MILJARD

"New Wave of NWOFHM!"

News came out in 2006 of a new Circle album and fans were eagerly waiting for it. Since their "Sunrise" album Circle has taken a heavier root making a clear statement with its NWOFHM tag. With the release of "Tulikoira" fans were certain that this will be their new style for now on, but boy they were wrong. They were way wrong. If you bought this album without hesitation expecting a double disc jam packed with motorik bass lines, hypnotic riffs, trance-inducing synths and pompous drums then you're in bad luck. This album has nothing you would expect a Circle album to have, nothing. So leave your expectations behind as well as your leather jacket and spikes, sit back and relax because you won't need all of that stuff here.

Delicate piano compositions, unstructured melodies and a snowy atmosphere is what you'll get here with Miljard. No krautrock nor metal, just abstract compositions made mostly with piano. This is certainly a relaxing album that's perfect to listen to in rainy nights, but it won't be an accessible album, though (after all, this is Circle we're talking about). This albums requires patience and I mean ALOT of patience to fully appreciate it. Being a fan of the band won't help you either since this album is so far off the band's usual sound that you won't even know its Circle unless someone told you it was them.

The music on this album feels very "artsy". It's the music that avant-garde artists have in their mind when painting (and this is certainly avant-garde music). Songs like "Parmalee" and "Sophie" bring images of a winter night in Scandinavia. The notes played by the pianos are the sounds little snow flakes make when they touch the ground. The wolf howls in "Cornelia" and the bird songs in several other songs through the album help you get more in the mood as well. There are also some psychedelic touches in the album here and there. In the first disc they aren't very present except in "Parmalee", but in the second disc it's all over the place specially in "Cornelia" and the closer "Viitane" which is the only song that sounds like Circle made it. The second disc is also more structured than the first one too making it the most accessible one of the two, while the first disc has a certain jazzy undertone.

There's a certain innocence and human feel that was never present in their discography and this is part of what makes this album so special (aside from being totally different musically speaking than any of their previous albums). This isn't for everyone, you need a certain amount of patience that even I have trouble having. I don't know to who I can recommend this album to, but if you like avant-garde, a bit of minimalism, delicate yet abstract piano compositions and maybe a hint of jazz then you'll enjoy this album.

From this release onward these crazy Finns have been evading expectations. Every release show a departure from their previous sound and a dive to a new unexpected one and this can clearly be seen with Panic and Tower. What will Jussi and co. lead us to next?

And again there's only Chamberry's review about a Finnish experimental product. As I said on my Magyar Posse review, he succeeds to describe the music superbly and with unbelievable patience, whereas a lazier reviewer might just summarize it all in a single sentence. Miljard is indeed an album that a casual listener is tempted to handle with the least possible effort and judge it merely as nearly two hours of minimalistic Ambient, all the same from start to end. I'm not truly impressed by this music, as delicate as it is in the chosen style. It's not that it would be too strange and difficult to get into. Yes, one can say I'm lacking the PATIENCE this music requires. But I've heard this kind of music before, by Brian Eno and many other explorers of his invention, Ambient. Now, you should think only of Eno's MOST minimalistic Ambient works, and maybe the minimalistic/experimental music done earlier in the art music field (John Cage and such), not to get wrong expectations.

I haven't listened to CIRCLE before, but I read them to be very unpredictable band shifting from noisy, experimental rock to almost any kind of stuff, and this album was VERY unpredictable as a Circle album if I understood. So I guess being their long-time listener gives no other device than maybe patience to digest this 2-CD. But if you're a connoisseur of Minimalism, there shouldn't be any difficulties to enjoy this album whether or not you've heard of the group.

The tracks are from 8 to 22 minutes long with two shorter exceptions, and they all pass as 'wallpaper music', that is, with no clearly notable changes during their lengths - or between each other, to generalize cruelly. But that's probably only the surface impression. To a patient listener there is constantly some tiny sonic activity to feed one's inner visions. Forget the usual rhytmic playing of guitars, bass and drums. It's all like abstract painting that at first sight looks empty but with a closer look responds to viewer's own inner space. Chamberry described the piano notes as snow flakes touching the ground, and my impression was the same.The leaflet includes pictures of the band members on a summer cottage surroundings on a snowy winter. Not a word is given to form any exceptations of the music, and the titles don't help much either. Most of them seem like persons' names; first name, surname or an unofficial calling name.

Is it all worth of two hours is a useless question, because the sense of time is better to leave aside when listening to this kind of music. Quite possibly the band improvised and taped many many hours of material and worked the best of it into two hours, instead of stretching a handful of sonic ideas into two hours, as it might seem to many listeners.

This two disc set was released by CIRCLE in 2006 and is quite a change from the previous albums where they had become increasingly heavy. This in fact is quite the oposite. Very ambient and low key with lots of sparse piano melodies along with effects, percussion, bass and guitar. This is all so laid back and considering there is 2 hours of music here it's a long listen.

I must admit things do not start off very well for me as the first three tracks are my least favourites, so we're talking 50 minutes of music right there. If I was to rate the rest of this recording minus these three tracks it would be an easy four stars for me.Things improve with the fourth song called "Manni" which is still minimalistic but for some reason I like it a lot better. "Salenius" has piano and bass standing out early. Effects and more join in and it's building after 4 minutes. Good track.

"Sophie" starts off disc two with beautiful but sparse sounds including piano. It settles even more after 9 minutes as the main piano stops. It does get fuller again though. "Muhle" has lots of atmosphere with a spacey pulsating soundscape with sparse piano. Great sound here. "Cornelia" is again sparse piano and atmosphere. "Bakkis" has this atmosphere that shakes the soundscape then it settles back late. "Viitane" has a motorik feel to it then it settles back tempo-wise around 9 minutes.

So lots to like here but once again I wish they had stuck with a single album instead of a double.