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Review by Bill Binkelman Circular are the Norwegian duo Bjarte Andreassen and Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik and they make highly individualistic EM and ambient music that pretty much inhabits its own little subgenre. glass darkly is a very accessible recording and contains no less than seventeen tracks(!) owing to the fact that none is even five minutes long. In that way, they are even more atypical from the "normal" electronic music artists whom I review. By concentrating on writing shorter compositions, they are able to head in a lot more directions than most artists, however, their music is never disjointed and the flow of glass darkly is remarkably cohesive. I consider their music to be at least somewhat dystopian in nature (it's not hard to draw that conclusion when "Jazz Kid" includes a snippet of dialogue (easily recognized, too) from the SF film Logan's Run. The music is frequently dominated by darker tonalities and minor chord/note melodies, yet their choice of uptempo rhythms plus a certain quirkiness (bordering on whimsy sometimes) means that they are less concerned with bringing you down than with entertaining and making you think at the same time. In this fashion, they resemble Finnish artist Ozone Player (Otso Pakarinen), because both of them interweave exciting and fresh electronic musical elements and beats with quirky and sometimes foreboding undercurrents. However, where Ozone Player's music tends to be frenetic and higher energy (bordering on manic perhaps), Circular's is pleasantly languid and relaxed with predominant mid or slow tempo beats. I could also hazard a guess that a lot of glass darkly would appeal to fans of Aphex Twin (mostly SAW II), Todd Fletcher (a.k.a. psychetropic) or possibly even lovers of music on the Foundry label. Picking out favorite tracks (from among the sixteen!) or even detailing more than a handful of selections would require too many words for this review. However, of special note are the first two songs, "Clay" and "Titan" which open the album with a double does of brilliance ("Clay" with glitch beats over an uptempo bass line, sparse piano and swirling synths, and "Titan" with a reverberating repeating "quacking" tone and ethereal keyboards morphing into a pulsing cosmic whirlpool of beats and textures). But that's only two songs and there are plenty more to recommend here. The cyber-jazzy "Jazz Kid" has a slinky sexy vibe going on (the Logan's Run soundclip is at the end of the song and segues into the dubbish "Spook"), "Revolved" bounces reverbed tones back and forth against panning skittering percussive effects and alien electronic sounds, "Bliss" merges tones and bass beats into laptop skritching rhythms, and "Wireframe" paints a forlorn soundscape of ebbing and flowing drones and vaguely disturbing background noises, eventually introducing a pounding techno beat underneath the proceedings. Amidst the more accessible ambient and EM are some cuts that might be a little too out there for the casual fan of these genres. "Mr. Deltoid" sounds like a laptop gone slightly amuck, exploring every electronic effect on its hard drive (although, I kinda dig the quirkiness of it and if you listen on headphones, there is a method to its madness). "Classico" retains some of that same glitchy/laptop sensibility but layers it on top of a gradually escalating combination of darker tinted synth swells and pulsing beats. There are also elements of acid jazz scattered here and there on the album as well as a wide assortment of dialogue samples, sometimes in the foreground and sometimes buried in the mix. What I like about glass darkly is how much intelligence it exhibits, exemplified through the sonic choices the artists make and the patterns they weave on this recording. It's not just that they (i.e. Circular) are unconventional, but that they are always going somewhere with their music. It's not noodling or pointless abstraction, yet it's also quite adventurous at times. I'd consider them in the same league as cyberCHUMP as both duos are idiosyncratic pioneers of genre-smashing, yet both also retain both obvious humanity and (for the most part) true accessibility for all but the most timid. I highly recommend this album for both its brazenness and its delightful blend of the unusual with the catchy! |
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