ZOPALKI

This early record of Finnish group Circle caught my attention from their large discography, as it was interestingly released through a prolific Finnish Bad Vugum label, focusing to punk scene in 1980's (for example early CMX records, "Liimanarina" and "Paska", a solo artist which was disbanded due internal tensions of the members). Album cover art promises some archaic and raw approach, a promise which is fulfilled well on this mainly instrumental record.

The album opens as mystic, dreamy, dark, hypnotic and pleasant aural voyage. The drums have nice groovy touch in them, creating with the group a calm vortex sucking the listener to the grey realms of Finnish winter ("brilliant colors, heh). Second track introduces the "punk / heavy" elements of the group via hard guitar riffings, the composition following the repetitive stoner rock style. Critical treble sounds are dominant in "Warszawa", waiting patiently and growing tension before opening. Next song has menacing minimalistic groove with nice quiet bass solo and some singing too. "Argont" builds a tense tunnel with soothing synths and distracting guitar riffs, reaching really powerful climax, resembling little a horror movie soundtrack. Next songs contain a stagnant dark ambience, relaxed open mantra, and then more oppressing with interesting rhythm layers and switches with guitar and drums position in the front. "Re-Masturbated" opens with quick acoustic sounds, leading to mellower downer/stoner passage with some chanting. This is followed by intense tension building and really dirty sounds, and album closes with a track having interesting rhythms, leading to a long minor-key ambiences.

The record is a very good compact entity, none of the tracks jump forward as clear favorite or evident filler, so the whole album is a pleasant trip to listen trough from start to end (if this style is favored) I am not yet very familiar with the group, but I have known the name long, and saw them on stage in spring 2009. My impression has been they partly do not do stuff fitting my taste, and partly doing that very fine, and evidently they are very talented musicians and performers. Some later recordings I heard from them had very straight drum beat, which is not luckily present in this fine album, containing impulsive, artistic and not too much produced sincere psychedelic rock moods from Finland. I recommend it warmly to fans of hardcore music, and will check out their other albums out too.