Posted in Whathaveyou on March 23rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Part live album, part concert film, part avant-garde ceremonialism, it should come as no great shock that Circle of Sighs‘ forthcoming release, Circle of Sighs Performs an Invocation would be a challenge to classify since, you know, that’s kind of the L.A.-based unit’s whole thing. Last year, the e’er experimentalist troupe founded by bassist/conceptualist Collyn McCoy (who now doubles in the revamped Unida) anyone offered the full-length Alabaster (review here), not so much blurring as readily crossing genre lines as though to underscore the absurdity of categorizing creativity in the first place. That they’d follow it with a mime-inclusive captured live performance makes sense in a way that is very much their own.
And while you’re perusing the various artsy namedrops in the PR wire info below, I’ll add the undervalued Sleepytime Gorilla Museum as partial aesthetic kin, less electronic, but with a similarly dark mystique behind material able to go anywhere it wants because that’s all it does. Active defiance of the laws of genre. Good for them, getting weird in Dolby Atmos.
The teaser on YouTube, so they’re not exactly keeping secrets ahead of the release, and if you’re feeling bold you can take it on at the bottom of this post. I would think that at some point, Circle of Sighs will have something captured at their Suspirium space as well, but it should be noted that Circle of Sighs Performs an Invocation was recorded at Transplants Brewing, and the stunning cover art is by Sean “Skillit” McEleny, who also did the first not-by-me banner for this site and drew the only tattoo currently on my body.
The pertinents:
Circle of Sighs Performs an Invocation – April 21 – Pillars of Creation Rkds
Since the group’s inception in 2018, Circle of Sighs has never been bound to tradition, least of all their own. From the synth-laden doom of their debut release Salo, to the epic prog rock of its successor, Narci, to the Aphex-Twin-on-dälek electronic adventurism of 2022’s Alabaster – stylistic shifts have always been the point.
Some bands do well by giving the fans what they want. Circle of Sighs is not that band. Technically, it’s not even a band at all, but rather a “kollectiv” (in the Bukaninian sense) wherein every participant contributes what they can, when they can, according to their creative need. The result is an ever-evolving oeuvre that transmogrifies and mutates like a virus.
And speaking of viruses, one should not discount the effect Covid-19 had on the group’s process. Those aforementioned records were very much “pandemic projects” with contributors exchanging ideas and performances remotely. However with …Performs an Invocation we find Circle of Sighs taking the diametric approach. Composed with all participants in the room, performed and recorded live in just one take, with sections of free improvisation, randomization and reactive composition, it is simultaneously their most human and most alien record to date.
But what’s the sound? The elevator pitch is Sun Ra meets SunnO))). You’ll also find traces of Amon Duul II, Fela Kuti, Dark Magus-era Miles Davis and, esoterically enough, Ya Ho Wha 13 (aka The Source Family house band). And yet, despite such disparately groovy, psychedelic and jazzy influences, …Performs an Invocation is still a metal record at its heart, albeit bereft of the toxic masculinity of a Hellfest slam pit. But when it dooms, it DOOMS.
Did we mention the mimes? We should probably mention the mimes.
No, we do not mean Third Street Promenade Buskers in horizontal stripes trying to free themselves from invisible boxes. We mean the corporeal mime of Étienne Decroux and Jean-Louis Barrault. We mean the surrealist mask theater of Mummenschanz. We mean Butoh. We mean the “happenings” of the Fluxus Movement. And while mime is usually considered a visual experience – and you certainly will catch an eyeful when partaking in the …Performs an Invocation BluRay release – the mimes’ compositional contributions were significant enough that they are credited alongside the musicians in the album’s liner notes. The human body is, after all, the primordial musical instrument. In fact movement art is so integral to Circle of Sighs’ compositional process, that – along with the group’s ever-expanding headcount which also includes jugglers, dancers, and contortionists – it inspired them to open Suspirium, a 3000-square-foot idea workshop and performance space in a still-not-quite-gentrified corner of Downtown Los Angeles. Therein the kollectiv can be found workshopping new musical and visual concepts as well as building props, painting sets, mapping projections, and hosting performances, events, and exhibitions. Think Warhol’s Factory gone kvlt.
Circle of Sighs Performs an Invocation releases April 21, 2023 care of the group’s own Pillars of Creation Rekords on vinyl LP, streaming, and BluRay (which contains the full konsertfilm and boasts a Dolby Atmos mix). To celebrate this event, there will be a record release performance and art show on April 22nd at Suspirium in downtown Los Angeles, CA, with further tour dates to follow.
