CiRCLE no.5
CiRCLE no.5 is the brainchild of Toph Bollweg, under his alias of Tofu Bot … Read Full Bio ↴CiRCLE no.5 is the brainchild of Toph Bollweg, under his alias of Tofu Bot which has existed under numerous names since 1998 when Tofu Bot first began writing and recording music by himself. Some other names CiRCLE no.5 has been seen under would be Burn, Pop Cultured Pearls, and Experimentation In Noise. Centralized in Reseda, CA, but has taken up residency in Las Vegas, NV and Seattle, WA for brief periods of time. The style of music has always been electronic based, but infusing elements of hip-hop, metal, punk, alternative rock, jazz, blues, folk, and experimental/noise music.
For the early years, Tofu didn't write songs so much as record textures, and pastiche them together on an analog 4-track recorder. This would be a technique that would become a hallmark of CiRCLE no.5 (or CNO:0005 as it sometimes is written lately.) particularly in the middle years, and fine tuned into the present. In the year 2000 when Tofu first enrolled in community college, he took an "Introduction to Electronic Music" class that would become the true starting point for CiRCLE no.5. This class was where "Better Living Thru Discotech" and a couple dozen unreleased songs were created, as well as the CiRCLE no.5 name came about. Being the first time of having a real studio to work in, many of the earlier tracks were built around the notion of seeing how far a lot of this new equipment can be pushed. Tofu has stated about the experience, "Most of the work that I did in that period was me opening up Acid 2.0 and fruity loops, dropping about 20 loops all on top of each other, randomly cutting them in and out for about 4 minutes, then running them through the effects processors and seeing what I could come up with. It was a real testament to how fucked up on meth I was at the time since at some point everything ended up at 200 BPM and higher."
In 2001 Tofu dropped out of college and went through a lot of personal hardship, this period is what bore the fruits of "Stabwounded Bankjunkies". According to Tofu, the title came from "My best friend had accounts at two separate banks at the time, so a mutual friend of ours called him a 'bank junkie'. When I first heard him say that I couldn't stop laughing for an hour, and eventually paid homage to that moment with the album title." The album was pared down from about 25-30 songs to a scant 10 since, as Tofu puts it, "most of those were absolutely terrible". The recording period lasted into the middle of 2002 where most of the cassette tapes that the 4-track demos were recorded on got lost due to being un-labled, or had lables that were covered up or unreadable. Some songs got recorded over for other projects, as well as tapes having serious damage put upon them. Tofu found them all again in 2005, salvaged what he could, and digitally mixed/re-recorded parts of the album again. Tofu still considers "Bankjunkies" to have come out in 2002 since "...that's when it would have been released, as well as the music really typifies who I was and what I was feeling in 2002. I couldn't, and didn't write SWBJ in 2005, so it remains a 2002 release in my eyes."
In 2003, the most important contribution to Tofu Bot's sonic arsenal came into the fold. An inexpensive drum machine that he went on to dub killbot_6900. Killbot would be used in practically every project Tofu has been linked to from then after, and marked a defining change in the sound of CiRCLE no.5. So much so that it took till 2005 before any new material would be done or released using this new tool. Tofu always considered Killbot to be an actual member of the band, and has even posted pictures of himself with Killbot on promotional material for CNO:0005, stating "I make the noises, he makes the beats. That's how it works."
In 2005, CiRCLE no.5 released it's first piece of work since "Better Living Thru Discotech EP" in 2000. A purely digital instrumental concept album titles "Beta Testing for the Masses", beta testing was to tell the story of what exactly happened to Tofu Bot in the last few years. "I wanted it to have sparse vocals, but honestly, I just didn't have the equipment to do it at the time. I started writing when I just got a new Mac and was fooling around in Garageband back in Vegas. The first thing that popped up when i wanted to make a song was what i wanted to title it, the first thing that came to mind was what I was feeling like at the moment. And thus, the song 'Trainwreckage' was born... When I moved back home to the valley, I was feeling dehumanized, sort of like I was losing touch with reality and becoming more of a mechanized version of myself. The more that I recorded and wrote 'Beta Testing' the more cathartic it was, and I became reconnected with the warmth I once had. It wasn't a conscious effort, it just ended up that way, so when it came time to put all the songs in sequence, it's very chronological to how I wrote the album, so it sort of became more of an interpretative sonic sculpture of where I was and where I ended up."
