Circlesquare

Circlesquare - Dancers

Circlesquare's new album is called Songs About Dancing and Drugs.  It has that moody handmade electronic vibe, half techno half rock, that you find on Colder or Thomas Brinkmann's last album When Horses Die. Call it bedroom Joy Division.  It's excellent if you like shadowy synthetic sounds but also Leonard Cohen. The song 'Dancers' is my jam. There's a number of album tracks where the lyrics are positive but they're weirdly undercut by minor-key chords and deadpan singing..so when you hear "now we're all dancers.." it sounds oddly alienated. 

The key word in the title actually is 'about', it's all about the about. It's not songs for dancing and drugs, but about them. The whole record feels like you went out clubbing and partying and there was a big rush of sensations and you stayed out very very late and all your friends went home, and now you're back at your laptop with a midi board, and maybe the sun is coming up, and you should drink some water, and all the loud pulsing sounds, with firebomb bass and siren swirl, are still echoing somewhere in the back of your skull.

here's a mix from Circlesquare as well, more downtempo gothic beats for your solo trek home through the neon wilderness.

Circlesquare- "Super Late Night Music For People In The Dark" (DJ Mix)

Circlesquare- "Super Late Night Music For People In The Dark" DJ Mix

This Mortal Coil- Thais II (excerpt)

Glass Candy- Lovin Machine

This Mortal Coil- Thais II (excerpt)

October- Doxa

Circlesquare- Dancers (Konrad Black Remix)

This Mortal Coil- Thais II (excerpt)

Jefferson Airplane- Lather

Aphex Twin- Mookid

The 6ths- The Sailor In Love With The Sea

Circlesquare- Ten To One

Tones On Tail- Rain

Matias Aguavo- De Papel

October- Listen, Move, Dance

David Bowie- Up The Hill Backwards

This Mortal Coil- Thais II (excerpt)

Circlesquare- Music For Satellites

This Mortal Coil- Thais II (excerpt)

Taking Transylvania (by Strategy)

JOHN CALE & TERRY RILEY - THE IDES OF MARCH

From John Cale & Terry Riley's collab LP, The Church of Anthrax. A monster storm of two pianos and two drums, a testament to free rock improv, a track I hold dear and which, as you'll see, has everything to do with hiking in Romania.

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I am down from the mountain. Much could be said about this. I know that I was there, I can prove it, I have images in digital. I and my colleague Alex spent a week in the Fagaras mountains in Romania. This is how these mountains appear through the eye of Google Maps.


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A trip initiated by a 3am drunken handshake over pierogis in the East Village, and borne to success by two friends who are both essentially adventurous, dumb and lucky. I have no urge to recall the details of the mountain mission here, for rather obvious reasons. In the absence of the sort of insightful, witty account the reader might expect from these pages, let me instead recommend perusing an online photo album. The further curious are encouraged to buy me and/or my travel partner beers in order to hear all the tales.

Taking Transylvania (by Strategy)

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I thought a great deal about what track to post that would link up with the mountains in the most satisfying way. I thought about Popol Vuh and Sunno))) and these things. Then I realized that the best way to mirror this mountain mission would not be to soundtrack it. Instead:

"The Ides of March" is a really fantastic example of improvisation, and reminds us how group music improv becomes a sort of utopian model for social relationships. Because it's all about negotiating and exercising your own freedom in relation to those around you. This is the politics of the thing, that you are free to do whatever you want, play however you want, but you're constantly affecting and affected by the decisions of others, there's a constant dialectic of freedom and limitation. Successful improv in music is a beautiful example of people getting along together, and it's not unlike the kind of exchange that can be practiced between two friends, especially two friends on a slightly bold, quixotic excursion, who are able to trust one another in their own freedom, and who by virtue of their respective decisions grant the other the chance to first become free. I've played improv-based music with Alex for several years now, and I can't help but think that seven days in the mountains was somehow..playing music by other means.