15th June 2009
At 11:00 GMT
Circulus’
excellent new album arrives via the new model of fan support: advance
orders and special “appear in the artwork” tickets to fund the
recording and promotion. It’s a concept album, perhaps their best
record yet, delivering a very clear and likely divisive document of
exuberant psychedelic folk highly tinged by Elizabethan music and
instrumentation.
It revolves around ideas of the world transfiguring, not so much by climate change or the oil running out, but
by Alien influence and the Mayan calendar. But you neither need to
agree, or be a fan, to enjoy it. There are some truly classic songs on
Thought Becomes Reality that you could love without considering how
seriously they intend it to be taken. Personally I can do both, and
this rather long review will tell you why, if you have the time.
Circulus
are often the object of aggression. It’s mostly directed at their
Mediaeval/Folk Revival/Alien abduction aesthetic and the overwhelming
influence that it has on their music. I once saw a man maniacally
slamming a stable door, screaming at the audience and the band who
stood in the grounds of Pengersick Castle as Circulus played an encore.
When someone went to placate him he lunged with a fist, missing his
target and losing his balance. He then proceeded to shake his fist and
continue shouting from what I believe was his holiday home. Though I
must say I have seen a thousand moments of happiness and revelling at
the live shows I have attended for every bewildered word of distaste I
have heard or read.
Take a look at this
review of Thought Becomes Reality on Electric Roulette by clicking
here.
An excerpt of the review:
“Sadly, now, Circulus have taken this fun image and made it a reality,
shot through the Irony Filter. Folk rock usually works best when it's
not much more than plugging a guitar in. Circulus have made some
rollicking good tracks, ruined by half-baked skits about UFOs and
repopulating the world.”
The reviewer ends his piece by saying “I
really want to like this album... I only wish the band wanted the
same”. I don’t know where to start with that, particularly the bullshit
last sentence. Perhaps I should start with the fact that he has based
his feelings on the idea that Michael Tyack and co are taking the piss with the apocalypse/rejuvenation
themes which populate the album. They are sometimes, but not in the way
he thinks they are. I should also say that I have met and chatted with
Mr Tyack and Will Summers (who plays various woodwind instruments) on a
number of occasions and found them to be very good company. But my bias is not quite what you might expect.
I
am about to go off on one of my customary rambles, but before I do let
me say that I love this album, though it carries some thorns in its
side. There is an undercurrent of weary sadness and pain which seems
very real and very urgent. Pain that stems from living in a society
whose value system is based on psychopathic principles, from seeing it
all from the vantage point of a consciousness which craves life and
love from a world which can be cold and dead; sometimes because of the
way we deal with those cravings and sometimes because of that society.
Now for the ramble (“that wasn’t it?!” I hear you cry?): I first saw
Circulus at the Greenman festival when it moved to its current location
a few years ago. I hadn’t heard their music, though I had read a long
piece on their history in The Observer and I was interested, in a slightly twisted way.
Back
then I thought I had a fix on what good psychedelic folk-rock was, and
it was a rather narrow perspective. Standing on the hill a good 300
yards from the band I found their music offensive to my tastes, to the
point where I can relate to the Electric Roulette
writer's attitude somewhat, in retrospect. I took a stance against it:
I wanted my psychedelic, antiquity bent music to focus on shamanistic
doom and dread and to take it very seriously to boot.
What
I couldn’t see at the time is that Circulus have stripped all elements
of reverent cool from their music, the kind of cool which people use to
dress up pseudo-mystical posturing as something unquestionable and
deserving of deadly respect. Those people
are the frauds. By opening themselves to ridicule and revelling in all
that they clearly love about early music forms Tyack and Circulus offer
something which is both self-consciously funny and of immensely
heartfelt importance; to them and a few others at least. To some it’s
just a straightforward laugh, but knowing that Tyack means what he
sings I feel certain that there are a good deal of fans who also
believe what he believes; more of that later.
It
seems very similar to the approach of another robed act, who are also
frequently judged for their image. In my recent live review of Sunn0)))
(which you can find
here)
I said “The costumes and mannerisms of the band might look tacky to
some, but the exuberance and cohesiveness of their outfits look
strangely sensible compared to the hipsters, the devotees of the cult
of fashion, the cult of clothing, the cult of now” which is an
appraisal that could equally apply here. My enjoyment of the two acts also seems
to have a correlation. I wouldn’t say I count myself amongst their
devoted followings as such, but I can see why some people take these
bands to their hearts so fervently.
Now that that’s out of the way I can get on to the music (Our apologies for the delay, Strange Glue
cares about your custom and endeavours to put things right as of now….
Our further apologies, we are being informed that even the discussion
of the actual album will include wilful digressions. The
writer has mumbled something about “these spiritual and sociological
tangents” being fundamental to considering music about “The End” as he
puts it. We will return you to normal service as soon as possible).
‘Guide Our Way’ begins with some minor chord acoustics, fluttering
synths and flute. Michael Tyack delivers a spoken word description of
the arrival of “lights coming towards us in the sky”. It’s part wonder,
part sadness, part terror and part joy. The sung lyrics are wistful,
quasi-religious and slightly disturbed.