Circle of Sighs Performs an Invocation ACT I: HARVESTER OF BONES ACT II: METRIC TIME ACT III: INVOCATION OF JARRÖD
album credits Ekaterina Gorbacheva – vocals Aguste Sharma – guitar Colin Kupka – saxophones Ryan Thomas Johnson – keyboards Collyn McCoy – electric upright bass Ian Schweer – drumkit
I’ll find out for sure in a bit, but I think this might be one of those supremely weird Quarterly Review days where it’s a total mash of styles and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever from one release to the next so that by the time the batch of 10 records is done we’ve ended up covering a pretty significant swath of heavy music’s spectrum. I ain’t out here trying to be comprehensive, you understand. I’m just doing my best to keep up. And in that, sometimes you hit a weird day.
In fact, I think “weird” might be the operative word for the Quarterly Review so far. I think about this music, who it’s for, why, and it’s weird and it’s for weirdos in my head. Both of those things are meant in a spirit of reverence for weirdness. Weird is interesting. Weird stands out. Weird is… also how I feel basically any time I’m out of the house among other adults unless I’m at a show. Weird is that beautiful thing that unites those people who don’t seem to fit anywhere else but in this.
So yeah, today’s weird. Strap in, kids.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Church of the Sea, Odalisque
Electronic beats, live guitar, and a resonant human voice make for a fascinating blend on Church of the Sea‘s richly atmospheric Odalisque. The Athenian trio of vocalist Irene, guitarist Vangelis (a different Vangelis) and synthesist/sampler Alex conjure a deep sense of mood in songs like “Mirror” and the closer “Me as the Water, Me as a Tree,” operating from the weighted beginning of opener “No One Deserves” onward in a slow-moving, open-spaced take on heavy post-rock that staves off the shimmering guitar in favor of adding the rumble of distortion often as a backing drone to fill out the sound alongside the synth behind Irene‘s voice. There are shades of Author & Punisher‘s latest — but Odalisque is less about slamming impact than spreading out the landscape of its title-track and the personal examinations of its lyrics, though “Raindrops” doesn’t seem fully ready to commit to one or the other and it’s easy to appreciate that. A striking debut from a band whose individualized purpose sets them apart even within Greece’s crowded and wildly creative underground.
Drummer Edu Escobar, bassist Raúl Burrueco and vocalist/synthesist Alejandro Ruiz are Gu Vo, and given their lack of guitar, it should come as little surprise that their Sentencia Records self-titled debut is a markedly rhythmic experience. Taking some example perhaps from Slift‘s uptempo space/krautrockism, the Spanish three-piece bring an avant garde vibe even to the ultra-smooth build of “Crab Ball Gate,” hypnotizing through repetition in the low end and drums while the keys weave in and out of prominence, “Little Lizard” arriving with storybook fanfare before toying with willful-sounding low- and high-end frequency imbalance — you go this way and I’ll go that, etc. — and vocals that are duly spaced. The nine-song/49-minute outing is ambitious, droning large in “USG Ishimura” and actually maybe-actually-sampling Altered Beast for the chiptunery of “Rise From Your Grave.” “TuunBaq” brings some of these impulses together at the end, but Gu Vo‘s Gu Vo is more about the trip you take than where you end up, and that’s much to its advantage.
Watch out for the slowdown in about the last minute and a half of “The Maze” (6:28) which is the first of two songs on Witchfinder‘s Endless Garden EP. Things are rolling along, some Acid King nod in that main riff, and then, wham, screams and meaner sludge pushes into the proceedings without so much as a s’il vous plaît from the Clermont-Ferrand-based four-piece. The keyboard later in the subsequent “Eternal Sunset” (10:41) running alongside the slower movement there calls to mind Type O Negative — though I understand it’s Hangman’s Chair holding down such vibes in France these days, so maybe or maybe not an influence — plays a similar function in distinguishing the ending from what’s come before, but it’s the overarching heft of Endless Garden that makes it such a fulfilling answer to 2019’s Hazy Rites (review here), the band perhaps pushing back against some of the more cultish tendencies of current heavy in favor of a more individual statement of fuzz and psych-doomer spaciousness. It’s been a hell of a three years since the album. A reminder of Witchfinder‘s growth in progress is welcome.
Imagine yourself having a dream about surfing and you might be on your way to Centre El Muusa‘s sound. The Estonian instrumentalist four-piece debuted on Sulatron with their 2020 self-titled (review here), and they cohesively explore various realms here, dream-beach among them, but also some twangy slide guitar in opener “Pony Road” and “Desert Song,” the band using the titles seemingly to drop hints of the vibes being captured. Sure enough, the dirty fuzz in “Boomerang” comes back around, “Keila Train” — it’s about a 15-mile trip from Talinn, where the band are from, to Keila — has a distracted line of keys over mellow jazz drumming and meandering guitar, and “Pilot on Board” brings a subtle kosmiche push with an undulating waveform drone that’s like the wind passing under and over the wings of an airplane. Each of these moments of (assisted) evocation can be experienced or not depending on how far in a given listener wants to plunge — or how high they want to float, in the case of “Pilot on Board” — but the abiding sense of exploration in sound remains vital just the same. Wherever it may want to take you at a given moment, it wants to take you. Let it.
