There’s a world somewhere that’s a little bit different: A decade of Circulatory Systems

Forgive me a little indulgent reminiscence. In early 2002 I invested an amount of my student budget in a copy of the Circulatory System’s self-titled debut album. For months afterwards it was my “morning record”: the soundtrack to my two-miles along the wide pavements of Fulham, Brompton and Kensington. On a few occasions I’d even leave 15 minutes early and go a long way in order to get all 58 minutes of the album in.

The sleepier, or perhaps more hungover I was, the better. The opening of the first track, Yesterday’s World, is music’s way of ordering the listener to “Stop what you’re doing and listen to this” and the 21 remaining tracks transmit a pleasant dream. The dream injects a blend of familiar images. The meaning is uncertain, they’re not always backed by logic but the journey all comes together to make sense. A journey guided, the lyrics tell us, by the sun and by clouds and compasses. The journey is a collective one, too, with the word “we” seeming to appear in more lines than not. Musically, every few bars in the whole album conceal a surprise- a new melody, an extra layer of instrumentation, a sound effect or an effortless lift or drop in intensity, all while maintaining a distinctively lo-fi roughness.

The album was musician and artist Will Cullen Hart’s first project following the end of the Olivia Tremor Control. It was the first release on his own label, Cloud Recordings. To me, if OTC stood at the centre of the Elephant Six Collective that brought us Neutral Milk Hotel and Apples in Stereo and give birth to Elf Power and Of Montreal, the Circulatory System represents its climax. Over 20 musicians feature, and they read like a who’s who of the Elephant 6 family. How many of the thousands, maybe millions of wise converts to the Neutral Milk Hotel cult know that a couple of tracks on this album were recorded in Jeff Mangum’s bedroom?

8 years have passed since the release of Circulatory System. In that time, Olivia Tremor Control have reformed to play a handful of live shows, and more recently Hart has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Many fans grew doubtful over whether a proper second album would ever see the light of day. It would be easy for the new album, Signal Morning, to disappoint. In fact, it compares pretty well.

This record starts with woodpecker noises, but leading into something a bit industrial in the form of the mesmeric Woodpecker Greeting Worker Ant. The noise introduces, and then drowns out Hart’s vocals as a lead into Rocks and Stones, bridging into what could have been part of a volume 2 of the first album. Throughout Signal Morning, there is enough familarity to please those of us who wanted more of the same, but there’s just enough of a new, noisy sound to show progression in the last 8 years. There’s still the constant musical twisting and turning, but this is more subtle, and there’s more of a nod to the more experimental influences, like in Tiny Concerts. Listeners who like Hart’s poetry will not be disappointed either-  he has us “breathing along with the Universe”, “blasting through” and “coming round again”, and reassuringly “this world is still make-believe”.

But the memorable thing about the 17 tracks are, perhaps oddly, the less stereotypically “Circulatory System” anthems, each of which could take a bold position as the highlight of any work of its genre. The best examples are the frenzied insecurity of Overjoyed, the whispering Gold Will Stay, the epic fuzz-pop of Round Again and The Frozen Lake- The Symmetry.

I don’t know whether we’ll ever hear more from the Circulatory System. I’ll remain hopeful. But if we don’t, there’s no better wave goodbye than the closing, the title track Signal Morning. Hart has a melody that could fill the dancefloors. It could be a hit. But that’s not enough for him. The song is shrouded in a mist of noises and synths, of fuzz and general clatter. And then you realise that maybe every theme, every melody and every harmony that has come before has a little hidden gem, and you listen again, and again, and again, and uncoveer new ideas and new emotions each time. And that is why this is one of the albums of the year. This might just keep me busy for another 8 years.

PS Jeff Mangum’s on drums…. somewhere……

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