Celestial July 15, 1994

For more than 15 years, Circle X has remained a challenging, innovative force in modern music. With an LP, an EP and a slew of singles, the quartet has grown from humble beginnings into a masterful new music machine, incorporating everything from musique concrete and electronics to autistic waltzes and passionate folk bleakness into its unpredictable and constantly mutating sandstorm of noises both mechanical and organic, traditional and boldly modern. With its new LP for Matador (the first full-length for the group in more than a decade) and a string of recent 45s, led off by the 1992 Matador release "Compression of the Species," Circle X seems to be making a quiet resurgence with most disquieting material, perhaps the group’s best and most groundbreaking yet.

In the late 1970s, vocalist Tony Pinotti and guitarist Bruce Witsiepe played together in No Fun, while Rik and Dave Letendre were members of the I-Holes, both of which are considered to have been the first punk bands to emerge in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1978, the four musicians combined into Circle X’s first incarnation, with both Rik and Bruce playing guitar for the bass-less combo and Dave handling most of the drum chores. Exhausting the resources of Kentucky with infamous live performances, the four relocated to New York City at the end of that year.

It was in NYC that the group converged with the prominent avant-garde no wave scene, including the likes of Arto Lindsay’s DNA and Mars, whom Circle X would pay homage to many years later on a `92 single, tipping the hat to that band’s legendary "Puerto Rican Ghost." More live performances followed and the band built up a reputation in the city’s experimental rock underground.

In France for nine months with new manager Bernard Zekri, Circle X toured from the base in Dijon, garnering strong press and stronger public reaction while writing new material as well. An untitled four-song EP, for then-nascent Celluloid Records, saw the light of day in 1980. It revealed the talents of raw, manic iconoclasts set on tearing down and reinventing the stuff of rock music itself with strong philosophical bent and intense early standards like the relentless "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the blues-tinged terrorism of "Tender." The record’s cover - identifiable only by a spray painted circle with an X through it, a symbol the group chose instead of a name - gratingly reflected its content. "Marketeers" inevitably forced a spelled out "Circle X" on them.

Upon returning to New York, the band recorded the equally inventive but more varied Prehistory LP, unreleased until 1983, for the California-based consortium of Enigma and Index Records. Some say this recording served as a crucial blueprint for the subsequent New York noise scene that spawned Sonic Youth, Swans and Live Skull. The LP went out of print rapidly, but was later reissued semi-legally by the French label Sordide Sentimentale with the addition of a booklet of essay texts and skin disorder photos.

The remainder of the ’80s saw the group diversify with new drummer Mike McShane, guest violinist Lois Delivio and complex art performances, often involving constructions of great wheels, techno puppets and machines, as well as collaborative visuals with film makers Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta. In addition, the integration of synth technologies, tapes and samples now figured in the music’s stew of beauty and din. Members of the Circle X faction surfaced in offshoot projects like The Life of Falconettie (featuring Witsiepe and future Circle X engineer Mike Pullen), Gin Ray (with Letendre and Pullen) and Dear John (ostensibly a Circle X incarnation). By `89, Witsiepe, along with both Pinotti and Letendre, had begun publishing ANTI-UTOPIA, a limited edition artists’ book. A 1990 volume included a near-half-hour flexi-disc featuring Peter Van Riper, Mike Pullen, Christian Marclay, Bodeco, and a Circle X offering, "Crash/St. Sebastian of the Hood" (after a J.G. Ballard novel), a song later remixed for Matador’s New York Eye and Ear Control compilation.

The veiled glory of Circle X’s past had metamorphosed into the purity of the marginal. Current drummer Martin Koeb (Dustdevils, Wall Drug, Loudspeaker) joined Pinotti, Witsiepe and Letendre in 1992 and four white-vinyl seven-inch singles for Matador, American Gothic and Lungcast Records were released over the course of a year. Titled The Ivory Tower, the records were compiled into a box set and re-released under the auspices of EDITIONS ANTI-UTOPIA in mid-’93. The package was limited to 100 and included an original performance photo from a recent European tour, a booklet fold-out and a silkscreen-printed mirror. The music within remained eerie, intelligent and harsh, yet far more aurally complex.

Wielding these new flavors as always with honed intent, Circle X released Celestial, their new full-length on Matador, as well as opening a pale pink eye for Frammenti de Junk, a soon-to-be CD EP in France for Sordide Sentimentale.