for over 4 years, david coccagna aka chaperone has been a constant part of great circles, as musician, art director, and muse. with snapback balaclava he once again fully embodies all of those roles, delivering three inspiring tracks, selecting his remixers with specific attention to their musical histories, and designing his cover art. across the a-side, chaperone scrapes away at the grit – personal grit, the grit of anxiety, and philly grit. these are meditations on loops, and loops on meditations. each one appears on the surface to be a brief quote, but time dilation takes over, and minutes later we discover that chaperone has welcomed us into and back out of his own healing moment. like chaperone s p o n d release grcr-009, the b-side of snapback balaclava is a great circles extended family affair with a trio of diverse remixes that expose and exploit fragments of the chaos chaperone so carefully contained. hitoshi kojima thrive reinterprets pulse feels swells beating with relentless syncopated rhythms and synth lines that hang like massive string drones. m//r lays down a signature percussion ensemble palette, zeroes in on otherwise peripheral elements of grit neglect, and then deftly navigates sea change with both. matt korvette and sean mcguinness of philly punk band pissed jeans open up the pit and finish the story, taking femur baseball bat to its literal and brutal potential with monstrous vocals and kicks.

nested structure is the first great circles release from artists outside of philadelphia. thrive are tetsuya yoshida and hitoshi kojima. they both grew up in the north kanto area of japan. they first met at the club run by tetsuya yoshida called sound a base nest, which is known as having the best sound system in the north kanto area. in 2007, the duo started their dj / producing unit thrive. previous releases have included a split 12inch with keia yano for japanese label struct, and recent solo releases by hitoshi for always human tapes and for his own label ambivalent deviation. this record almost didnt happen! — tetsuya and hitoshi were picking up great circles records in japan and, having periodically communicated with each other about music, they sent us the struct 12inch to check out. while cleaning out the back of the car a few months later, the presumably empty record mailer was about to land in the recycle bin when we fortunately discovered a demo cd of unreleased thrive material inside. we drove around listening to it and week later we agreed to release a 12inch. the music on the nested structure 12inch is dark, foreboding, even outwardly threatening. its hypnotic, textural and rhythmically complex.