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

Chris Soohoo – Mime 1 (Horus)
Mavis Figuls – Mime 2 (Hathor)

Recorded live at Transplants Brewing – Palmdale, CA

Mixed and Mastered by Matt Lynch at Mysterious Mammal – Venice, CA

Atmos mix by Rob Wrong at Wrong Way Recording – Portland, OR

BluRay authored by Asaf Blasberg – Brooklyn, NY

Artwork by Skillit

https://www.facebook.com/circleofsighs/
https://www.instagram.com/circleofsighs
https://circleofsighs.bandcamp.com/
https://circleofsighs.com/

https://www.instagram.com/suspirium.space

Circle of Sighs, Circle of Sighs Performs an Invocation concert film teaser

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.

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