Three Point Circle

Three Point Circle

Fluorescent Grey

Palace Of Lights

The music, like the titles of Fluorescent Grey, imparts an impossible reconciliation. The “Nearly Remote,” a “Muted Chromesthesia,” the pulse of a “Still Current” or the dying light of “Dull Flares.” These contradictions reconcile opposites to reveal an uncommon ground of perpetual but shifting stability. Sources linger in the background, emerge and then dissolve into a continuously growing soundstage. Calm embraces agitation, which in turn invites noise. Distortion manipulates the purity of sampled harmonics. Melody appears and struggles to apply the most cursory analgesic. This is a music fused from differing digital and sampled sources into a resonant beauty. A beauty—not mere prettiness—that unfolds slowly to reveal deep timbres actively defining their own space and time. On their two previous releases, Three Point Circle’s compositional process willfully blurred individual identities in favor of a collective compositional technique. With Fluorescent Grey K. Leimer, Steve Peters and Marc Barreca established a genuinely distinct ensemble voice. Beginning with the most basic structural constraints, the material generated by an individual member is subjected to whatever degree of annihilation the other members deem appropriate; each successive iteration is then recirculated and further obliterated until consensus is reached. By then, the original gesture is radically altered or almost completely erased, making it nearly impossible to determine who originated what in a given piece. The sublimation of individual egos results in the unpredictably coherent identity of Fluorescent Grey.

Three Point Circle

Proximity Effects

Palace Of Lights

K. Leimer, Marc Barreca, and Steve Peters first performed together in 1980 for a pair of one-off shows in Olympia, WA. Nearly forty years later, the trio resumed work as Three Point Circle. That reunion resulted in the release of Layered Contingencies in 2020. Their new release, Proximity Effects, continues in a similar vein, obscuring individual contributions into an integrated collective compositional voice.  “...fragments of guitar, electric piano, and bell tones occasionally rise to the surface of these oceanic soundscapes, their generally blurry design tends to camouflage the identifying aspects of their components. Each of the five settings unfolds in a spirit of unhurried drift, the slow pace allowing the listener to closely monitor the material as it develops and to examine the mutating sound design.” —Textura

Three Point Circle

Layered Contingencies

Palace Of Lights

The origins of Three Point Circle go back to 1980, when K. Leimer, Marc Barreca, and Steve Peters met for two sparsely-attended shows in Olympia, WA. Some forty years later, they have regrouped as Three Point Circle. Perhaps better described as a process than as a musical group, Three Point Circle has developed a collaborative system that replaces standards of improvisation and authorship with a new, independent, compositional identity removed from the individual habits and traits of the members. Layered Contingencies presents the first results in this quest for uncertainty—five long form pieces of sharp and smooth contrasts taking place in a soundstage of rest, unrest, shallows, and depths that manage to maintain an unpredictable coherence.