*****
¨ This is great music. Without a doubt one of the best releases so far this year. CIRCUMSTELLAR blends prog jazz and ambient and successfully pushes the boundaries of all of it. I’ll admit that when I go through the prog archives recommendations sometimes I’m floored by musicians I have never even heard of but only in the very rarest cases do artists reach this kind of nirvana. Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on what’s missing because all the ingredients are there. But this is the type of music that evokes awe and you don’t even have to wonder why because it’s feeling not reason. You just know. Those who don’t trust me and ignore this do so at their own peril.¨ - Birdboy Blizzard Music Blog


As a follow-up to Radical Accretion [2021], Circumstellar represents the next step in the evolution of this exhilarating project that draws inspiration from orchestral, jazz, electronic, and metal musics. Featuring two long pieces that showcase the duo's focus on continuous melodic generation and development, this album is a forward-looking and arresting musical experience.

Make sure you read the liner notes which were written in real time by astrophysicist Luke Keller as he experienced the album for the first time:

"1- Circumstellar Protoplanetary Disk

We're approaching a circumstellar protoplanetary disk. Starting at a distance we see a central glow within a quiescent disk. As we approach the rhythm begins to hint at periodicity; planets forming and orbiting in the disk. Closer still the physical structure of the disk becomes more evident: luminous hot spots, density enhancements. Then we resolve the central glow as a star. The active inner disk, heated by the star, glows brightly, intensity increasing. The underlying violence of planet formation and disk accretion are emerging. Magnetohydrodynamic flows of gas stream from inner disk to star, exploding on the stellar photosphere. The periodicity of orbits becomes obscured by chaotic bursts of accretion. Our trajectory is a close pass. Intensity waning as we depart a system that is purely creative from seeming violence.


2 - Space-Time Alive

This system is bigger, more massive, space-time alive with evolving curvature. A super-massive black hole. We approach from a great distance. The accretion disk glowing brightly has no luminous center. The event horizon waits there. Approaching, we feel no fantastic gravity, no mind and body-warping tidal disruption. Not yet. Closer in we can see tidal forces ripping and stretching the hot gas in the accretion disk. Luminous wisps, spiraling to the event horizon, become redder, fainter, slower, never quite crossing the horizon. Gravitational redshift. Curvature obscuring dynamics. We're on a crash course with the infinite future. The event horizon widens as we approach. Black, pure opposite of light, below; the luminous universe above. Passing through we feel...nothing. But now the dark is in every direction. Every possible future...every possible direction…is singularity. We will join the mass of the singularity. We watch matter ahead of us accelerate to blackness. Then...blank eternity."

Written by Luke Keller, astrophysicist and professor of astronomy and physics at Ithaca College, New York.