RICHARD DAWSON & CIRCLE

Henki WEIRD WORLD Unlikely union between Geordie troubadour and Finnish titans.

Richard Dawson and Circle might seem like an odd pairing on the face of it. Dawson is best known for his skewed brand of urban folk and microcosmic take on modern life, while Circle are a Finnish psych/prog/metal institution, and self-proclaimed “world’s greatest band – in every category”. But Dawson turns out to be a major fan of Circle, and after hitting it off via Twitter, he was invited to play with them at Helsinki’s Sideways Festival in 2019. The idea to record together soon followed – and thank goodness it did, because Henki is head-spinningly brilliant.

Firstly, Dawson’s blunt but melodic voice is an absolute joy here, combining a storyteller’s directness with a surprisingly powerful delivery. Secondly, his words are consistently intriguing, with the ‘concept’ behind this album – basically, plants through history – worthy itself of an essay. Thirdly, Circle might regard themselves as primarily a metal band these days, but crucially, they don’t sound like a metal band – instead, they crackle with a fierce internal energy that fuses krautrock, math rock and psychedelia together into an implacable and unique sonic signature.

There are just seven songs on Henki, but each one is a mini epic, with the album clocking in at nearly an hour. The hard-strummed acoustic drone of Cooksonia immediately conjures a disquieting folk ritual feel, with Dawson setting out a manifesto of sorts when he sings of his ‘consideration of small things’. But then the song takes a more regal, keyboardenhanced turn, and produces the peerless line, ‘Unfortunately the fungal cultures we brought with us have started to degrade’. The intense Ivy starts with a loping, predatory riff accompanied by dramatic strings, then goes into metronomic overdrive to match Dawson’s bizarre, death-littered narrative.

Silphium is the longest track, guitar and piano locked together around its galloping beat, before an extended jazzy interlude ejects Dawson into the cold Nordic night. Silene builds on the shadowy post-rock of Slint and patient extemporisations of Can, yet Dawson brings an upbeat, almost hymnal quality to it.

Perhaps the stand-out on an album of tremendous tracks is Methuselah, its creeping, tension-building guitar exploding into a rollicking riff, Dawson hurtling down a mountainside with a great falsetto howl – it combines the dynamics of metal with the instrumental firepower of prog, yet is most definitely not prog metal. In fact, as the eerie but catchy Lily and rousing, operatic Pitcher confirm, it’s almost as though Dawson and Circle have effortlessly created a new type of progressive music here – it really is that good.

IT’S AS IF THEY’VE CREATED A NEW TYPE OF PROGRESSIVE MUSIC.