Genre: Glitch / Noise / Experimental / Ambient

01 Mygrain
02 Cutting Up The Rest I
03 Feedback
04 Cutting Up The Rest II
05 Glitch Core
06 White Swan
07 Cutting Up The Rest IV
08 Cutting Up The Rest III

Circle Six is a US band from Colorado that experiments a music between glitch, unparasited noise, together with ambient interludes. This album was issued in the beginning of 2007. Certainly its originality makes it worth being reviewed. Only the cover reflects this characteristic: as some kind of DNA sequences, diving deep in the black…

“Mygrain” is a dark ambient introductory track with quite threatening synths ending with more electronic then noisier sounds. The 2nd track begins with something harsher: brutal but undistorted electronic noises appear, apparently without structure. It gives the impression of some destructured Venetian Snares (2nd track). Electronic melodic glitchy sounds flourish but no clicks or drier sounds. A distorted sample is almost as tortured as the other sounds, hatched, deformed, crushed then amplified. No ambient part in such a track: many unpredictable changes and sudden sounds clinging here and there, as if your stereo was possessed by an insane PC.

“Feedback” begins with more ambient sounds, slightly oscillating and not that relaxing. It’s made in the same fashion as the first one but it’s less dark and no more threatening. But, it’s a relatively good and clearly experimental break between the hectic electronic tracks…

“Cutting up the rest II” is a relatively calmer, compared with its first version, dealing with lower sounds, at least in the beginning… “Glitch Core” features sampled proto-rhythms. They emerge and are destroyed as fast as they appeared… Other sounds’ modifications appear, sometimes featuring regular patterns building giving a temporary rhythm. An impressive stormy sequence is featured just before the end of Glitch Core: a manifest of electronic chaos.

On “White Swan”, the listener’s welcomed by distorted voices’ samples, with many sounds imitating breaths and seemingly a true breath’s samples. In the end, all these sounds come back, several times, as lugubrious and fleeting as ghosts, sometimes giving a strong impression of acceleration... Highly experimental.

The 4th and 5th versions of “Cutting up the rest” conclude this album. The first one deals with rather brief electronic jerks, then reappearing in echoed patterns, far more aggressive, while the whole is still punctuated with blank breaks. The second one proceeds with less interrupted sounds, from many kinds (from high-pitched pseudo-twittering to lower pseudo-percussion). There still are blank breaks, but less often.

Sounds are close from metallic and may have a special effect (“Feedback”), for the most, they are quite original. They remind electronic glitches but also scratched CDs’, videogames’ and sampled electronic rhythms. But, for the electronic non ambient tracks, this is the much interrupted structures, the torture imposed on these sounds and their unpredictable chaotic arrangement that’s original. Ambient tracks are quite subtle: this is not amateurism at all. Atmospheres are weird, interesting, difficult to define, certainly original, as the whole album. But, I wonder how it is possible to listen to such a thing really often. It isn’t as brutal as harsh noise, but, in a way, it is as unbearable for unpredictable, varying in loudness, without structure… Maybe it’s precisely after numerous listening one is able to truly get into such a music and appreciate it. But, it remains highly experimental and alien, so that we can recommend its listening only to open-minded people and true aficionados of the genres… Make up your mind on Circle Six myspace!