3 out of 5

Produced by: Various, Bob Weston (mastered by)

Label: Expert Work Records

A compilation of all of Drill For Absentee’s released music prior to their 2024 / 2025 release, Strand Of A Lake, Circle Music +4 is a fascinating glimpse of an on-the-fringes math rock group’s quickly established and then iterated-upon identity. The music has some – to me – cringe elements that were common in the late 90s scene, with faith in overly poetic lyrics and some willful avoidance of rocking out, but having all this music together shows off how cool it can be to find a unique voice in a crowd; Circle’s collected tracks sound fantastic with a new mastering from Bob Weston and a great pressing by Expert Work Records, and the musical history this comp presents presents an intriguing What If that can then be answered by DFA’s subsequent, 20+ years later release.

There is a bit of a curiosity to the sequencing here that I’m guessing was a sacrifice for vinyl space, but it has an unfortunate impact on the listen: the five song Circle EP is split across the album’s two sides, and songs were rearranged as well. This puts the somewhat underwhelming instrumental Process Music For Numbers Ascending From Five at the end of Side A, which does make sense as a closer as it ended the original recording, but gets the underwhelming tag if you’re bearing in mind that there’s still another song from the EP to go – like, it has coda energy rather purposefully, but now it’s just a pause in the action, and is a bit too long for that, though it shows off DFA’s interesting way of bouncing between precision and wandering composition styles.

But anyhow, more directly, this makes Albatross and Ars Poetica Scribbled On A Parking Ticket have to go side by side, and those songs are structured too similarly that it feels a bit repetitive without a distraction between. That distraction was originally Naked Singularity, and that now kicks off the B-side, but it is not an opener. However, this is buffered by the two tracks following from DFA’s excellent debut 7″, which present both sides of the band – hardcore punk; slowburn emo – in comparatively compressed ways (Circle’s songs, setting aside the punky opener, are pretty broad), and then another track from the 7″ session which has demo vibes in its rawness, but shows off how the band’s more modern, jazz-flecked looseness was always part of their DNA.

Finally, the physical format gives us a track from after the 20-year gap: The Sea Is Watching is a minor note, and feels like the band figuring out their style; a bit of ambient experimentation. An appreciated addition, though it doesn’t come close to showing us what the band would be doing on Strand Of A Lake. (Note that digital also has a demo of Circle’s title track.)

Musically, early DFA takes from a pile of Discord, Sunny Day, Rainer Maria, and Quarterstick Records – a blend of elevated punk rock with droney noisemakers and some heady lyricism. The 7″s songs hit pretty hard and fast. Onto their EP, the June of 44 vibes run strong – though note the bands were running concurrently – with spoken word vocals breaking into shouts as drums and distortion kick in at the ends of songs. It’s a familiar set of influences, but the majority of the works here show off the aforementioned ability to let happy accidents and looseness inform the direction of precise moments of some songs, making for little nuances that add incredible texture. It can take a few spins to bring this stuff out, but once you notice it – you cherish it. I think the group only really got to leverage this with “full” songwriting a couple times, though, as we also see / hear some arty avoidance of going too deep with just enjoying a riff. …And sometimes you just want to enjoy a riff.