"Flying saucer in the sky have you come for me this time?
"Saw you hovering above the sea, now I’m waiting patiently."
There
are painful elements of hope and despair in the song, Tyack, with
backup, then sings “you’re our only hope this day, we believe there’s a
better world waiting”.
This is a theme and tone that dominates half of
the album. The other half, far better in my opinion, loses itself in
electrically charged renderings of ancient tunes such as ‘Trotto’ and
‘Tristan’s Lament’ and more direct and universal messages such as the
beautifully simple ‘Within You is the Sun’.
Back
in ‘Guide Our Way’ Tyack repeatedly refers to the meaning of the
patterns made by the “higher beings”, that are found in “cathedrals and
all of your architecture”. He suggests that this is the coming together
of centuries of outside influence, that finally we (at least the ones
that recognise it) are going to be let off the hook and taken to the “better world waiting”.
I
can empathise with the hope, but only the element which longs for there
to have been some meaning in all the senseless battling of religion and
all the repression, that humanity will finally come together and make
some sense. But I think those hopes are
an exaggerated and misguided by-product of recognising the horrific way
in which human beings have treated themselves and their world.
I
have talked with Michael about the beliefs some hold in what is to come
in 2012; I hope I am correct in my memory when I say that he told me
that he believed the world would turn
into light and only the people who recognised it would survive beyond
this moment. I told him I held no similar belief, and I do wonder how
someone could trust the predictions of the Mayans, whose use of
authority via religion may well have differed little from that of the
Catholic Church over the past 1700 years, and not trust every
other calendar and prediction that would inevitably clash with each
other wildly. Without wishing to cast aspersions on these beliefs, I
think they slide very nicely into the void left by the confusion of
being alive at this point in time, perhaps at every point in time.
I
don’t
think these songs are meant metaphorically and that is why I am
coming at them from this angle. I have some respect for them because
there are some very good-natured and wise observations lying in the
root. It’s just that the flower to me is a little too rosy, I think we
should have to stay here and work with what we have, even if the aliens
did offer us a way out; an idea I believe to be a fantasy, but
nonetheless a strategy to cope with the world which is more sane than
dealing with our fragile mortality by going to school, getting a “good”
job, buying lots of stuff and then getting scared of our death when the
years have passed. So I want to leave the higher beings behind for a
while (though the tunes that carry those prophecies are genuinely
great) and talk about what I see as the higher value of a band like
Circulus.
The
second
time I saw Circulus play it wasn’t technically Circulus. It was
Tyack and Will Summers playing under the moniker of Princes in the
Tower in the garden of a cottage under a beautifully lit dome built of
willow and canvas. Summers played his Crum horns and recorders, Michael
played
guitar and sang. That night something in me broke, the rhythms of these
old tunes are made to make you dance and that was just what they did to
me. I am not one for dancing that often and I wasn’t particularly
drunk, but I couldn’t help it. When Michael stomped his phaser and
distortion pedals for a blistering archaic solo it pissed all over
traditionalism, modernism and classicism all at once: Real Folk Music.
And the people came together in that garden, united by the music, not
by the hope that aliens would relieve us of the burdens of being more
than just thoughts.
This effect has been repeated on me a few times and I want to say to Circulus:
stay with the now, because that is what you have the ability to
improve. You have for me at least, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in one
of your hats or robes or singing such words. Perhaps caught drunk yes,
but I think you all know what I’m saying: This isn’t “my thing”, but I
don’t know what “my thing” is anyway, nor do I particularly want to.
The
distant
drums and softy sung choral vocals over the drifting jangle of
‘Kalendar Maya’ strips prophecy back to something a little lighter; joy
at the dawning of a new day. What that new day holds or represents,
is up to the listener. The only thing the song imparts is happiness at
the continuing of our existence, we live to perceive this flawed but
beautiful world a little longer. The vocals are ethereally warm, the
instrumentation restrained and impassioned at once. One thing I must
say is that the production on this record smoothes off some of the
wilder, rougher edges that make the live shows so captivating. It would
have ranked higher had it been recorded a little more viscerally.
This
leads
into the aforementioned ‘Within You is the Sun’, a song that I
knew inside out after hearing it once at a live show. It’s very simple,
and stays with you. An electric guitar picking it’s way in and out of
phase, drifting between grainy and clear. The bass amiably plods the
melody, the drums are simple, the flute clear and bright.
It’s a very beautiful, lilting tune and I hope it’s inclusion at the
end of the album indicates that they consider a message like this to be
the most fitting end, the best summation of what they’re about. Tyack
sings,
"Don’t let it take you down the road that leads you nowhere.
"Don’t let it drag you down, don’t let it take you over."
I
believe he sings for us and for himself with true sincerity and good
motivations. I hope they continue to make music beyond 2012, I hope I
get to see them play again soon. It’s a good time and I recommend it to
you all. It’s a grand album indeed, but I know for certain they could
top it. Someone please give them a bloody record deal, a good one. Give
them money and tons of time in the studio, they’re a national treasure.
I mean that.