I’ll admit that Unwavering Resonance is my first exposure to Slovakia’s 0N0, but it won’t be the last. Their third full-length following 2016’s Reconstruction and Synthesis with an EP and a split between, the new outing collects four cuts across a manageable 36 minutes and begins with its longest track (immediate points) in the 12-minute declaration of purpose “Clay Weight.” Though reputed for more industrialized fare in the past — and still definitely utilizing programming for the ‘drums’ and other synthy sounds — one cannot ignore the chug that rises to prominence in the leadoff, or the malevolence of purpose in the deathly use to which it’s put. Post-metal and death-doom come together fluidly enough in “Clay Weight” and the subsequent “Shattering” (5:12) with a balance tipped to one side or another — the second track, shortest, blasts furiously — and one wouldn’t call what happens in the nine-minutes-each pair of “Unwavering Resonance” and closer “Wander the Vacant Twilight” an evening out, since they continue to lean to particular aspects of their crushing sound in a given stretch, but hell’s bells it’s heavy, and its catharsis is less about making your skin crawl than turning bones into powder. Methodical, not chaotic, but ready to bask in the chaos surrounding. More brutalism than brutal.
Shit, that’s heavy. Released on cassette and download, the 2021 self-titled debut long-player from Savannah, Georgia’s Faeries is a beast working under suitably beastly traditions. Tapping into a tonal density and an and-yet-it-moves crush of riff that reminds of the earliest days of fellow Peach Staters Mastodon, there’s a more straight-ahead, heads-down, push-through-with-the-shoulder sensibility to David Rapp‘s solo outfit, an underlying sense of riff worship in “March March,” “Megadrone,” and the rest of the nine-song/45-minute outing that — much to Rapp‘s credit — are set for destructive purposes rather than self-indulgent progressivism. That’s not to say Faeries, the album, is dumbed down. It’s not, and even in the vocal gruel of “Fresh Laces” and “The Pain of Days” or the chug-‘n’-swing instrumental “The Volcano,” that can be heard in the structure of the songs — “Slurricane” deviates to somewhat lighter tone and also-instrumental closer “Traces” echoes that — but Rapp‘s clear intention here is to base his songwriting around the heaviest sounds possible, and while it’s exciting to think maybe he got there on this first outing, it’s even more exciting to think maybe he didn’t and is going to try again sometime soon. Either way, happy bludgeoning/being bludgeoned.
The Cult of Dom Keller, Raiders of the Lost Archives: Demos & Rarities 2007-2020
Somewhat inevitable that a 100-minute collection of lost tracks, demos, alternate versions and live takes from UK psych adventurers Cult of Dom Keller would be something of a fan-piece. Still, as Raiders of the Lost Archives: Demos & Rarities 2007-2020 spans its 20-song run and multiple lineups of the band, its moving between years and methodologies has plenty of flow if you’re willing to open yourself to the essential fact that the band can do whatever. the. fuck. they. want. To wit, “Monarch” with its relatively forward verses and choruses and the lo-fi howling feedback of “QWERTYUIOP,” or 2020’s creep-into-wash “Dead Don’t Dream” and the garage-psych urgency of 2007’s “We Left This World Behind for a Place in the Sun.” Those who’ve followed Cult of Dom Keller on their merry path will dig the (again, relatively) efficient look at how far they’ve come and in how many different directions, while those unfamiliar with the band might want to find something less inherently uneven to dig on (start with 2020’s Ascend! (review here), then work back), but cuts like “Broken Arm of God” and “Jupiter’s Beard” are ready to catch ears either way, and if it takes time to digest, well heck, you’ll have all the time in the world if you quit your day job, so why not just go ahead and do that?
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — holds that Supplemental Pills got together at the behest of vocalist/guitarist Ezra Meredith when his main outfit, Hearts of Oak stepped back for pandemic lockdown. Fair enough. With Joel Meredith on guitar, bassist/synthesist Aron Christensen (also Hearts of Oak) and drummer/vocalist Mark Folkrod, these seven songs feel carved out of jams as the reportedly were, with “Feel It” blinking momentarily into Endless Boogie-sounding improv preach while mellower and more spacious pieces like opener “Run On,” the nine-minute drone-drawler “Floating Mountains Over Rivers” and the 11-minute fuzz-go repetitions of “Gonna Be Alright” — a decent mantra if e’er there was one — ooze deeper into vibe rock far-outreach. “Freedom March” is fairly active, with Ezra‘s vocals there and in “Run On” seeming to nod at the departed Mark Lanegan, and “The Wizard Was Right” has a sense of movement as well that suits its overlaid verses. If it feels right, it is right. Drone what thou wilt. And if this is what they’re coming up with essentially by accident, one shudders to think what might happen if they actually tried to write a song. It’s just crazy enough to work.
