Hisham Bharoocha, who is Soft Circle, used to be the drummer for Black Dice. They played once in an old Masonic temple in Baltimore. There was either a mosaic ceiling or a wall or stained glass, can't remember, but somewhere was some blue architectural beauty, something reliant on its connection with light. And Black Dice played on the stage. There was a balcony and plenty of seats, so most people sat, but some stood in the crevasse of floor in front of them. Black Dice didn't mind. Bharoocha, can't imagine he noticed. Somewhere in the evolutionary period out of that band and before this one, he sat at a kit half made of electronic pads and intoned wordlessly into a Madonna microphone. It was brutally loud. That was the last time we saw Black Dice with them. Not the next time we saw Soft Circle, but the next time it was how it should be, was in the basement of a museum shaped like stacks of boxes, again on chairs, this time white and museum-like, stacked on risers. It sounded like "Feel the Light" does, wild, open-spaced drone, like a prayer for rain. But with the then drums replaced with the now guitar. "Feel the Light" is almost entirely without percussion (the maraca makes a late appearance), the one instrument we cannot untether from our view Bharoocha. This track is apparently not yet released, so maybe represents a new weeded direction for Soft Circle, a final shoulder shrug to the volume and pace of the drums. This is his Robert Frost moment. (via 20jazzfunkgreats)
Download: Soft Circle, "Feel the Light"
