Process Of Guilt - The Circle

(14 Feb 2011)

For some time, Nine Inch Nails were known to follow up each and every release they would make with a/a bunch of remix albums. My definite favourite among these has to be the criminally underrated Things Falling Apart. It might not seem like anything special at first, just your usual superlong remixes of tracks from The Fragile, just like every other remix album NIN ever made, but that one was different: it showed a completely different side of NIN. One of vastness and glacial perseverance. Although I have never heard the release the one I'm reviewing is based on, and I have only casually listened to Renounce so far, I believe it's safe to say that this is showing a different side of Process Of Guilt. One of beauty.

As you turn The Circle on, you are immediately engulfed in an oppressive soundscape that doesn't take long to mold the location you are in. Wherever you may be as you listen to this, it's dark, and it's damp. As the crushing melody progresses, you get a feeling of your surroundings, and emotions start to flow: a feeling of space, of hugeness, light, hope, melancholy. The same formula repeats on the second track, only more triumphant, and to great effect.

You are then thrown into an otherworldly, gigantic place. The triumph of the second track still resonating in the third, and then consumes itself for the two next tracks, the melody presented on erosion becoming progressively more of a fading image of its former self, until the space you were in is finally destroyed, ending the circle.

Every single time you listen to this, you give more meaning to each part, and what you are left with is a fantastic achievement in experimentation. Sadly, I wouldn't go as far as to rate it higher than 4, because, despite how well-constructed it is, in terms of concept and progression, it does fail on some details. The repetitiveness is forgivable, but the aspect that ruins this release is its length. It's only a fucking half hour of brilliance! The soundscapes were brilliant, the atmosphere was brilliant, the concept and idea of having one song and letting it follow its own free path without being pretentious is remarkable and brilliant, but it's not enough! There needed to be at least a tiny bit more variety, there needed to be more time to let the sound dominate the room.

The Circle is at the same time a huge achievement and an even huger disappointment, and is among the most depressive albums that I've ever listened to, but you have to work that depression out, and that is brilliant in itself. It creates great expectations, and then goes on to purposefully not meet any of them, and absolutely destroys everything it had spent the first half to create in the process. It creates a majestic vastness up until the end of the third track, and then just lets it extinguish itself. The last track is absolute destruction. It screams and clatters and demands your attention. It's like listening to the universe shatter and melt. It is powerful, dominant, yet manages to still be weak and fragile. It's like The Circle knows it could have been so much more, but isn't. The CD goes out with a whimper. A VERY LOUD whimper.

Standout tracks:

The Circle (Erosion Part II)
The Circle (Erosion Part III)
The Circle (Erosion Part VI)