The Circular Ruins "Land of the Blind"
The latest release from The Circular Ruins.

listen to
Anamnesis
Interior Distance

The music of The Circular Ruins has always struck me as lush, as very full. An intricately detailed canvas of sound art that captures a sense of both time and place. With the release of "Land of the Blind", The Circular Ruins have collected eight stunning pieces that continue to engage and delight in the same manner.

The disc opens with "A Storm of Secondary Things". Delicate sweeping pads loop and swirl, while complex percussive patterns play underneath. Shimmering melodies unfold as the piece progresses. A beautiful introduction to the disc.

"Holiday in Reality" is built around fluttering patterns of sound, a series of squelchy electronic patterns rising and falling throughout. A sense of movement, of journey permeates throughout the track, a lovely feeling of travel. Wonderful.

"Thought is False Happiness" builds upon a laticework of pads and waves, intricate folds weaving and gaining in complexity as time passes. A stunning piece.

Track four, "Anamnesis", is a much more subtle piece, a minimal sense of movement that uses silences to accent the tones throughout. Patches of dialogue pass through like fragments from half forgotten dreams. A fantastic track that I find myself drawn to again and again.

"The Abyss of Proof" is an ominous track, a dark foreboding introduction leading into a tense claustrophobic environment. Be careful when you stare into the abyss, it has a way of staring back at you...

"Interior Distance" features a repeated arpegio overtop an organic backdrop of landscape sounds. Delicate and simple, yet somehow vaguely threatening. A slow and steady journey through the familiar territory of reason to the darker lands of delirium.

"Standing in Violent Golds" is a more dense piece, dark matter and alien elements clashing, conflicted. There are small pieces of beauty that stand in contrast to the controlled chaos at play here, but they serve only as small reminders of order, in effect bringing the confusion more into focus.

Disc closer "A Distant Assembly" is an epic track that utilizes oblique motion to anchor simple melody lines, slow waves of sound rising and falling like tides. Tones gain in strength, finding order and reason, gradually melting into other forms, taking on other shapes and meaning. A hundred vistas pass by during the course of it's length, each another glimpse of alien worlds, different spaces, a thousand more just beyond reach. And then it is done, an afterimage reflected in our mind's eye the only reminder of what we've seen.

Without doubt, "Land of the Blind" lives up to and surpasses all of my expectations with regards to The Circular Ruins. A truly wonderful disc featuring a truly wonderful collection of music, I recommend it wholeheartedly to fans of the ambient genre in all of it's forms, as well as to all those who enjoy the discovery of inner journeys.

rik - ping things