Tag: ambient

Recorded over a single day at Keski-Porin Kirkko, the nineteenth-century stone church in the heart of Circle’s hometown, the basic tracks for Enharmonic Intervals exude divine inspiration. Caressed by Faith Coloccia, Aaron Turner, Jussi Lehtisalo, and Mika Rättö, the house of worship’s immense Paschen organ sets a liturgical, contemplative mood, which persists unabated through a cycle of improvisations and short compositions.

The album opens and closes with slowly building sinfoniettas of sustained drone and flatlining feedback that shine heavenly light onto the wan, academic corpse of avant-garde minimalism. In the middle, all sorts of hell breaks loose: Coloccia chants wordless omens on a distant shore, Turner shouts his lungs out, Lehtisalo speaks in tongues from atop synthesized snowbanks, Rättö gargles operatic gibberish, hummingbird guitars flutter past, and delicate chords glisten like dewdrops on Arctic lichen. Much of this earthly ruckus stems from additional sessions spent brainstorming, fine-tuning, cooking, and stoking the sauna at the Lehtisalo family cottage, deep in rural Finland.
(A couple of months later via the miracle of technology, Eyvind Kang tacked on a spot of viola while visiting Turner and Coloccia at their Washington state abode.)