Some sonic coincidence brings Amorphis‘ “Forever More” to mind in hearing the winding guitar figure featured in Green Hog Band‘s instrumental-but-for-the-sample “Iron Horses,” but that’s not a direct influence. The Brooklynite trio’s third full-length, Crypt of Doom, follows last year’s Devil’s Luck (review here) and sees the self-recording trio of vocalist/bassist Ivan Antipov, guitarist Mike Vivisector (also lyrics) and drummer Ronan Berry weaving into and out of Russian-language lyrics on top of their thick-toned sludge rock, which they shove resolutely on “Sweet Tea, Banana Bread” and even give a little shuffle on the penultimate “New Year Massacre,” but which is invariably more suited to the doomly lurch of opener “Dragon” or its later giant-lizard-thing counterpart “Leviathan.” Still, that these guys can make that bubbling cauldron of sludge and are even vaguely interested in doing anything else is admirable, and as raw as Crypt of Doom is, even the air seems to be stale, never mind the bare walls of rock and dirt surrounding. Dig a hole, reside therein, riff.
Most of all, one has to give kudos to Los Angeles experimentalist outfit for daring to cross the line between hard industrial music and the hip-hop it’s been summarily ripping off for the last quarter-century-plus. Alabaster is the third full-length from the unit not-so-secretly led by bassmaster/programmer/etc.-ist Collyn McCoy (also Night City, Aboleth, a bunch of others), and in addition to guest rappers A-F-R-O, Zombae and Kayee on cuts like “Anatomy Autonomy” (relevant) and the becomes-a-black-metal-onslaught “Copy Planet,” the nine-song/32-minute outing regurgitates genre expectations in a spew so willfully individual it can’t help but make its own kind of sense even unto the sound collage of “Segue-08” or “ec63294e-0dcf-4947-bb7c-965769967dbd,” which answers the freak-dance of “A Magical Journey of Love” with sentient-AI-knows-where-you-live moodsetting, which of course is an excellent precursor to the organ-laced cult extremity of “FLESHSELF: Abandon the Altars.” This is never going to be for everyone, but Alabaster‘s willingness to play with risk in sound makes just about everything that ‘fits in’ feel ridiculous. You think you’ve heard it all? Think you’re bored? Check this shit out and see how wrong you are.
Posted in Questionnaire on March 23rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Collyn McCoy of Circle of Sighs & Night City
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that what I do probably fits best into a “composer/producer” box. For a long time I considered myself a bassist who just happened to write some tunes. A “band dude” in other words. But then there was a stretch, from about 2017 to 2021, when I really wasn’t playing much bass at all. I was making a lot of music, in a lot of different projects, but only a bit of it involved four strings tuned way down low. So I figured maybe “bassist” isn’t what I should lead with.
Coming to terms with that fact happened to coincide with “composing” and “producing” becoming a much bigger part of what I do vocationally. I produce a good deal of music for video games, which involves a bit of composing (and performing), but mostly finding talent, booking studios, and following the head chef’s recipe to ensure that the soup gets made to everyone’s liking. But I’ve been doing some film composing as well and in fact I just finished the score to a very fun (and bloody violent) horror film that will be hitting the festival circuit soon. I can’t say much more but if you like Goblin, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and John Carpenter, the score is right in that wheelhouse.
But even a lot of the “avocational” music I make (i.e. my own shit) really doesn’t easily fit in a band box. I mean I get an idea and I make it happen but is it something I’m going to play out? Do I need to put together a new band and go play shows for every thing I do? Do I need to make shirts, sell merch, do a van tour? I mean I would love to, but that seems exhausting. Tommy Meehan from Deaf Club, Cancer Christ, etc etc seems to pull it off, plus make music for a bunch of cool cartoons my daughter loves, but he’s a bit younger than me and also, I’m pretty sure, super-human.
All that said, the Night City live iteration is coming together nicely and will soon be a thing.
Describe your first musical memory.
My dad was a musician — a bassist actually — so there were always musical instruments and musicians around the house. I remember my dad’s friends coming over for a jam session — jazz stuff, standards mostly — and I was bangin’ along on a little electric piano in the corner and to my toddler ears, it worked. Dad’s friends seemed to agree, or at least they were stoned enough that it worked for them in an Ornette Coleman sort of way. Beyond that, though — and this is a very very clear musical memory — it was hearing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” while going to day care in my dad’s Volkswagen Camper Van. That breakdown section gave me chills, and still does. I don’t care if it’s supposed to be Robert Plant jizzing. It’s musical magic.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
DesertFest UK and DesertFest Germany with Ultra Electric Mega Galactic were both fantastic experiences. I’ve played to bigger crowds — a few anyway — but none more appreciative and “on the same page.”
