record all of it. This session was edited down to a total of 40-minutes which wanders ongoing through free folk, psych, improv, spaced out- hippy jamming & noisy-rock bizareness . The collaboration of both America's & Finland's weirdest, is nothing less than sensational.

SUNBURNED CIRCLE's The Blaze Game – out in September on Conspiracy Records, as a CD and a limited LP.

– The LP comes with a full colour poster and is limited to 750 copies!
– The CD version features one 45 seconds short extra track called ‘Last Song’.

Live music from 2006 now available

09.08.2007

A previously unreleased live clip, edited from Circle's 2006 performance at Atlanta's Drunken Unicorn, has been posted here.

Interviews

03.08.2007

Circle's J. Lehtisalo was recently interviewed by From Beyond Fanzine and Musique Machine.