Miljard (2006): The Circle Album That Goes Silent

Going Silent

Album cover — rights belong to the original label

Miljard ("Billion") is the sharpest left turn in this section of the catalog. Released in 2006 on Ektro Records in Finland and picked up internationally by Hydra Head/Deathwish Inc. (later reissued by Iodine Recordings), it drops both the motorik krautrock engine of the band's early records and the heavy metal turn of Tulikoira the year before, in favor of sparse, piano-led ambient and drone. Coverage of the record describes the band deliberately working "as ascetics" on this one. The lineup was Mika Rättö (keys/electronics), Tomi Leppänen (drums/electronics), Janne Westerlund (guitar), and Jussi Lehtisalo (bass).

The recording sessions were documented on film by Finnish filmmaker Esko Lönnberg, released as the DVD Saturnus Reality on No Quarter (sources disagree on the exact release year — Discogs lists 2009, other references say 2007; see Circle on Film for more) — an unusual companion artifact that underlines how deliberate and considered this stylistic shift was, rather than a one-off experiment. Dusted Magazine reviewed the album in November 2006.

Miljard is a good corrective if you only know Circle as a heavy or krautrock band — it's proof the band's genre-hopping goes in genuinely quiet directions too, not just louder ones.

Ten Tracks, Two Hours

The album runs ten tracks stretched across nearly two hours, with two long pieces alone — a 20-minute opener and a 21-minute second track — taking up most of what became sides one and two of the eventual vinyl pressing. Period label copy described the opener as built on "meandering, pretty piano" gradually joined by abstract electronics and guitar, and likened the record overall to a slow-moving stream, or the ripples in a pond, frozen in the Finnish winter.

A Decade Before Vinyl

Miljard didn't get a vinyl pressing until a full decade after its original release: Hydra Head Records issued the first-ever LP edition in 2016, remastered, across three discs — 700 copies on black vinyl and a further 300 on clear. It remains in the Iodine Recordings catalog today in both variants.

Nine Names, Ten Tracks

Nine of the album's ten track titles are plain surnames and initials — the 19:57 opener "Parmalee," the 21:10 "Duunila," then "B.F.F.," "Manni," "Salenius," "Sophie," "Mühle," and "Cornelia," with "Bakkis" closing the set — reading less like song titles than a class register, in keeping with the record's private, almost domestic feel. Deathwish Inc.'s own catalog copy, written for the 2016 vinyl reissue, frames the opening "melancholy keyboard line" of Parmalee as the thesis for everything that follows: "simple webs of melody used to stitch together brooding, fractured, disparate sounds that meander, skitter, rumble and squeal" across all ten pieces. It's a rare instance of a label writing more evocatively about a Circle record than most outside reviewers managed at the time.

A Slow-Building Reputation

Miljard's initial reception was lukewarm by Circle standards — Discogs users now average it at 4.21 out of 5 across 72 ratings, respectable but not the band's highest — and Rate Your Music catalogs it under a post-rock/ambient tag rather than alongside the band's krautrock or metal work, underlining how much of an outlier it is in the discography. The record's reputation has grown with distance: reviewing the 2016 vinyl edition years after release, Prog Archives contributor Mortte called it "the greatest Circle album I've heard" and pushed back specifically against earlier three-star write-ups, arguing the record rewards the patience its nearly two-hour, piano-led runtime demands rather than punishing it.