Circles Around the Sun is back with a new album (Language, out April 28th) and the quartet, known for their exploratory psychedelic improvisation, is on the road as well. Catch them this Friday, January 27th, at Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, NJ (tickets here!).
A couple days ago, drummer Mark Levy called me from the band headed into NYC. We discussed the evolution of the instrumental sound Circles Around the Sun has become known for, the pros and cons of vintage gear, the thrilling sounds on Language, and more.
Andrew Howie: I noticed the phrase “sound design research” in the press release for the new album – can you elaborate on that?
Mark Levy: I think that’s referring to the fact that we were in a little incubator, just throwing around a lot of ideas and approaches. Every time we record it’s a very creative process where everybody is adding their own ingredients, and it kind of feels like research sometimes.
AH: Your sound is very identifiable as Circles Around the Sun – not the style of music, but the way the music itself sounds, the production, the texture. Did you arrive at this particular sound by chance or by design?
ML: Well, I’m the drummer, so for me it’s not as much of a choice, but Adam’s whole keyboard rig is from the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, including the amps, and for Dan (Horne, bassist) and John (Lee Shannon, guitar) as well, they’re all playing Sunn O))) cabinets. It’s something we’ve always done, and it’s something that we’re not ever going to stop doing. People ask why we tour with gear like this, but it sounds better than digital stuff. To people like us, you can’t argue that, because we’re not really looking for convenience or even reliability necessarily. It’s old and sometimes you have to get it repaired, but it’s not breaking every night, and it sounds better!
What we’re after is that warmth and that natural compression that really to the listener is going to let you past any harshness or wear and tear on your ears after an hour of listening. Personally for me, I like to be a part of music like this because it’s becoming less common in the world. Instead of going for convenience, and maybe portability or less weight, all the advantages of modern gear and technology, we stick with what sounds great, feels great, we enjoy it. The way it looks, it’s the vibe.
AH: Can you talk a little about the conveyance of emotion through instrumental music?
ML: I have always found that to be an interesting aspect of this project, that we don’t overlay spoken words or vocals. It leaves a lot of flexibility for the listener to kind of choose your own adventure in a way. With lyrics it can be very specific; the greatest lyrics have layers of meaning or different concepts, but still it involves a whole other layer of intellectual processing. That’s not positive or negative, it’s just an aspect of lyrics. Some people love to pick the words apart and know the meaning, and feel something deeper, and that’s great. But for us, it’s just more natural to instrumentally convey feelings and vibes. I think it just leaves the space open. More room to get lost. When we released Let It Wander, that was kind of the idea behind that. You don’t have to be so specific about what you’re getting at in the song, you can let it just wander.
AH: In a way, letting things wander on this newer record is representative of the broader music scene; genre barriers are melting together and breaking down. What do you think is driving these new sounds in contemporary music?
ML: I think it probably has to come back to the process in which music is made. Obviously in the last 10, 15 years or so, with the rise of software like GarageBand that is very user friendly and very compact and portable has really changed the playing field in terms of who is on the field. There is just way more material. So I think it is more rare for you to hear recordings of bands that have all the members in a room together playing together and it’s recorded, and that’s what you’re hearing with us. That was the root of where we started in a very literal sense, no editing, no overdubs, no anything. We have embraced the recording process more since then, and have added layers of overdubs and things like that, which you hear on Language, the most recent release.
I think that really the sound of music today is a product of the means with which people are creating music. There is a lot more technology now than we had ten or twenty years ago. I really think that that’s just kind of what’s driving the direction, the availability of creative outlets for people, which is amazing. I think it’s great, because in the time of Mozart, there were probably hundreds if not thousands of composers that we never heard of. Of course, in any time period, there is going to be a certain volume of creation and a certain part of it that is not necessarily going to attract a lot of ears, and I think there is just more now.
AH: Do you find that this sonic evolution affects your approach to songwriting in CATS?
ML: I think it is still rooted in what we’ve always been, but as with any living thing, we’re evolving in ways that we might not exactly know until it’s happening. I think a tadpole doesn’t realize it’s going to grow some arms until its arms are growing. That’s what it feels like to me, the band is playing, evolving, writing new music. It just sort of happens. It’s coming from the same animal. It’s just a limb, a tail, another ear, whatever, these features are just kind of growing out of the same animal.
It’s interesting even for me to listen back to old recordings, what has always been something I love about recordings, it’s a stamp in time, a musical picture, and we can revisit it and live in that space through the recording. I feel our music will always sound like us because it is us. The instrumental nature of the music also makes it so we have to really speak with all our voices. It’s part of a cool continuity. Obviously we’ve had big changes in terms of our guitar slot, and that’s going to affect things no matter what. You can never replace a person, it’s just different.
