Early Days maps out Nine Circles interpretation of Cold Wave and Minimal Synth. Unbelievably the tracks are mostly from a brief time period, ’80—’82. Alienation and uncertainty course through the 2LP with heavy Yamaha chords, metallic machine beats and brittle vocals.
Nine circles was formed in the early '80s by Peter Van Garderen and Lidia Fiala. In 1980 there was a band called Genetic Factor. This band split up when their three members got girlfriends and they started to make music together with their girls. So at that time there were three bands living together in one house. One of the couples were Peter van Garderen and Lidia Fiala. Lidia had been writing lyrics since she was 15 years old. Nine Circles was born. Within two years they wrote about 60 songs.
Also living in the house was Richard Zeilstra, who had a job at the VPRO radio, hosting a show called Spleen where he gave New Wave bands a chance to play. He asked bands to send tapes to him and the best bands had the opportunity to play live at the radio and also got the chance to be on the Radio Nome compilation. Peter and Lidia sent their tape to him and were the only ones from this house to be on the show. Richard knew their music was special. Nine Circles never played a live show on stage, only one concert live at the radio which is also featured on this album.
Two years later Peter and Lidia split up and Nine Circles disappeared. In 2009 Lidia’s son googled her name just for fun and found a lot about the band Nine Circles. Lidia was surprised, she never knew how popular Nine Circles have been over the years. She got herself on Facebook and since then she got in touch with many people and decided Nine Circles should come back! Peter was not able to join the band these days, he had a different life but he was supporting Lidia and liked that she enjoyed doing music again. Peter still had all the old recordings and sent Lidia a lot of the music they made together back in the days. The best tracks are collected on this 2LP.
Together with Per-Anders Kurenbach Lidia revived Nine Circles. They recorded new material (released on the album Alice) and played live until Lidia had to stop playing live for health reasons in 2016. Nevertheless they‘re working on a follow-up album called Emerge which is planned to be released in 2020 and hopefully Lidia will be able to go on stage again soon.