The Burning Well EP- By Circus worlD
ALBUM TITLE: The Burning Well EP
ARTIST: Circus worlD
GENRE: Alternative rock / Grunge
LISTEN HERE: Bandcamp
Circus worlD is the long time music venture of Mark Sayle and Mikie Daugherty. In 2007 Circus worlD was abandoned, and it wasn't until just last year, after messing around with some new content, when the duo decided to revive the band. On February 15, releasing new music for the first time in over a decade, Circus worlD debuted The Burning Well EP.
The Burning Well EP starts off with "Black Swan," and ends very appropriately with a track titled "The End." "Black Swan," relative to the rest of the EP, is light and upbeat. It features a catchy chorus with a very "rock-show" vibe, and is the perfect track to open the EP with before deeper and heavier tracks like "Nibiru Rising," and "Fire Flowers." One of my favorite moments of the EP occurs in the song "Demons." The extended guitar solo is something I really appreciate, and can listen to over and over. It's just so good, and is somehow exactly what the song needed to transform it from an ordinarily good song to one I would voluntarily put on repeat.
"The End." is the last and final song of the five track EP, and it is easy for me to say it is also my favorite. The beginning of "The End." reminds me very much of Metallica's classically composed intro for "Nothing Else Matters." There's something really beautiful about a slow and melodic intro that really takes its time before building up and paving way to the rest of the song. Although slower and softer than the other tracks, "The End." does not lack in depth and feeling, fully encompassing elements that give the song its grunge and metal undertones.
The Burning Well EP is intense and full of depth. Mark's bold vocals seem to be perfectly synergized and complimented by Mikie's instrumental components. Listening to The Burning Well EP gave me a sense of musical nostalgia, taking me back to my alternative rock days when this genre still flourished. In a world of colorful pop, catchy electronic, and mainstream festivals, the grungey alternative music produced by Circus worlD is a surprisingly refreshing contrast. The EP reminds me of the rawness that is found in small venue shows with high energy performances. Full of genuine and raw alternative rock musicality, The Burning Well EP is a truly great listen.
After a twelve year hiatus broken with the impressive release of The Burning Well EP, we can only hope that Circus worlD will continue to produce and provide us with new music. Read the exclusive interview between Tune Jam and the duo behind Circus worlD below.
ANNA: What type of music did you guys grow up listening to? Do you think that influenced Circus worlD's musical direction?
MARK: I grew up listening to bands like the Sex Pistols, Iron Maiden and The Sisters of Mercy. Later on though I got into bands like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., The Manics and Husker Du. It was these later bands that really informed my song writing in the early stages of Circus worlD and I have to thank Mikie for introducing me to some of them. Lately though I feel my earlier influences have slipped surreptitiously back into my songs. One of the numbers on the Burning Well EP called 'The End' owes a debt in no small part to Iron Maiden and a number of tracks that will be forthcoming have a definite post punk Sisters-style darkness to them.
MIKIE: When I was young I remember The Beatles being played a lot. Stuff like Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ album, The Travelling Wilburys, Cream, Lou Reed from my dad; my mum played The Doors a lot, Gary Moore, R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic For The People’. The first record I bought for myself was ‘Full Moon Fever’ by Tom Petty. When Freddie Mercury died a friend of mine was playing a lot of Queen and they became the first band that I really got into. I bought a lot of their albums in my early teens. I liked a lot of accessible, melodic rock when I was growing up really, nothing too weird or abrasive at the point; that would change considerably when I left my teens. It was really good time for music back then as well; with the rise to prominence of the grunge/alternative scene and then britpop/indie there was a lot more spotlight on interesting guitar music, helped of course by the fact that people were still buying music at that point.
I’m not sure how much of an influence the music I was exposed to as a kid has had on me as a musician (though I do still like a lot of it), but the stuff I was getting into in my late teens almost certainly helped to shape me to some degree. Bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers, etc not only impacted on the way I wanted to play but also helped to steer me towards things like Pixies, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Nick Cave. – all bands that we were listening to a lot in the early days of Circus worlD.
Due to the band being dispersed, it has been about a decade since Circus worlD came out with new music. How has this long period of dormancy affected the EP?
