Finland's Circle: Strange and Beautiful Music from a Strange and Beautiful Place

Circle
Since the dawn of 20th-century modernism, culture theorists have been claiming that the edgiest and maybe most significant artistic statements have come out of conflict, suffering, revolt, longing and some general need for self-expression. If that’s the case, then who would believe that Finland–that idyllic Valhalla of socialistic democracy, uniformly high standards of living, low crime rates, scant pollution, children’s book author Tove Jansson and poofy Guns ’N Roses prototypes Hanoi Rocks–would have spawned the most fascinating, vital and enduring art-rock unit of the past decade?

Given the marginal success of likeminded but pitifully inferior combos like Trans Am, Mogwai and Cul de Sac, it’s about time that Circle have finally planned their first transatlantic tour. The group swelled into a mind-boggling, 10-man mini-orchestra for its recent European dates, but the five principal members–leader/singer/guitarist-turned-bassist Jussi Lehtisalo, guitarist Teemu Elo, guitarist Jyrki Laiho, keyboardist Teemu Niemelä and drummer Janne Peltomäki–now embark on the three-week, American outing. This Friday, they’ll share the Knitting Factory stage with Oval, the German button-pushers who create order out of skipping CDs. On Monday, they crowd into Brownies.

Lehtisalo has also scored two domestic record deals. On Sept. 12, New York’s Feldspar label, distributed through Koch via KnitMedia, issued the U.S. version of Circle’s fifth album, the diverse, well-produced Pori. This conceptual work about the band’s hometown is a mighty return to form that summarizes and improves on several years of developmental meanderings. The single and MTV2-submitted video, "Back to Pori," reasserts Lehtisalo’s belief in ass-flattening hooks and monolithic trance-guitars. Epics such as the vibrantly gliding "Promenaadikeskus" and the lumberingly robotic "Karhun Kansaa" stretch out and flaunt the players’ technical expertise via subtly varying phrases, double-percussionist acrobatics and a maturation of Circle’s mid-90s flirtations with bone-chilling grooves, psychedelia and electronics. Several chamber pieces taped inside Keski-Porin kirkko, the city’s main church, serve as brief, highbrow refreshment.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s tUMULt Records has licensed Andexelt, the tougher, slightly less songful follow-up from 1999. Over an unrelenting thunder-throb, the feedback, tremolo, analog fizzles and demonic gargling of the title track build to a head-kicking crescendo that approximates a bloody wreck on the Autobahn. The remainder alternates between similarly disciplined ferocity and tight space-rock full of knotted time signatures, dub accents and snaking, six-string telepathy.

In Finland, both of these triumphant documents are available on the admirable indie Metamorphos. Recently, however, Circle rekindled their relationship with Bad Vugum, the uncompromising, 13-year-old noise label that’s home to such sturm-und-drang champs as Radiopuhelimet, Liimanarina (Fall-like burnouts whose deranged Spermarket was picked up by Drag City) and Paska. The company plans to unveil the import edition of the ensemble’s seventh album, wherein Lehtisalo fleshes out the sophistication of Pori and Andexelt with increased vigor.

Vigor and luminous heaps of guitar slag characterized Circle’s three early-90s 7-inches, which Bad Vugum later compiled to amass the 1998 outtakes and rarities retrospective Kollekt. In 1993, Virginia’s VHF Records negotiated a one-off licensing of the fast and furious "Crawatt" single. Shortly thereafter, Lehtisalo began expanding Circle’s lineup, whose hallucinogenic gigs involved nudity, phosphorescent body paint, ultraviolet lights, fake blood and films. Their remarkable first two full-lengths, 1994’s Meronia and 1996’s Zopalki, sacrificed some of the amphetamine rush (and youthful insanity) for stately, earth-moving grandiosity. MTV Europe’s late-night alternative program ran the crafty, gory promo clips from these double-LPs.

At the end of ’96, a revised band emerged on a new label. The intriguing but largely voice-free and transitional Hissi, their first long-player for Metamorphos, bogs down in beat-layering overload and tedious, digital exercises. Circle’s focus shifted again for Fraten, a subdued but more human display of clean, prog-ish musings that owe more to King Crimson than to Kraftwerk. The Japanese Captain Trip label, which had also issued Hissi in Asia, helped facilitate 1998’s Surface, an immaculate concert CD shared with Tokyo’s acid-daze heroes, Marble Sheep. By the decade’s close, Pori and Andexelt had perfected and linked all that had preceded them.

Unconcerned with and geographically removed from both mainstream and indie trends, Circle have grown and changed while preserving the wound-up, individualistic impulses that propelled them. In many ways, Lehtisalo’s ideas are even gutsier now than they were nine years ago. This week, he’ll finally get a chance to share them with a wider audience. Winter’s coming early this year.