3 out of 5

Label: VHF Records

Produced by: Antti Usuimaki (live mix and recording)

Airy but dense, this combo of Circle members and Kantele player Hannu Saha evokes the liminal other-realms of its cover art: expansive, skyward-reaching repeating structures, rooted in intricate, stone lines at its base, and bubbling up into organic, flowering forms at its peaks. ‘Konsertti’ is a live performance linking together several “Pala” tracks from previous releases, with some additions.

At a high level, the sound focuses around Saha, fleshed out with ambience or flashes of guidance by a Circle trio on electronics, noise, and guitar. Never boring, Konsertti is mostly a meditative work: Pala 1 and 3 have a gentle drum-circle mantra that verges on easy-listening, dissolving into some minimalist raga-lite. Followup Pala 5 is cosmic drone, bare percussion tickling a spacey haze that’s dotted with the zither-esque Kantele.

Pala 6 and 10 take the cosmic notes and advance the digital side into squiggles and effects, which transforms into folk-tinged strumming – these smoothed out combinations of oddities are alluring, and often mesmerizing; it can be exciting to consider how strange it is that we get from one place to the other, but this collective makes all of this sounds glisten alike.

Closer Pala 7 is as close as we get to “noise,” somewhat merging the raga and background buzzy burble with some guitar stabs. It’s nothing harsh or discordant by any means, but it pushes us further from grounding in an organic sound, as part of the purposeful massage of Konsertti taking us into those skyward parts of the cover art.

…And for all of this, I think for a different type of listener, or perhaps by being in attendance for the concert, there would be more impact, but the album’s persistent gentleness prevents my ears from really hooking into it. I’m half in / out with the Circle crew, and I’ll admit that had me on guard, but I appreciated the blending of sounds – weird and familiar – Mahti crafts, and I was on board with the layered elements I was hearing: by the midway point of the album, I felt like it was opening up. But the pace and, though varied, range of tones, ultimately doesn’t change much, to the extent that once I got to that ‘opening up’ point, it didn’t feel like there was much more to discover. Repeats of the album were / are incredibly pleasant, but underline this even more: there’s something delightfully mellifluous about the work that also makes it a bit too harmless; very talented people doing some complex things that ultimately provide music that’s not very challenging. Is there value in that? For sure, but not in a way that bumps up my review.