Circle - Pharaoh Overlord (2015)

Pharaoh Overlord’s Circle is bound to annul all expectations you ever held for these once avant-stoners. What’s clear is that Circle marks the fusion of Pharaoh Overlord with the namesake of this album.

It is a wild card you foresaw. Their no-nonsense self-referentiality, oddly enough, inverses the paradox of the red queen: with the building blocks standing still, the friction with the ever-accelerating external realities gives the impression of expanding horizons in the standstill of tonal landscapes of the body of music that is Pharaoh Overlord’s Circle. Synthesizers float like nitrous oxide above the serene pastures of laid-back grooves. This is epic synth pop that would vaporize any pulse or mundane logic into the stream of thin air of upper atmosphere.

On Circle, Pharaoh Overlord stand among their bling-blinded subjects as a modestly-clad emperor proud of the newly-discovered self-realization by means of merging with their idols and contestants (that is, Circle) into one abstract entity of sonic flesh. There is no sobriety like loss of identity.