There were a few Aboleth shows that were really special — Clarksville, TN, comes to mind. We were a new-ish band and our album had only been out about a week but there were people singing along to every word. Gave me the feelz.
Also, I did play bass live on network TV with Tony Danza — not the tech-metal band but the actual Tony Danza — which crossed something off a bucket list I didn’t know I had.
But lately, it’s when I take my daughter to her piano class and hear the massive leaps in progress that she makes each week. I get moist eyeballs every time. Every. Damn. Time.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I gave up on firmly held beliefs a long time ago. They never work out. But I suppose accepting the fact that I’m a lot more flawed of a human being than I thought I would be by now, as a middle-aged dude — but that that’s actually OKAY — was a sort of breakthrough.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I honestly don’t know but I’m dying to find out. I’ve been on this journey for a long-ass time and I feel like I’m discovering new things all the time. It’s like a video game where you think you beat the final boss only to realize that was just the end of the first level. Sorry, I’ve been working on games long enough that I’m starting to think in those terms.
How do you define success?
Contentment. Satisfaction. It’s not even happiness necessarily — not everyone is happy or meant to be happy all the time — but just knowing that you hit one out of the park in a way that can always hold up as an example of achieving what you want to achieve.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
A Serbian Film. Without hyperbole I can say that a part of me died when I saw that movie. The Trump Years, especially the pandemic portion of that, had a similar effect on me — just that gross realization that humanity is a lot more nihilistic, self-destructive, hateful, and stupid than I previously had thought.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I have some really big fuckin’ ideas for Circle of Sighs and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I want that project to become. It was never meant to be a band. A creative collective, sure, and music would be a part of what that collective creates. But I always envisioned CoS as more of a touring multimedia event that draws from a whole bunch of disciplines — visual art, theater, video, projection mapping, dance, even mime. And I’m zero percent joking about the mime thing and in fact we recently starting incorporating mime into our live show and believe it or not it was really well received. But CoS, in its ideal final form, will be a lot more like Blue Man Group, Mummenchanz, or Cirque Du Soliel than say Black Label Society. I shouldn’t even need to be on the stage. Anyone should be able to pick up the gauntlet and run with it.
I mean a production like that would take a lot of money, and that’s not a thing that I have a lot of, but perhaps some investor or grantor would allow it to happen. Never say never!
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Expressing something that can’t be better expressed — or understood — any other way.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Hanging out with friends and not having to mask up. Seeing them laugh with their actual mouth holes, hearing them speak not through a wall of microfibre. I mean I was bullish on masks and still am when necessary, but I missed seeing my friends visages and it’s great that I’m starting to again.
I’m looking forward to watching my daughter grow up just so long as it doesn’t happen too fast.
And I look forward to seeing Yob tonight. Which is not musical so much as it is spiritual. I mean I’m not a religious guy by any means, but I’ve seen Yob probably 100 times and it is exactly the same as every beatific event I’ve ever read about — enlightenment, “seeing the light,” holy bliss, ego death — it’s all that and more. But, like, fuckin’ doom.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 18th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Ah man, this is pretty cool. The namechecks below are right on. I hear exactly the part in “Molly Million$” that is the source of the Ministry comparison. Night City is another guise in the increasing number of them from Los Angeles-based Collyn McCoy, known for Circle of Sighs (on whose record I got to guest last year or was it the year before?), Aboleth, Diesel Boots, Trash Titan, The UEMG and so on, and it leans to the industrial side of the dark atmospheres one might expect from Circle of Sighs. There’s a lot going on with it and no tracks streaming yet — I think I had a request in to do a stream? — but a teaser is live and you’ll find it at the bottom of the post.
Also, I think this is like the 33rd post today? They’re not in order of preference or anything, don’t worry. But really, I think this might be number eight or nine on the day. I gotta look.
Oh the things you think about when the beats start to get crushing.
Anyone out there doing laundry?
From the PR wire:
Night City – Kuang Xi
Dealing in Godfleshian cyber-brutality, NIGHT CITY is an industrial/sludge metal project from multi-instrumentalist Collyn McCoy (Circle of Sighs, Aboleth). Anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-capitalist, this project draws thematically from near-future dystopian speculation–think the gritty and disaffected cyberpunk worlds of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Phillip K. Dick. Mirroring the unfiltered harshness of these literary visions, Night City sonically recalls such benchmark acts as Throbbing Gristle, Swans, Ministry, Author & Punisher, and Killing Joke. Perhaps most consequential, however, is the unrelentingly heavy formula established by the aforementioned Godflesh.
