The tireless Circle have released more than 30 records during a 16-year career, so it's no shock that the band has managed to change and evolve. Despite a self-appointed induction into "The New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal," Circle have actually dabbled in a wide range of sounds, including post-rock, prog, jazz, dub, and more. So holding the Finnish group to a single stylistic standard would be both unfair and pointless.
Still, it's hard not to be perplexed by the band's recent direction. They seem to have plucked out the sparser, mellower, and cheesier moments in their repertoire and strung them together, discarding the intriguing time-changes, rock-riff twists, and inverted metal clichés of previous efforts. On last year's double CD Miljard this skyward drift worked pretty well, since the group's dreamy ambience was grounded by a strong dose of open-ended improvisation.
Not so with Tower, a six-song instrumental album made in collaboration with Finnish electronic musician Mika Rintala, aka Verde. Here Circle takes their New Age tendencies to an extreme, and the results are uneventful and sometimes just boring. Sounding like too-stoned-to-stand 60s jammers, the band doles out repetitive, twinkling cycles of Fusion-ish jazz-rock. Each track starts with a lax loop and rarely budges or builds, resulting in predictable tunes that end where they started. At best, some moments evoke the Kraut hypnosis of Can or Amon Duul. But more often Circle come off as a weak approximation of the Doors playing Fusion.
The album's highlights occur on its first two tracks, "Gerde" and "Gåttø". Both are more active than the rest; the latter particularly nudges forward due to rattling, propulsive percussion reminiscent of the No-Neck Blues Band's tribal explorations. Notice, though, how both titles start with "G"-- so does every other track on Tower. That may be meant as a clever trope, but it's also an indicator of how little variety the album holds. Each tune uses the same narrow sonic palette (most noticeably an overly cool Manzarek-style organ tone), making it exceedingly hard to remember which track is which.
Maybe Tower works as background music, if such a thing can be said to "work." At least the album's mediocrity isn't particularly offensive or annoying. But when you're talking about a band with such a varied and stellar track record, that's depressingly faint praise.
