Drawing from bands like RITES OF SPRING, DAG NASTY, and EMBRACE, Nantes, France based emotive hardcore band CIRCLES just released their new 4-track EP and it’s not very often that such a short release aims so high and consists so much of emotions. The offering channels the Dischord catalog’s melodic ferocity, but evokes love, sadness, longing, and confusion, captured with infectious accents that will make you play it on repeat!
Astonished by its powerful glow, we asked the band to shed some more light on their lyrics, first explained through this feature over at NoEcho.
“Resonate” is out now on 7″ vinyl at Unity Worldwide Records. CD version comes with the band’s debut demo (2017) and a bonus track and will be out on September 27th via Swell Creek and Unity Worldwide Records. The record release show will be held at LLe Zinor in Montaigu, France on September 29th.
Guns N Bruises
This is the first song of this ep we wrote. Despite the stupid wordplay of the title it’s a pretty serious topic since the lyrics been finished just after the local police shot Aboubacar Fofana, 22 years old, straight in the head during an identity control. This being the peak of police brutality in our city after way too much acts of humiliation and violence in the poorest neighborhoods, and during the numerous political protestations our country knows those last years. More than one year later the situation is still the same, or even worse (check the events that happened during “La fête de la musique” and during the Yellow Vests protests) and no one is never condemned.
We ask ourselves, why do we let this happen, why do we close our eyes or even worse, justify, such acts coming from people, payed with people’s money, who are literally at war against us. When will we reclaim police disarmament to prevent those hatefull, irresponsible, state employees to commit more violence?
Grey winds
This one is a bit different, musicwise and lyricwise. It used to be two unfinished songs that we managed to put together and it ended up to be Grey Winds. Our friend JB who was our first drumer, is playing shakers in the ending chorus. We though it will be cool to use shakers on a hardcore song! Lyricwise it’s also build in two parts and more in the hardcore tradition, using this “You” that we usually try to avoid.
The first part deals with reactionary, hateful “opinions” that bloom everytime someone is trying to defend new ideas. Those people who can’t help blowing grey winds on every hope. Fighting against everything they don’t take the time to understand because it doesnt concern their lives and in the end fighting for nothing but the status quo because they fear that any demand of progress and equality is directed against their little selfish selves.
The second part goes on a more personal level and deals with how to try to maintain friendship when disagreeing on political beliefs, the whole song ending up to be a more intimate approach of how the reactionary ideas are counter productive and dividing the working class.
Anattā
This is the last song we wrote for this ep. Since the three others were rooted in current political situation we wanted a text that will make the link between those songs, some kind of conclusion suggesting a solution or an outlet to the problems brought. Anattā is a Pali (ancient language of India) word that can be translated by “selflessness”, absence of self. Beyond the obvious buddhist influence it’s mainly inspired by some ideas develloped by Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet in the book “Dialogues” where they say that the established powers need our sad affects to maintain their domination. And the perpetual pursuit of satisfaction through identity, through belongings, through the Self, maintains us powerless. Let’s become more than this, let’s walk out of their path. Add to this some vampire metaphors and you have some pretty abstracts lyrics that i struggle to explain clearly! Chaviré talks about it too in “Là où les puissances”, check their track by track!
And to speak about music, the version on the vinyl is quite different than on digital, hip hop beatmaker Spectateur remixed the intro and this is what you can hear on the vinyl, he also did a full track using what we recorded and you’ll find this on the cd version out September 27th on Swell Creek and Unity Worldwide.
Resonate
This is the first song written by our drummer and our Guitarist Guillaume is expressing is love for poppunk by singing the melodic bridge!
The lyrics been written during the protests against the “Loi travail” which aim was clearly to destroy every worker’s rights won during the last century. Those protests marked the begening of a new level in the violence of state repression.
The birth of the idea is this Angela Davis quote : “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” It is a tribute to all the people giving their time and energy, sometimes their security, trying to build a better world. Facing the repression, whereas it can be physical during protests, during squat’s evacuations, or ideological, during education and through our whole lives. Much thanks to those who don’t let the Tatcher’s fantasy “There is no alternative” become true. To those who can’t yield to apathy, who can’t let them win and reduce us to silent.
CIRCLES was born in 2017 around Nantes/France. They play a heavily influenced Dischord style of melodic punk hardcore, that reminds directly the golden age of Washington D.C. ’86 Summer revolution bands like Embrace, Dag Nasty, Rites Of Spring and Fugazi. You can even find some reminds of Ebullition ’90 emo hardcore. Fueled with punk culture in all it?s diversity, the 5 members of CIRCLES meet each other under a positive and political approach of hardcore. Lyrics mainly focusing on the idea that it is necessary to emancipate ourselves from the current world through collective action and the joy we can find in it. The 4-song EP was recorded and mixed by Antoine Gandon (Homesick, Heavy Heart) and mastered by Brian McTernan (Battery, Ashes) at Salad Days Studio in Baltimore. With 12 songs, the digital download contains CIRCLES’ complete discography: the 4-Song Resonate EP, the 7-Song 2017 Demo and an exclusive remix of the song Anattä.
For fans of: D.C. Hardcore, Embrace, Dag Nasty, Rites Of Spring, Fugazi, Winds Of Promise, Praise, Don’t Sleep, Mindset, Marginal Man, Battery, Ashes, Homesick, Heavy Heart
Reviews:
Circles build their tunes based around a solid interplay between drums and bass, with the guitars either grinding out harsh chords or switching to more delicate melodies. Honestly when bands get creative like this I’d be happy enough with instrumental versions of the songs. On here, the vocals sit perfectly on top and work well as a combination of the two DC bands mentioned earlier – taking the melody of Wig Out At Denkos era Dag Nasty and inserting the fragility of Guy Picciotto’s Rites of Spring. This ticks all the boxes for me and delivers on all fronts. As a nice bonus the download code that comes with the EP chucks in all their demo recordings, giving you a twelve song collection. – Tom Chapman of MassMovement
Faithful to the context of the scene that influences them so much, we find a very political speech, in their words. “Guns N ‘Bruises” deals with state and police violence, a topic that particularly echoes a recent event in Nantes that affected members of CIRCLES: the drowning death of Steve Maia Caniço, following a violent charge of CRS after celebrations of the Music Festival on the banks of the Loire. “Resonate” reminds us when it comes to the popular revolt of the Yellow Vests, evoking this camaraderie, sometimes even these ties of friendship woven at rallies, which unite us in the face of repression, give us the strength not to give up. “Gray Winds” evokes those people who would defeat the so-called “good-thinking” (aka everything that is leftist spectrum of politics) and demolish the system, but react the opposite of what to do and which in the end helps it to continue, and proposes these populisms, these nauseating ideas, – “Frustrated like no one else, you hate the world like no one else. Have you ever considered putting a little sense in this rage that burns like nowhere else? “- ledictionnairedelemo.blogspot.com