MARK: I don't know that it's affected the EP as such. Our sound has certainly developed, you could say matured I suppose. The recording techniques Mikie uses now compared to our old recordings stand a mile apart. I'm still hugely proud of the body of work we put together in the early days of the band but the songs we put on the EP are just on a different level altogether.
MIKIE: I’m not sure how much of an effect it had on the songs themselves really; I would say minimal at most. We had got together a couple of times in the few years prior to making the EP and done some vague demos that had never ended up being finished, so that coloured my outlook on the project at first. It started with Mark asking if I was interested in recording a new song he had written. I initially viewed it with a little scepticism, thinking that maybe nothing would come of it but figured I’d give it a go anyway. So I recorded all the music for it and then he came and added the vocals a day or two later. We were both happy with it and decided to keep going, with Mark bringing a new song idea the next week, then a couple more a week later. Pretty soon it became obvious that this time we were definitely working towards a new record of some sort and in the end we had twenty completed songs, including the four that had never been finished in the preceding years. Once the creativity was really flowing I think the fact that it had been so long since we had made music together properly was a positive thing because it made it exciting to be doing it, it made me think, “why the hell hadn’t we been doing this earlier?”.
Mark, what inspired you to approach Mikie after so many years, and want to revive Circus worlD again?
MARK: For me Circus worlD was always on hiatus rather than irretrievably broken. I started writing songs again that fell, I felt, into the Circus worlD mould and it just felt like the most natural thing in the world to approach Mikie to see if he wanted to do something with them. For me the band is like a slightly dysfunctional family, with me being possibly the most dysfunctional member. You might not talk for years but you're still close after all is said and done.
What song on the EP means the most to you guys, and what is the story behind it?
MARK: For me it's probably Demons which is about my struggle against my addictive personality and my battle with depression. It's about the addiction and guilt spiral which is a part of so many people’s lives and which I try to deal with on a day by day basis.
MIKIE: I’m torn between the first two tracks ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Demons’. If I had to choose I think I’d probably have to go with ‘Demons’. I think it was the fourth or fifth song we did (it was written the same night as ‘Nibiru Rising’) so it was around the time I had started to feel that we were doing a bit more than just recording a couple of songs. Like many of the songs, as soon as Mark played the basis of it to me I knew it was something I could definitely work with. I can’t remember how much of it was already written; certainly the verse and chord patterns, possibly the middle eight was written that night. I remember us working out the arrangement while jamming through it a few times and me coming up with the intro. As for why I like it, I just think it’s a good song. I don’t particularly like over-analysing songs, some tracks just connect with you in some way and this is one of them. I also played some guitar solos on it that I was pretty happy with.
Do you have any favorite live performance memories?
MARK: My absolute favourite was a support gig we played for The Damned. As it turned out Dave Vanian couldn't get to the gig in time and so The Damned didn't actually play. To me, as disappointing as that should have been, it didn't matter. We played a fantastic set. The crowd were informed halfway though our set that the headliners wouldn't be playing and, instead of leaving in disgust, stayed to watch the rest of our set anyway. We really put the effort in that night and it worked beautifully. Shame about Dave.
MIKIE: I have quite a few, mainly just little snippets of moments in time that have stuck with me. One of our earliest gigs, Mark and I colliding in mid-air as we both launched into scissor kicks at the same time: another early gig, an acoustic set in a tiny, packed bar and what seemed like the whole place singing along with one of our songs – the whole thing, including my guitar solo; the general drunken chaos of so many of our gigs in the first several years – not always a good thing by any means, but kind of cool looking back on it; Mark introducing one gig with “Good evening, we are Circus worlD and we shit beyond all reason”; Mark leaping atop a very unstable-looking speaker stack at one gig; looking down at the neck of my guitar to find it looking wet and realising I’d sliced my middle finger open in two places during a solo; seeing the looks of horror on certain people’s faces when we ended acoustic sets with me playing guitar with a drumstick through heavy distortion; being told to stop playing by one bar manager during one particularly violent noise-out (it was the end of the set so it really made no difference to us anyway). As to an actual full gig, the set we played as our comeback in June 2006 following a year away from each other is the one that I always remember as being really good. The audience was great and to my recollection we were really on-form, it just felt like everything was as good as we could have hoped.
Listen to their EP below: