CALLIGRAM

The latest signing to Prosthetic Records is London’s CALLIGRAM - a multi-national quintet charging into 2020 intent on making their presence felt. Their first release for the label is The Eye Is The First Circle - an eight track pummelling of raucous guitars, d-beat rhythms and lyrics sung entirely in Italian.

With members from Brazil, France, Italy and the UK, CALLIGRAM are a unique amalgam of cultural, musical, emotional, political and social reference points and influences. Each member brings their own experience to the table to create one unified and distinctive emission. Their uncompromising sound draws from punk rock, jazz and the bleak soundscapes of black metal. All of the above combine on The Eye Is The First Circle to create a compelling and electrifying communique.

The band as a whole faced more obstacles in the creation of the album than with previous recordings; with life more chaotic, the album became a document of their personal struggle during this time. The album title derives from a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay titled Circles which starts: "The eye is the first circle: the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.” Although the essay is about the transience of life and the ever-evolving aspect of nature, the band chose to give the first sentence a new meaning by interpreting the image of the circle that surrounds every person as a sphere within which one has duty of care towards the people around them. This message of love acts as a counterpoint to the negative and pessimistic lyrics, and gives a sense of purpose to an otherwise seemingly meaningless existence.

Fundamentally this is an album born out of love, about love; specifically about survival in chaos thanks to love. The ties that bind each member of CALLIGRAM to the next are the sinews that hold the whole thing afloat. Much like the existence of the band itself, the creation of The Eye Of The First Circle is a perfect storm; a mixture of elements and experiences that combine in a one-off lightning bolt of serendipity.

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Lewis Johns at The Ranch Production House during October 2019, The Eye Is The First Circle is an abrasive, relentless ball of energy, designed to short circuit nerves upon first listen. Ultimately, CALLIGRAM have made the album they want to listen to - the album that’s missing from their record collection; an album that says what nobody else was saying to them. The Eye Is The First Circle is a complex and multilayered experience, crammed into a little over half an hour of playing time.

“New art destroys the old” - Ralph Waldo Emerson