High Places/ Soft Circle

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Ant on Thu 03 Sep, 2009.

First up this week is a tasty little 12" split from High Places and Soft Circle on PPM. The labels are printed the wrong way around which has caused a little confusion but I think I've sussed it out. Soft Circle is Hisham Bharoocha of Black Dice/Lightning Bolt/Pixeltan who unleashes two dancefloor style party numbers. 'Light Bright' is mutated psych disco with loose guitar solos, funky basslines and phased out vocoder vocals. I'm digging this track, both tight and funky whilst maintaining strange psychedelic overtones. 'Don't Just Stand There' kicks in with a beast of disco beat!! This tune brings to mind Liquid Liquid, !!! and a bunch of DFA stuff, kinda spaced out, kinda baggy but distintively New York in it's outlook. Theres more to come from Soft Circle later in the year but for now enjoy the pre-emptive strike. On the other side we got one epic tune from fellow New York two piece High Places. 'Late Bloomer' is distinctively mysterious piece of music full of reverberant whispers and strange clanging sounds. Things start out ambient but soon kick in with a mutant tribal style cut up beat and some awesome percussion punctuated by delayed vocals and spacy tones. Things get more and more intense as the eats start to take control of the composition only to fade away, leaving the remaining ambient tones to bring things to a close.....It's a bit of a journey. Their grooves remind of the recent Pit Er Pat stuff but way more spaced out. Ace split LP, well worth a listen.

• An album containing two bands playing for each other whose
mental brain paths collide in perfect symmetry - a nice
nugget of pleasing sounds and artwork by three
individuals who know how to kill it.
• High Places are from New York - Rob and Mary have been
making music for years now and it has taken them all over the
world. Their ‘Late Bloomer’ track is a long and beautiful
piece of composition, with a vocal hook that stays in your
head for weeks. The way they write songs is very mysterious,
with rhythmic collisions, whispers, bangs, clangs, sea shores
and melody seeping into your body.
• Soft Circle is Hisham Bharoocha’s solo effort, formerly of
Black Dice, Pixeltan and Lightning Bolt. Soft Circle’s
previous endeavours were more akin to his role in ‘Beaches
& Canyons’-era Black Dice; Eastern, droning, blissful. The
two tracks on the split - ‘Don’t Just Stand There’ and
‘Light Bright’ - are way more geared to a dancefloor inspired
mass.
• Always original and epic, Soft Circle remains a New York
secret, until the full album drops in the Autumn and the Soft
Circle world domination program begins in full force.
• Limited to 1000 copies.

High Places ‘Late Bloomer’
Soft Circle ‘Light Bright’
Soft Circle ‘Don’t Just Stand There’