a Perfect Circle

In an age where major labels dictate that new releases from bands appear on record store shelves every 18 months or so, rare is the artist given freedom and ability to reflect and stretch out to explore creative evolution and release music as an artist, rather than the prepackaged predictability of an entertainer. Thankfully, Tool has somehow managed to circumvent these rituals, releasing a record every four to five years as they so feel the need.

Be Here Whenever is a perfect circle of nine creations by Danielle de Gruttola (Cello), Henry Kaiser (Guitar), Benedicte Maurseth (Hardanger Fiddle) and Stein Urheim (Guitar). It is music filled with the intense mindfulness that comes when one is confronted by nature at its most awe-inspiring, those places where one becomes acutely aware of how small they are within this world, never mind the cosmos beyond its thin atmosphere.

Sound Cipher is the surreal, pulsating audio vision shared by three of modern music's most uncompromising sound sculptors. It’s the sort of thing that emerges when Tim Alexander (Primus, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle) finds himself inside a thunderous duo improvisation with Skerik (Critters Buggin, Garage A Trois, Les Claypool's Frog Brigade) during a soundcheck for Primus' Chocolate Factory tour in Oakland CA. One person surrounded by a circular percussion station of preposterous proportions, another person hurling psychedelic saxophonic screams into the hellfire of analog and digital circuitry.

A conversation between subterranean dirt and electrified sky; an invocation of the dueling destructive forces of blazing fire and icy frost; Hundred Suns make music cinematic in scope, haunting in presence, and disruptive in its moody upheaval. Like the power harnessed by the imaginative connotation evoked in their moniker, Hundred Suns offer an ambitious exploration of storytelling, introspective adventure, and atmospheric majesty, crushing in its depth and beautiful in its steady execution.