Andexelt (1999): The Circle Album That Started the Breakthrough Trilogy

Circle's Breakthrough Trilogy

Album cover — rights belong to the original label

Andexelt came out in 1999 on Metamorphos and was reissued the following year by tUMULt with a bonus track. It's the opening record in the trilogy — completed by Prospekt (2000) and Taantumus (2001) — that first pushed Circle's audience beyond Finland. The lineup on this record was Jussi Lehtisalo, Teemu Elo, Jyrki Laiho, Teemu Niemelä, and Janne Peltomäki.

It's also one of the most consistently well-reviewed records in the catalog. AllMusic's Brian Way called it "the most linear and rewarding of all of Circle's vast catalog," reaching for comparisons like Trans Am and the Octopus Project rather than the band's usual krautrock touchstones. Pitchfork's Paul Cooper went further, writing that it "surpasses Brainticket's Adventure, and equals Can's Future Days" — a serious comparison to make about a Finnish band four albums into a career at the time. The Wire's 2001 review praised its "complex 4/4 rhythm clusters" and "Arctic atmospheres," likening it to ambient composer Thomas Köner.

For a band that would later become known as much for genre-hopping and side-project chaos as for any one sound, Andexelt is a useful reminder of how good Circle could be working in a single, focused mode.

Full Track List and the Sound of the Title Track

Andexelt runs nine tracks on the tUMULt version: "Andexelt" (6:31), "Odultept" (9:03), "20milate" (8:57), "Lisääpui" (5:21), "Humusaar" (8:31), "Paljasta" (5:50), "Vereftoi" (7:36), "Kidulgos" (6:22), and the closing bonus cut "Friitalan Nahka" (17:53), for a total runtime of 76:04. The original 1999 Metamorphos pressing carried only the first eight tracks. Trouser Press critic Jordan Mamone singled out the title track for its build, describing how "the feedback, analog fizzles and hellish gargling" of "Andexelt" mount to "a head-kicking crescendo that approximates a gruesome wreck on the Autobahn." Mamone framed the record overall as "a tougher, slightly less melodic follow-up" to 1998's Pori, alternating "disciplined ferocity and tight spacerock full of knotted time signatures, dub accents and snaking guitar telepathy."

Recording Sessions and the tUMULt Reissue's Extra Track

Per Discogs release documentation, Andexelt was recorded in July 1998 and mixed that October, with Teemu Korpipää behind the recording desk and mixing handled by A. Peltonen alongside the band itself. The cover imagery is drawn from "Pori," a film triptych by director Mika Taanila with cinematography by J. Eerola, originally commissioned by Kiasma, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. When San Francisco's tUMULt label picked up the album for its 2000 US release (and a 2007 repress), it appended the 17-minute closer "Friitalan Nahka" as a track not present on the Finnish original. That addition didn't go unnoticed by critics: The Wire's Jim Haynes, reviewing the album in 2001, called out "the near Thomas Köner-like frigidity of 'Friitalan Nahka'" as a highlight of the record's "Arctic atmospheres."

The Breakthrough Trilogy, Album by Album

Writing about the albums that followed, The Quietus files Andexelt alongside Prospekt (2000, Ektro Records) and Taantumus (2001, Bad Vugum) as the run of releases that "helped bring the band to wider international audiences." The two albums that completed the trilogy pushed the sound in different directions: Prospekt leaned into "a tight krautrock sound that shows heavy influence from both Can and Neu!," built from extended single-riff improvisations that regularly ran past the ten-minute mark, earning a four-star AllMusic rating and a nod from Hawkwind's Dave Brock, who named it one of his favorite albums. Taantumus, by contrast, tightened the format again, running 71:09 across ten tracks on Bad Vugum before Ektro reissued it in 2009. Set against those two records, Andexelt's blend of "disciplined ferocity" and knotted rhythm reads as the trilogy's opening statement.

Further Critical Notes and How the Record Is Rated Today

Beyond the AllMusic, Pitchfork, and Wire reviews already covered above, Brian Way's AllMusic write-up extended its comparison beyond Trans Am and the Octopus Project to include Six Finger Satellite, arguing Andexelt sits closer to those American retro-futurists "than their usual Krautrock forebears." Paul Cooper's Pitchfork review was published March 3, 2002, roughly three years after the Metamorphos original — likely reflecting the album's wider circulation once tUMULt brought it to American listeners. Collector databases still track it actively: Discogs users rate the album 4.45 out of 5 across 44 ratings, with more than 400 copies logged in collections and nearly 190 on wantlists, while RateYourMusic's larger user base places it at a more modest 3.54 average from 685 ratings — enough for a spot on that site's ranked list of 1999's best albums.