I was visiting my friend Charles the other night (you may remember him from the CERN show) and he turned me on to this amazing band Circle who bill themselves as “The New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal”. Holy jumping Jesus is this shit on the money. It tips and spins and barks from thunderous atonal echo-washed psych rock into lush and confusing folk-like soundscapes without bothering to check over it’s shoulder and make sure you’re still there. It’s a tough ride, but you come out the otherside with your fuzzy brain glowing a dizzy green and your loins feeling like they’ve been massaged by finely crafted razor mitts. Crazy awesome.

Looks like they’ve recently completed a documentary on these fucked up souls. Here’s what their site says about it:

Saturnus Reality (2007) is the Finnegan’s Wake of Finnish rock documentaries, and a fabulous cul-de-sac in a stream of consciousness. The film’s subject is Circle, the prolific Finnish experimentalists hailing from Pori, but it is a self-ironic vicious circle of a film that focuses on the curious world of the band and its musicians, shot on a home video camera. Jussi Lehtisalo, Mika Rättö, Janne Westerlund, Tomi Leppänen and Tuomas Laurila appear in the film as if they were acting out themselves.

The film is nominally centred on the recording sessions of Miljard, one of the latest albums by this extremely productive band, whose output includes 28 albums in 16 years. Starting out as a traditional rock documentary, the film soon runs loose on various sidetracks: to the depths of a forest, onto a frozen lake, into the darkness of night. The band’s primeval music becomes the soundtrack for magic rites performed in nature. The musicians meet the mysterious Oracle of the Reed Sea, a strange meteorite has landed in a snowy landscape, and so forth. What matters in Circle’s fantastic world is totality of vision, while details are treated somewhat generously. The new genre the band has coined, NWOFHM (The New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal), may just as well mean fragile atonal piano improvisation or catatonic one-note walls of sound. Inspired by the ritualistic films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, the film moves to the beat of double and triple exposures, the atmosphere balancing in the timeless opening between childish horseplay and reckless pathos. Enthusiastic live commentary can be heard beside the camera by the director/cinematographer, Pori’s multi-talented craftsman of the psychedelic, Esko Lönnberg. His earlier works include the splendid concert film with Doktor Kettu (also from Pori), shot through a distorting lens.”

I just picked up their amazing 2x LP ‘Sunrise’ from AllThatIsHeavy.com and you should too.

Here’s a fun little paper from the 1970’s using the famous detective as a case study for the obsessive-compulsive results of long-term amphetamine abuse (see internet). It’s a fun read if for no other reason than the Holmes quotes and the flagrantly forced use of post-woodstock hep druggy terms.

Indulge yourself in the full helping…

Wow. The last post I put up about Julia Child and Sterling Hayden working for the OSS got my ires up and I dug around this here old bucket of tubes for some more information on one of my favorite character actors of the last half of the twentieth century. Turns out Sterling Hayden was more interesting than Jack D. Ripper or even Roger Wade for that matter.

A veteran, spy, gun runner, alcoholic, pot fiend, actor, best selling novelist, seaman and philosopher, Sterling Hayden wrote the fucking book on what it means to be alive in this world; uncompromising and restless. I only wish he was still stomping around our little planet sos I might have had a chance to knock a glass or two with the guy.

God bless you Sterling Hayden!

How cool is this? It appears that Julia Child, Sterling Hayden, a couple of Hemingways kids and Sox catcher Moe Berg worked as spies in the early days of the OSS.

Read the whole story here