Radio Exile | Circulatory System – Signal Morning Review

Circulatory System – Signal Morning Review

By Tom Williams - July 2, 2009 | Email the author

There, deep in the nether regions of space, a small crack forms in the absolute blackness of nothing, before quickly bursting into a circular tear that burns through space like film celluloid. This tear is quickly followed by a glass-like shattering of the cosmos and the space-time continuum itself rips apart.

A gaping hole is formed.

Through this hole, in rhythmic time, come a thousand billion footsteps as the armies of Satan march in formation. Horrible terrible beasts of nightmarish origin and with foul weapons lumber through towards earth, every footstep in perfect synchronization with its neighbor. Every star, quark, and celestial body shakes from the deafening din of these marching beasts.

Out of the hole they continue to stream in a never-ending torrent of terror. They begin to chant. Their static filled words are completely fuzzed out by the time they reach earth but their meaning is clear.

The camera then zooms back to a sleeping earth and the song ends.

The work of the Olivia Tremor Control and its successor/evolutionary heir Circulatory System has always been cinematic in scope and intent. The first Olivia Tremor Control album was a soundtrack for a never filmed movie and the second OTC and first Circulatory System albums were among the most “visual” albums released in recent decades. Perhaps because of their close association with psychedelics and the dream world, the music made by the OTC/Circulatory System always seems to invoke visions, like my interpretation above of Signal Morning’s first track, “Woodpecker Greeting Worker Ant”. The genius of these tracks was that, because they were “soundtracks” for films that never existed, the listener was able to create their own mental film to match with the provided soundtrack. The result was a richness and depth of listening experience that few bands have ever matched.

I hated Signal Morning, the second Circulatory System album, for a long time. One of my most anticipated albums for almost five years now, I hated these songs from when I first heard the them in a small college basement three years ago. Despite massively lowered expectations, I was still disappointed when I first heard the recorded Signal Morning in its entirety a month ago.

I now think this album is completely brilliant and possibly the best and fullest realization of what the Olivia Tremor Control first set out to do well over a decade ago.

The Olivia Tremor Control is one of the best and most underrated bands of the 1990s. Formed as one of the pillars of the Elephant 6 Collective (which also spawned the Apples In Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Of Montreal), they released two truly incredible double albums of sprawling, densely layered, massively catchy 60’s influenced pop rock that more or less was of a higher quality than the material that influenced it. Upon the band’s late ‘90’s break-up, almost the entirely of the band reformed as Circulatory System (the main loss being OTC co-founder Bill Doss) and released an equally trippy but much darker album that was as good as the earlier OTC releases but without its predecessor’s sometimes overindulgent electronic noodling.

Which brings us to Signal Morning. By far the most original and least backwards looking of the previous three albums, Signal Morning is the first OTC/CS album which feels like a completely modern album of their own creation, untethered to past notions or sounds. The production is much finer than that of the original OTC albums, which strongly benefits recordings as intricate and dense as these. Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of this album is that, unlike almost any other recording I’ve ever heard, these songs sound sculpted out of solid blocks of sound. Only the bare minimum of superfluous sound is removed, leaving thick and heavy blocks of fuzzy noise. This explains my three years of disappointment with these songs; the melodies are there and the songs are incredibly catchy, but one must first rub ones hands over and over the monolithic outside of these songs in order to pick up the faint lines. In that respect think of Signal Morning as the anti-Grizzly Bear. Instead of finely woven and intricate songs you get dense carved blocks of sounds.

This is one of my top albums of the year. I’m approaching my tenth listen and each time this album improves. Knowing the depth of the Olivia Tremor Control albums, I would be shocked if I were still not uncovering new lines and carvings in these songs 50 listens from now. Highly recommended. There is nothing else out there that sounds like this.

[mp3] Circulatory System – “Woodpecker Greeting Worker Ant”