OUT NOW! Rites of Initiation unleashed today!

 We are absolutely thrilled to finally let you all hear the new songs. Please head over to our bandcamp page where you can listen to, and download 4 new songs. The EP is called Rites of Initiation, and is the 1st chapter of Decompositions, Vol.1.
 Thanks for keeping us relevant in your lives, we love you.
Caleb, Kathleen, Drew and David.
Circle Takes The Square

NPR streams new song!

Check out the new track, "Way of Ever-Branching Paths" over at NPR, before our digital EP is released on Tuesday! You can pre-order the upcoming RITES OF INITIATION digital EP at the CTTS Bandcamp page now! Check out the lyrics for "Way of Ever-Branching Paths" in the previous blog post!

Way Of Ever-Branching Paths

III. Way Of Ever-Branching Paths

"Reality is not always probable, or likely."
-Jorge Luis Borges

At your doorstep
Cloaked in negative space
First frost aches
To lay its claim

At the threshold
Between without and within
First foot prints
Disgrace the virgin soil
Ignoring refusal
Let the winter in
 Indian Summer
Defiant forever
Let winter have its way

Through hollow insides
Made of branching halls
First step falls

Vanishing reasons
I chose this course
Death is in season
Inward to source
INITIATION
Vanishing reasons
I chose this course
DISINTEGRATION
Death is in Season
Step inside...
One thousand faces 
Stare back from their fractured origin

In turn,
 Turn another corner
And lose my place
A blue-print for disorder
The Way of Disarray

Backward glare
Burnished obsidian walls
Reflect the endings
That will never...

Unfold,
Fold the corners over
To hold my place
The panic feels so familiar
In a breath-work maze

Clear the air
Ceremonial smoke rings
 Fill the creases
Where the trauma collects

You better keep your thought forms clean
How we, the Conjured, seek
To breach the compass of this dream

Tangental slipstreams
Derail our train of thought
Stationed in fog
Composing
Decompositions
In constant revision
Infinite indecision
Encaged
Within a finite space

Help me hide it away
Under thin coats of cracking paint
Under smothering sound-scapes
Where every layer I've made
Competes for a place

Enchanting parlor tricks
And slights of hand
Made me a god
Here in obscurity
Confined to making believe

So help me wish it away...
But how long,
 How long
Before I'd beg to bring it back into life?
To bring it into the blue grey
The Grey matters
Matters of the Maker

Mark and Measure
Locus of control
Order, theorized
Crooked, our belief
In the straight line

Leave room for failure
One fatal mistake
 That human touch
Planning its own obsolescence

The scent of senescence
Permeates

So much potential
Fated to fade
Our monuments
Willing their own expiration

Ground to powder
Chaos, improvised
Stolen fire
Blessed are the thieves
In these End Times

Distill it down into a single line
 Meet the demands of the mountainside
Compromise is such a loaded word
When landslides are singing

Hermetic melodies
Only we could hear
  We clutch the chords
Forgotten anthems reappear

Encoded messages
Only we could speak
In native tongues
Ancient strains have gone to seed

Entangled crossroads
Only we could see
Beyond the fear
 Our new creation will be gleaned

From the wastelands
Of the insincere
Winged beauty she looms

Within a derelict cocoon

Inspiration strikes
Under flashing flood lights
Winged beauty emerge
To search this tortured world for new growth
  Resurface, Recreate, and Redeem

Shades
Of night
Blossoming
Within

These Laced
Pathways
Of Hekate's
Garden

Retrace
Mind streams
Following
Her lead

Wellsprings
Whispering

The Rites of
INITIATION
I chose this course
DISINTEGRATION
Inward to source
PREVERBERATIONS
Follow the stations
Through branching halls
ANNIHILATION
Fever breaks my fall

Dionysus, good heavens
You've gone to pieces
In search of closure, you went within...
Everything and Nothing
Clashed
In counter movements,
Rotating spins-
A dream,
A dream
And nothing more.

