Why Circles?

Circles Of is finished.

That still feels slightly strange to write. For months, it has existed as pieces. Songs in different stages, lyrics being rewritten, arrangements changing and ideas that sometimes made perfect sense one evening and considerably less sense the morning after.

Now there are no pieces left to finish, and on September 25, Chapter 02 is out.

So for the seven days leading up to the release, we wanted to do something a little different. Instead of showing you what these songs are supposed to look like, we want to tell you what is inside them. The thoughts behind the lyrics, the decisions behind the arrangements, things that changed along the way, things we got wrong and some of the details you might never notice just by listening.

Seven days. Seven Notes.

This first Note is open to everyone. Most of the ones that follow won't be.

Some parts of these seven days will only be open to the Truthbearers. Not because we want to put the story behind a paywall, becoming a Truthbearer is free, but because we promised them something when this started. A little closer access to the things behind the music, and sometimes getting to see them before everyone else does.

So it feels right that some of this belongs to them.

And there is probably only one place to start.

Why Circles?

Some of the Truthbearers might recognise parts of this story. We started talking to them about Circles before Blame had even been released. At the time, we were still standing inside Chapter 02 trying to understand exactly what we were building.

The strange thing is that Circles wasn’t originally supposed to explain anything. It was just the title of a song.

Parts of that song had existed for a while, and when we returned to it, something about the word started following us into everything else we were writing. We started seeing circles everywhere, and they were not the kind you draw on paper.

They were the ones we live inside.

The things we inherit without realising it. The behaviours we repeat even after promising ourselves we won’t. The fears passed from one person to another until nobody remembers where they started.

But also the good ones.

Traditions worth keeping. Lessons worth passing on. The things our parents gave us that we hope our children will one day give to theirs.

That distinction became important, because Circles Of was never supposed to be a Chapter about breaking every cycle. Some circles deserve to continue. Others probably should have ended generations ago.

And somewhere between those two sits one of the questions that kept returning while we were writing this Chapter.

How do you know the difference?

There was another uncomfortable part of it too.

Blame had originally started somewhere completely different. We thought we were writing about social media, data, corporate greed and children growing up in a world where being connected can somehow make us increasingly disconnected.

It was very easy to point at everything that was wrong. Then we realised we were standing inside the same thing we were pointing at.

That changed the song, and eventually it changed the Chapter.

The question stopped being only about what they were doing and became much more uncomfortable.

What are we repeating?

Why are human beings so good at finding someone else to blame? A company, a generation, a political side, a religion, our parents, our children, history or society.

Sometimes those things absolutely deserve criticism. But blaming something and understanding a pattern are not necessarily the same thing.

That idea started appearing everywhere.

A child can learn fear from someone who was once taught the same fear. A family can slowly grow apart without anyone ever deciding that it should. A nation can repeat something it once promised history had taught it never to do again.

And twenty years can completely change what the exact same road looks like when you walk it again.

Perspective became as important to this Chapter as repetition, because a circle looks very different depending on where you’re standing inside it.

Maybe something that felt like failure when you were seventeen looks like survival when you’re forty. Maybe something you were angry at your parents for becomes something you finally understand when you have children yourself.

Maybe you realise they were wrong?

Maybe you realise you were the one at fault?

Usually, I suspect, the truth is somewhere considerably messier inside the circles of every human being.

That is where Circles Of lives.

Not in answers, but in mirrors.

It’s also one of the founding pillars of SevenFiftyTwo: “Speaking through music that mirrors reality.”

That was something we told the Truthbearers very early on, and I think it became more true the longer we worked on the Chapter. We weren’t interested in writing six songs telling everyone else how to live.

We’re still trying to figure most of this out ourselves.

But before a circle can be broken, protected or intentionally passed on, it first has to be seen.

Our music and lyrics give us somewhere to look.

Over the next six days, we’re going to show you what we found when we looked inside each of these songs. Some of it is about the world around us. Some of it gets considerably closer. And some of the things connecting these songs have been sitting there quietly the entire time.

We’ll get to those.

There is also a longer story about how SevenFiftyTwo actually travelled from The Great Divide into Chapter 02. That story belongs in the normal timeline of Notes of Seven, and eventually we’ll get there in due time.

This isn’t that story.

For these seven days, we’re jumping forward.

Circles Of is finished.

Now we want to show you what we made and one way to interpret the songs, but we also want you to find yourselves within the lyrics and songs.

Find your own story within the lyrics I wrote. Find strength, let out grief, feel that you are walking beside me on the walk fighting insomnia, or comforting your child with words my father once told me.

That’s the purpose of these Seven Days of Circles, to make you feel the songs even more.