In the world of Night City, machines grind bones. Obsolete technologies gain sentience, taking their revenge against the selfish creators who abandoned them. It is an undoubtedly grisly affair. While occupying this unique aesthetic arena, Night City seeks to bring industrial metal back to its aesthetic roots and the implicit harshness and leftist politics demonstrated by the progenitors of the style, all while moving the genre forward in terms of production and sheer heft. To this end, Night City’s debut EP – the four-track Kuang XI – will be released March 11th via Dune Altar, an LA-based label defined by a demonstrated willingness to release music across an eclectic spectrum. The title itself is a dual reference to the Mandarin phrase for “crazy happy,” as well as the computer virus featured in Gibson’s Neuromancer. At risk of making a statement, Kuang XI is the opening salvo of the Next Wave of American Industrial Metal.
Night City sits at the cross-section of two impulses. On one hand is McCoy’s desire to recreate the overwhelming sensation of encountering industrial metal for the first time. On the other is a drive to write music with politics at the core–anarcho-socialism, post-capitalism, toxic media, social media, climate change, workers’ rights, the reemergence of global fascism, and revolution are all topics and targets of the Night City lens. The result of this thematic, intellectual, and sonic conglomerate? A blunt soundtrack for rage and revolt. A digital death rattle for a rancid, dystopian world.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 25th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
I… uh… I’m on this record. That’s a thing I haven’t been able to say in a while, but it feels oddly good. Released last Bandcamp Friday earlier in the month as a single, the Joni Mitchell cover “Roses Blue” (discussed here) will open side B of Circle of Sighs‘ upcoming second long-player, Narci. I’m interested to hear the rest of the LP, of course, as I dug the crap out of the Los Angeles outfit’s 2020 debut, Salo (review here), to the point that I basically invited myself to sing on a song. A little presumptuous when you think about it, but I’ve always been kind of a jerk.
Metal Assault Records, also California-based, will release Narci in June, and if you get the chance to check out the colored vinyl, it’s gorgeous. I’m not trying to sell you anything here, but if you like pretty records, this is a pretty record.
I do feel bad for the owl though.
From the PR wire:
CIRCLE OF SIGHS signs with Metal Assault Records; New Album Details Revealed
Metal Assault Records is pleased to add to its roster an international synth doom collective that is sure to mesmerize one and all.
A few months after featuring on the January 2020 Metal Assault Mixtape Vol. 2 compilation release with their apocalyptic doom opus “Burden of the Flesh” and their first public live performance at the corresponding mixtape release event, CIRCLE OF SIGHS released their stunning debut full-length Salo, which rightfully made its way onto Metal Assault editor’s 2020 albums-of-the-year listicle. Now, Metal Assault Records is delighted to welcome CoS to its own label roster.
MAR will release the second CoS full-length, Narci, on June 4 2021 on limited-edition colored vinyl, digipack CD, and digital download. Pre-orders for the vinyl + digital download will be launched on March 5 on circleofsighs.bandcamp.com. More details surrounding the vinyl, i.e. colors, packaging, etc will be unveiled soon. To coincide with the pre-order launch, the album’s lead single “Heaven in Flames” will also be revealed on the same date.
With great pleasure, MAR is hereby revealing the incredibly vivid artwork that makes the Narci album cover, hand-painted by Nicole Momaney:
Narci Final Sequence:
SIDE A 01 – Spectral Arms 10:03 02 – We Need Legends 6:06 03 – A Crystal Crown of Cosmic Pain 5:14
Total 21:23
SIDE B 04 – Roses Blue 5:30 05 – Segue 04 0:49 06 – Narci 5:28 07 – Heaven in Flames 5:01 08 – The Man Who Stole the Wind 5:08
Total 21:56
Narci was mixed and mastered by Katie Gilchrest (High Priestess).
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 5th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
This just occurred to me to post, like five minutes ago. I had another post all set up for an album I’ve been listening to all week and then decided last-second to write about the Circle of Sighs track. I’m not trying to get away with anything in terms of self-promotion or something like that — I’m on the song, doing vocals. I think it’s on the Circle of Sighs Bandcamp page, but it’s not like I’m making money off it and even if some came in from that, I’m pretty sure I’d still be well in the hole on recording costs. Doesn’t matter. It was worth it to me.
I hadn’t been in a recording session as someone actually recording in a really long time. Nine years, maybe? And in a real studio even longer. A while ago, on Thee Facebooks, I posted Circle of Sighs’ “Fleshself” single and said something along the lines of “god damn I want to be in this band.” I’d actually talked with the prefer-to-remain-anonymous parties behind Circle of Sighs about collaborating before, but the atmospheric industrial doom of “Fleshself” hit me right where my head’s been at in its combination of harsh, broad-reaching, and heavy sounds.
The band reached out after that and asked if I wanted to do a cover. Immediate impostor syndrome. I don’t belong in a studio. I don’t belong working with a band. I don’t even belong writing for a magazine. I belong on my laptop — and no, I don’t know how to record on my laptop. But I said yes anyway. In 2019, I got on stage with friends in Clamfight and did a guest vocal spot at Saint Vitus Bar. I won’t say it gave me the itch, but it definitely didn’t not give me the itch. I was in bands a long time ago, mostly a group called Maegashira who put out one album and a couple splits and demos that, on the whole, I’m still proud of. If we were making the record today, I’d hold a couple songs back for later release — it ran long — but it was a different era, and beyond that, I stand by that work.
