Friday, December 5, 2008

Sun Circle - Sun Circle


Sun Circle - 1








Good God how have I not written about this yet? I was going to listen to a new Suishou No Fune record that I picked up recently and passed by Sun Circle. I immediately did a search on my blog for Sun Circle and saw that somehow this record slipped by. I have no idea how that happened because this CD is bitchin'.

Sun Circle is Greg Davis and Zach Wallace, two guys who really know how to get their drone on. Wallace is the guy who did that wine glass armonica tape that I reviewed a while back and Davis is most known (to me) as the guy who collaborated with Keith Fullerton Whitman on Yearlong and who contributed to Project Bicycle. But as cool as it is that these two dudes got together to make some tunes, who they are is completely irrelevant to the sheer fantasticness of the resulting music.

Sun Circle is a limited edition (100 copies) CD-R put out by Lichen Records (sold out) of uuuuh-MAZE-ing drone. The first track has a humming organ as the bedrock with Wallace and Davis howling and chanting like some freaky cult. Their voices blend with the organ until you can't tell the two apart. What may only be 4 or 5 layers of sound end up sounding like an entire chorus in an enormous cathedral. It's utterly hypnotic and I love every minute of it.

The second track is a bit more dynamic and no less impressive. It's super sparse chimes and bells that grows and extends every repetition. At first, there might be a group of chimes and 1 bell but they keep adding just a bit more every...umm...strum? So by the end of the song there's a whole bunch of chimes and bells that echo for a little while. Yeah, that makes no sense at all but it's hard to describe. Go listen to some of it on their MySpace if you want to.

If this is really your kinda thing and your little collector heart is crying, fear not. There is an LP re-issue on the way. I don't know who'll be putting it out but if you befriend Sun Circle on MySpace, I'm sure you'll be one of the first to know.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now I feel like digging up Whitman's Multiples, but I can't find it.

Justin Snow said...

Multiples is good. One of my favorites is Antithesis. Whitman is a fucking genius. I love him.

Anonymous said...

Isn't that the one where he recorded each track in a different Boston apartment?

Anonymous said...

But my favorite thing he's done is "Gemini" off the Hrvatski record. That track is gorgeous.

Justin Snow said...

Yeah, he recorded the songs for Antithesis in different apartments that he had in Boston.

"Gemini" is truly gorgeous. I really love his Hrvatski work. Even though "Gemini" has that glitch thing going on, it's much more subdued than the rest of his regular break-core. I'm a big fan of "Marbles" (wrote about it here).

Anonymous said...

Ha! Just last weekend my girlfriend and I were trying to download Marble Madness for Wii, but wound up w/ Mega Man 2 instead.

Old school NES music rocks - tons of classic melodies. In fact, a former roommate (who I hated) once overheard me working on my own songs and told me they sounded like SEGA Genesis music. He was trying to be a dick, but it was exactly the sound I was going for, so I took it as a compliment.

I love that band the Advantage. Sometimes I'll put them on when I have friends over - when someone says "this is pretty cool, what is it?" I get to reply, "it's Kraid's Lair from Metroid."

Justin Snow said...

Marble Madness is one of the best games ever. It's so much fun. Mega Man is pretty great, too, but definitely no substitue for some Marble Madness.

Yeah, NES cover bands are great. The Advantage, NESkimos, and The Minibosses are some of my favorites. The best song is "Contra - Alien's Lair & Boss Music" by The Advantage. It's so metal and epic. I love it.

And 8-bit music in general is awesome. The website 8bitpeoples has tons of free and amazing 8-bit and chiptune stuff. Love it.

Anonymous said...

Cool, man. Thanks for the tip on 8bitpeoples. This is right up my alley - I'll pass it on to some people I'm sure would also dig this.

"Contra - Alien's Lair" is one of the best from Elf Titled - especially the boss part. "Batman" and "Caslevania Stage 1" (this one really brought me back) are great too, and "Ducktails - Moon" is so perfectly cheesy.

I have two friends w/ a new project called Sitari 2600 Revival - all songs are made using only this, and this.

gd said...

thanks for the kind words.

the LP reissue of this cdr is available now.

email me if you are interested in buying a copy- gregorytylerdavis@gmail.com

or hit us up on myspace.

peace,
greg

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