Chart the startling curves
Of your dementia
(No way out)
Map the staggering depths
Of one dimension
(No way out)
Like clockwork witchcraft
One must suffer to pass
Suffer to Pass
Like clockwork witchcraft
My dreams now abandon me
Suffer To Pass

In time, you'll add my shadow
To your overspilling urn
And match my every move
Step for step, turn for turn

Reclaimed by a destiny I revoked
A trajectory, resigned
Writhing
In surrender
Storm clouds gather in this altered state

Hard-wired
To the recklessness of perception
Bathed in artificial light
Steeped in fabricated time
Storm clouds gather in this altered state

Ever-spinning,
The Great Wheel:
Void of progress

Ever-Branching,
The Great Work:
Grieve the dying
Dying art
Art of process

Tunnel visions
Wander without aim
Through the Gauntlet

Spirit Guides,
Forward Exits-
Disembodied nights
Shrouded in war paint

Losing mind
To behold...
The Other Side

TAKE HOLD.

New EP on August 23rd! "Rites of Initiation", the First Chapter of Decompositions Volume 1

“Seven years after the release of their heralded debut, As the Roots Undo, experimental cult rock heroes Circle Takes the Square have announced plans to release their second full-length album, Decompositions: Volume I, in November via their own Gatepost Recordings.

Recorded/Mixed/Mastered by Anthony Stubelek at Rockstudio in Brunswick, GA, Decompositions: Volume I is a collection of songs, comprised of three central musical narratives. Each composition maintains its own identity and story arc, while also playing an integral role in the overarching plot line that will unfold throughout the Decompositions series. Given the self-contained nature of each individual passage, CTTS will be unleashing the complete first chapter from Decompositions: Volume I, entitled Rites of Initiation, as a digital EP on August 23 on their bandcamp page in advance of the full album’s release in November.

Rites of Initiation finds CTTS breaking into new territories, from the crushingly primitive to the technically transcendent, from stripped down metallic riffs to harmony embellished, eerie folk passages, all within a framework consistent with their trademark discordant and experimental approach to high speed, outside the box punk/hardcore.

“We have spent vast amounts of time exploring every fractal peak and recursive valley in the landscape that these songs describe, and we are eager to provide our listeners with the opportunity to glimpse a portion of this realm, and to immerse themselves in the labyrinth of startling curves and staggering depths that we’ve been lost within for so long,” says co-vocalist/guitarist Drew Speziale. “Rites of Initiation documents the ill-lit, inward-leading, forever-winding pathways that eventually take hold, on a search for the authentic in an increasingly artificial world. When the boundaries between thinking and knowing, dreaming and waking, living and dying all begin to blur, a terrifyingly primal vision begins to bleed through the fragile veil of consensus perception. To surrender to it, embracing the other side is our “rite of passage.” We’ve crafted these songs in an attempt to sing that Transition into being.”

Rites of Initiation is CTTS’ first recorded music since their debut album, As the Roots Undo, which was released in 2004, and gives fans a peak at what’s to come on the long awaited follow-up Decompositions: Volume I.”

Our first live show in over 3 years! AUG 27th at the Black Cat in DC.

Hey guys and ladies,
When Pageninetynine asked us to join them on their 2nd reunion show, weren't exactly ready to play a show yet, especially one this big and badass, we were hoping to ease back into touring with a low key house show here, a VA hall there, to get our groove back. But ultimately we thought uh, its pg.99, and Thou. We have to make it happen.
So, fuckitletsrock!
We'll be unearthing some songs from our demo, a song or both from the split 7", some ATRU classic hits, and some new songs as well. If you can make it out, we'd love to see you. If you are one of the many traveling from far away lands, please be safe. We're very much looking forward to our first show back. Coincidentally, the last show we played was with Thou in New Orleans, Nov. 2007. The circle continues...

Beware of nostalgia! - Chris(pg99) and Drew(CTTS) in 2002