Anyhow, I knew I wanted to cover a woman. Just tired of dudes. Dudes everywhere. Dudes with beards. Dudes who look like me, or dudes who don’t. Dudes dudes dudes, day in and day out. I picked Joni Mitchell, who seemed almost too obvious but I didn’t remember off the top of my head anyone doing in a heavy context recently, and she’s of course an amazing, legendary singer-songwriter, and someone whose folkish structure would translate to a heavy context. “Roses Blue” is about a friend getting into tarot and mysticism, so it fit a kind of cultish vibe as well, which I thought Circle of Sighs might go for. They did.
This was before the holidays, and then after the New Year, I booked time with Mike Moebius at Moonlight Mile in Hoboken, NJ. I’ve known Mike for a long time through the Kings Destroy guys, and he’s someone I trusted and felt comfortable with as much as I was going to feel comfortable. The ideas I was hearing in my head pushed the boundaries of what I’d done before, but on the other hand, it had been 10-plus years since I recorded anything in a studio, so I didn’t know what was going to come out when I opened my mouth. Largely it was off-key and pitchy, but Mike worked with me and made it come together such as it did. By the end of that session I was exhausted but excited, and that’s how it should be.
I’d rewritten the lyrics to “Roses Blue” — which felt a bit like sacrilege, right? That’s Joni Mitchell. It wasn’t just about making lines like “she lays her religion on her friends” from the original more modern. Coming from my mouth, I didn’t want the song to sound like I was criticizing the woman in the story, which would come across like misogyny. Instead, I thought about how in the last 50 years, and really the last 20, the idea of “friend” has changed. I have 5,000 “friends” on Facebook. Most of them I’ve never met. So I thought about friendship in that context, and tried to turn the lyrics around to indict not the lady getting witchy but the sort of pathetic male gaze coming from the other side. Her “friends.” “With trauma there’s no barter/Inside self-pity you swim,” and so on, if you can even understand those lines in how they’re screamed.
This was an experience for me. A good one, I think. When the first session files were sent to Circle of Sighs, they wanted more screams, so I went back in a couple days later and banged that out, easy peasy. That felt good. I think what I’m most proud of in the whole thing is the one falsetto line that made it in. A little bit I regret not doing a version of the entire early verses that way to give Circle of Sighs more to play with in mixing, but you do what you can when you can. I’ll take “of rain and roses blue” and call it a win.
Obviously I wouldn’t post this in any kind of review context — it’s hard enough feigning impartiality about bands I’m a nerd for let alone something I contributed to — so it seemed to me this was the space where I might be able to talk a about making it in a context that’s a little more personal than the average writeup tends to be. If I was wrong about that or you don’t give a crap, that’s fair. Thanks for reading this far if you have.
Circle of Sighs will reportedly have a new album out later this year. I don’t know if this song will be on it or not. And for me, I don’t know if it will lead to anything else or what, but it felt good to help create something like this after so long.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
Thanks for reading and have a great and safe weekend.
Digging deep on some of this stuff, and I like that. I mean, yeah, you’ve probably heard Enslaved and Lowrider by now, and maybe Black Rainbows, but stuff like Burning Brain Band, Jointhugger and King Gorm could be new to you. I hope so anyhow, that’s why I picked the tracks. That and I thought they were cool. Pretty simple process when it comes down to it.
I did the voice tracks for this one while my son played (first) with kinetic sand and (then) on the piano, so that’s kind of a mess, but I’ve come to enjoy that and it’s a good show either way. If you manage to check it out, stick around for the end, because the last two songs, the long ones from Dire Wolves and Stonegrass, are absolutely killer. I was recently put onto both records and I have absolutely zero regrets. Cardinal Fuzz put out the Dire Wolves LP in April and Stonegrass is out through Cosmic Range Records in Toronto digitally now with LP to follow. Both albums are worth your time if you have the time.
