This is the debut release for Collective Recording Company. Welcome aboard.

On a stormy morning in January of 2025 Finnish artist Anna Fält and New Zealand locals Antony Milton, and Zac Winterwood got together in the tiny rural town of Featherston. Anna had played an intense and engrossing live solo performance at a local gallery there the evening before.

After a cup of tea and very little pre- planning they embarked on a series of improvisations. The instruments employed were wholly acoustic but the 'idea' of folk music a point of departure only. The resulting music was frequently abstract and trance inducing. The soundscape of a stormy summer’s day.

'Circle Song' is an excerpt from these recordings that seemed to stand apart from the rest of the music and have an identity all its own. For all its abstract wildness it is perhaps the most 'traditional' sounding of the recordings. It was also the perfect length for a 7" record and thus it made sense to carve it off to present to you here as its own thing.

Anna Fält said of this song: "The melody & text are both traditional, from a place called Carelia (Karjala in Finnish) where my granny comes from. It is a song that says: I listened to the cuckoo bird sing, and I listened and thought which one of us has a faster tongue? (That is to say, which one of us is better at singing? So, there is a funny song-battle idea to it, and this quite profound, existential idea of a meeting of the human world and the animal world/nature). Basically, a very stereotypical Finnish folklore: a nature reference, a human being connecting with an animal, and a combination of humour and seriousness."

An edition of 24 7" records in a choice of 3 different colours. [from Carbon] I have a couple copies of Blue and Green, you'll get a random one :)