![]() ![]() While CATS boasts certain elements of peak-era live Dead, particularly in the latter band’s 1972-’74 improvisations that could shift from glacial-psychedelia to whip-smart, serpentine jazzier explorations, the L.A. “But the the way it’s worked out for us is that in real life, as we had those fears of getting shoved aside, because we’re, you know, ‘Grateful Dead’ related, or ‘jam band.’ Yet it turns out that the jam band scene is so cool.” So, that’s kind of what the fear is,” explains Horne, of the band’s deliberate dance between finding a scene yet not being defined by that same scene. “In theory, you would think you don’t want anyone to make assumptions about what your music is gonna sound like or what it is, before they give it a chance. The recording is a worthy document of their “roll tape and flow” encounter with Russo, shifting from gurgling, frantic jams to wall-breathing psych-rock meltdowns. The following album was 2019’s Meets Joe Russo, a series of full-blown improvisations with NYC drummer and likeminded music polymath Russo. The nearly 20 minutes of “Halicarnassus” evokes the holy greasiness of Lenny White’s Venusian Summer as much as any ballroom psychedelia or Wall-of-Sound-era Dead. Let It Wander (2016) featured seven tracks that ultimately shed any deadening influence. The way it’s worked out for us is that in real life, we had those fears of getting shoved aside because we’re, you know, ‘Grateful Dead’ related, or ‘jam band.’ Yet it turns out the jam band scene is so cool. However, the malleable and percolating sound of Circles Around the Sun leans as much toward ‘70s protean fusion-funk like Herbie Hancock or the perma-whack ooze of Parliament-Funkadelic. Horne is also a founding member of Echo Park-based Dead tribute band Grateful Shred. The resultant pieces found a home on CATS’s 2015 debut, Interludes for the Dead. But it has been hard, you know, for other reasons.”Ĭircles Around the Sun first found highly visible exposure in 2015, when Casal was hired by the surviving members of the Grateful Dead to create original between-the-sets music for their final Fare Thee Well shows. “We didn’t really think we could ‘do’ much better than if we just kept playing,” says Horne, on folding the band. The work at hand was honoring Casal’s energy while pushing the music forward. Speaking with band bassist and founding member Dan Horne, breaking up the band after Casal’s passing was never even considered. In his suicide letter, Casal urged the group to continue without him. And with the 2019 suicide of founding member, virtuoso guitarist Neal Casal, they’ve also moved through unimaginable loss. quartet Circles Around the Sun are cooking up something all their own.įormed six years ago, the band has covered a lot of ground since. While routinely stamped as a “jam band,” a varietal that is as nebulous, constricting and even as dismissive as “Americana,” the L.A. ![]()
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