And as always, thanks for listening if you do.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmeradio.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 05.29.20
Circle of Sighs
Kukeri
Salo*
Lamp of the Universe
The Eastern Run
Dead Shrine*
Lowrider
Pipe Rider
Refractions*
BREAK
Enslaved
Homebound
Utgard*
Wren
Seek the Unkindred
Groundswells*
StoneBirds
Only God
Collapse and Fail*
Jointhugger
I Am No One
I Am No One*
Saavik
He’s Dead Jim
Saavik*
Black Rainbows
Hypnotized by the Solenoid
Cosmic Ritual Supertrip*
The Burning Brain Band
Bolero/Float Away
The Burning Brain Band*
King Gorm
Beyond Black Rainbow
King Gorm*
BREAK
Dire Wolves
Flow & Heady / By the Fireside
Flow and Heady*
Stonegrass
Tea
Stonegrass*
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is June 12 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
It is inevitable that the death of an artist brings out tributes, but the truth of the matter is Circle of Sighs both recorded and put together the video for the Kraftwerk cover “The Man Machine” before the recent passing of synth-pop pioneer Florian Schneider. Timely then, in a kind of unfortunate way. Circle of Sighs — a trio, if I discern the horned and masked figures in the photo above correctly — will release their debut full-length, Salo, on June 19 through Pillars of Creation Records, and sure enough the cover isn’t the only track on the nine-cut/52-minute cosmic cult doom offering to make use of keys or pop influences. “Hold Me Lucifer” is catchy and melodic to go with its weighted chug and overarchingly grim atmosphere, and though it gives over to a rousing vocal duet and more guitar-led fare and some harsh screams that call to mind a connection with Los Angeles’ High Priestess, whose Katie Gilchrest mixed, the beginning of “Desolate,” the intro to “Unicorn Magic” and the segue that follows (the third of three on the album) all utilize synth in considerable fashion. Likewise the closing title-track. At the same time, the nine-minute “Kukeri” follows a linear progression building from acoustic guitar to a progressive metal apex and dropping back again, so from opener “Burden of the Flesh” onward, the proceedings are hardly staid or repetitive as varying arrangement elements and moods come and go.
The three segues help build a full-length flow between some of these shifts of intention, but it is up to the songs themselves to ensnare the listener, and that’s done with an immersive depth of mix and an abiding art rock weirdness that, given the band’s imagery, one can’t help but relate to earliest Ufomammut or even a more doomed vision of California’s Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, whose progressive bent eventually consumed them and sent them into a universe unknown (actually other bands), but for Circle of Sighs, their commitment to heavy, crunching riffing and the other aesthetic elements at play throughout Salo may indeed save them from that grim fate in the longer term. That is, while Salo is a lot to keep up with, the foundation Circle of Sighs are building in their songwriting feels solid enough for them to work from going forward. There is a complex thought process playing out in this material. It is not haphazard when the keys return four minutes into “Desolate.” The title-track, safely tucked away after the 10-minute “Unicorn Magic/Segue-03” one-two, makes an attempt to tie everything together with progressive guitar and keyboards and electronic beats, and though it succeeds to some degree, there’s of course more left to be said. One suspects that perhaps that’s intentional as well.
But what unfolds across the broad path to get to that moment of closure is strange, purposeful and consuming enough to be considered progressive. On first listen, Salo plays out as a kind of wash of intent — it almost buries you in it — but subsequent playthroughs gradually reveal the nuance of the ceremony at work and the human drive for expression underlying what might seem at first to be otherworldly chaos. Left to their own figurative and literal devices, one suspects the blend of styles at work in these songs will continue to meld, reshape, be added to and subtracted from over time, as nothing here feels permanent in a “this is how it’s gonna be” kind of sense, aside maybe from the weirdness. It’s gonna be weird, and so much the better.
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not sure if the below is a premiere or not. I tagged it as one above, and I don’t think anyone’s going to fight me on it, but I think maybe it’s been shared already. If that’s the case, sorry to mislead. These are confusing times and, well, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer to start with. So, you know. Apologies if you’ve been mislead. One way or the other, though, in visual and aural cues, Circle of Sighs‘ take on Kraftwerk offers a look a the band’s project as regards their debut album and perhaps their larger mission too. We’ll see about that over time, I suppose.
Until then, I hope you enjoy “The Man Machine”:
Circle of Sighs, “The Man Machine” official video
Occult-themed synth-doom collective Circle of Sighs comes wrapped in a veil of mystery. Their anonymity is by design. In today’s age of hyperinformation, the group prefers that the music takes the forefront (as well as the visuals that are a key component to their work). Thus, dear reader, you will not be getting soundbites. All we can offer is some vital information and a bit of history.
Their work began in 2018, as rough demo recordings were hewn by clandestine shamans and cosmonauts on a sub-rosa mission to merge the celestial and the terrestrial. The result of their effort was an album of existential heaviness that pitted synthesis against nature: Digital beats, downtuned riffs, harsh keyboards, and warm tube amps. Their genre-bending and -blending dredges the uncanny valley to cull a sound both strange and familiar.
For those willing to wait comes Salo. The nine-song opus, available on CD, cassette and digital download from Pillars of Creation Records on June 19th, is a fully realized work from a band that cut no corners to achieve exactly what they set out to do: In short, redefine metal. As evidence, look no further than the lead-off single, ‘The Man Machine.’ Their dystopian spin on the Kraftwerk classic pairs trudging doom guitars with ambient synths and vocoder harmonies, captured in a video that recalls the after-hours programming of mid-1980s MTV.
