CIRCLES

Solstice's third album finds the lineup tweaked again - Jethro Tull veteran Clive Bunker's joined on drums and Emma Brown is the new lead vocalist. The long-serving Marc Elton is still here on violin, and has some powerful moments, but sadly this would be his last recording with the group - due to tinnitus he had to quit live performance, and he gave up his spot in the band after this album was completed.

Circles scales back the role of keyboards compared to New Day, so that the vocals, Elton's violin, and most particularly Andy Glass' guitar work can take centre stage; in this way Glass is revealed as a guitarist after the fashion of, and at his best on a part with, Andy Latimer of Camel.

Aside from the keyboards the album is largely in the style that Solstice album past have made us accustomed to, with a standout departure being the title track. This commemorates the Battle of the Beanfield - the confrontation between New Age Travellers (repeatedly scapegoated by the Tory government of the era) and gung-ho police which erupted into appalling violence and put an end to the annual Stonehenge Free Festival in 1985.

No official inquiry into the matter ever occurred, but a police officer was found guilty of criminal Actual Bodily Harm and the police were successfully sued by some of the travellers involved. The overall effect of the event was to herald a crackdown on the New Age Traveller lifestyle which had become inextricably linked to the free festival scene - with the result that such festivals became a thing of the past. (Religious neopagan ceremonies would not be allowed at Stonehenge for over a decade, until finally in the authorities relented; even then, these gatherings have been of a strictly religious character and not included the sort of freewheeling musical festival that veterans fondly remember and mourn the loss of.)

This would have been a matter dear to Solstice's hearts; the free festival scene had been the band's spiritual home for much of their 1980s run, and the coincidence of the band splitting in the very same year as the Battle certainly feels oddly fitting. That the 1990s incarnation of the band would mark the occasion with a song is only fitting. It's perhaps one of Solstice's darker moments, interspersed with reconstructed sounds and news reports from the incident; in this context, the band's spiritually-oriented style might seem a bit incongruous, but personally I consider the way the music keeps going in their accustomed style and the vocals stridently insist on the right to assembly and religious worship and celebration is actually quite apt, striking a note of defiance in the face of difficult circumstances.

And if the story of Solstice is not one of triumph against difficult circumstances, I don't know what it is...