#Circulus #psychedelic folk #progressive folk #folk rock #British folk rock
A fanciful blend of traditional British folk, prog rock, psychedelia, and folk-rock, with a cultural mindset that is rarely seen outside of a revival screening of The Wicker Man, Circulus is the brainchild of Michael Tyack, a songwriter and musician who has set out to create music that exists in the 20th and 16th centuries at once. Based in South London, with Tyack the only constant member after dozens of personnel shifts, Circulus incorporate the drums, guitars, and Moog synthesizers you'd expect from a rock band with a retro early-'70s approach, but also features a variety of medieval instruments, including crumhorns, recorders, and a reed instrument called the rauch pfeifer, whose intense volume Tyack declares "isn't really acceptable to modern ears." Circulus are nearly as well-known for their collective fashion sense as for their music, with Tyack costuming himself and his accompanists in thrift-shop capes, caftans, hats, and masks that are equally influenced by the British hippie scene and Tyack's self-proclaimed model in style, Philip the Good, who was the Duke of Burgundy in the 13th century. Add to this the stated belief of Tyack and his bandmates in pixies, fairies, and "old gods" and you get a group whose reputation for eccentricity precedes it, but Circulus have also won a loyal audience for the strength of their music, with fans ranging from traditional music enthusiasts to death metal addicts. Circulus made their recorded debut in 1999 with an EP entitled Giantism, but it wasn't until 2005 that the band found a sympathetic record label interesting in financing an album-length recording - Rise Above Records, an extreme metal label that issued Circulus' full-length debut, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent. A second album, Clocks Are Like People, followed a year later. From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/circulus-mn0000306289/biography
With its rauch pfeifers and crumhorns, psychedelic guitar solos, squealing vintage synthesizers and songs about pixies and burning scarecrows, Circulus' debut album, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent, is so far removed from anything else currently available, so blithely unconcerned with any contemporary notions of cool, that it makes for genuinely shocking listening. It is by turns preposterous, unsettling, tear-jerkingly beautiful and wonderfully refreshing: the one thing it is not is a concerted effort to storm the charts by sounding a bit like Coldplay or Franz Ferdinand, which may explain the flurry of critical excitement the band are currently generating. But it is merely the tip of the iceberg, the musical wing of a wilfully skewed world view that vocalist and band "auteur" Michael Tyack has been formulating since a visit to America in the late 80s, when homesickness led him to begin attending Elizabethan music concerts: "When I discovered Elizabethan music I was like, wow," he says. "It was exactly what I was pining for, some ancient culture. I didn't really want to hear any modern music at all. All I did was go to early music concerts and mix with early music boffins for about five years, discovering a whole world of ..." His voice trails off as he searches for the right phrase. "Something great," he decides, with a beatific grin. The medieval era, he says, "is my ideal, the whole style and the music. I mean, I like tights. I like the way those dresses look on women. It's all just beautiful. Take away the diseases and the brutality and it's a very stylish period. Very, very long pointy shoes." As a result, he says, he has dedicated his life to creating his own world, "which has nothing to do with Tesco or anything. You get people in Finland doing it, they live their lives as Iron Age people and have a good time. That's the plan, to set up an alternative way of life, where all like-minded people can congregate." From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jun/17/worldmusic.folk