During the Beta Testing writing, Tofu took up his old job of working back at a bookstore where he met future A Screaming comes across the sky/Not Will Porter band mate and collaborator Grady Turnbull (Gradie Ossirian in ASCATS), as well as good friend and driving force behind Operation: Liquid Octopuss, James Kannedy. Both of which became sounding boards as well as collaborators for not only "Beta Testing" but the next work that Tofu had been working on immediately after, "Literally Speaking". Literally Speaking was a direct result of working in a book store, since all the titles were to come from book titles of authors Tofu liked. "I wanted to sort of tell the story of the book through song at first. Thankfully I abandoned that idea when the project started, when it became more of an expression of how the title of the book, or the book itself left me feeling." This led to the album being very multi-faceted and schizophrenic at points, as well as far more experimental than previous works. Literally Speaking received very little attention after it's 2007 release, though Tofu cites it as "some of my favorite work I've done, as well as some of the most fun."
Post Literally Speaking has seen Tofu Bot and Killbot working on the next album, a concept album proper, titled <3 (pronounced heart less than three, or heartlessthan3). The album is intentionally an industrial rock album, with more straight forward song writing, and a verse/chorus/verse song structure. "I wanted to write that Nine Inch Nails album I was trying to write when I first started all this mess." The story of the album revolves around a post-apocalyptic world where machines have taken over and enslaved mankind, and one human worker is picked at random by a bugged program to be taught all the secrets of how human kind used to be prior to the end of the war. Tofu Bot has described the story of "all my favorite Man versus Machine sci-fi stories in film and literature sort of pureed in a blender with some old Wax Trax albums. If I was hired to score the Terminator, this is what I would have wrote."
In 2008, unfortunately Killbot_69000 stopped functioning after years of hard use. Tofu Bot broke the news to his fan base as if an actual member of the band had died, and has treated it very much like if he had lost a true friend. Currently, there has been no news on the acquisition of a new drum machine, or if it'll be treated in the same manner as Killbot.
Tofu Bot has hinted that in the future after <3 is released, there's the plan for at least three albums waiting to be made, but is "...just taking it day by day at this point". Other plans are the release of the often referenced, yet never materialized B-Sides collection "Scrap Metal", which will be released as a Box set in 2010 to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of Better Living Thru Discotech. It'll contain any and all b-sides still in existence that are available. It will also be the first physical album release since 2005's Beta Testing for the Masses.
For the early years, Tofu didn't write songs so much as record textures, and pastiche them together on an analog 4-track recorder. This would be a technique that would become a hallmark of CiRCLE no.5 (or CNO:0005 as it sometimes is written lately.) particularly in the middle years, and fine tuned into the present. In the year 2000 when Tofu first enrolled in community college, he took an "Introduction to Electronic Music" class that would become the true starting point for CiRCLE no.5. This class was where "Better Living Thru Discotech" and a couple dozen unreleased songs were created, as well as the CiRCLE no.5 name came about. Being the first time of having a real studio to work in, many of the earlier tracks were built around the notion of seeing how far a lot of this new equipment can be pushed. Tofu has stated about the experience, "Most of the work that I did in that period was me opening up Acid 2.0 and fruity loops, dropping about 20 loops all on top of each other, randomly cutting them in and out for about 4 minutes, then running them through the effects processors and seeing what I could come up with. It was a real testament to how fucked up on meth I was at the time since at some point everything ended up at 200 BPM and higher."
In 2001 Tofu dropped out of college and went through a lot of personal hardship, this period is what bore the fruits of "Stabwounded Bankjunkies". According to Tofu, the title came from "My best friend had accounts at two separate banks at the time, so a mutual friend of ours called him a 'bank junkie'. When I first heard him say that I couldn't stop laughing for an hour, and eventually paid homage to that moment with the album title." The album was pared down from about 25-30 songs to a scant 10 since, as Tofu puts it, "most of those were absolutely terrible". The recording period lasted into the middle of 2002 where most of the cassette tapes that the 4-track demos were recorded on got lost due to being un-labled, or had lables that were covered up or unreadable. Some songs got recorded over for other projects, as well as tapes having serious damage put upon them. Tofu found them all again in 2005, salvaged what he could, and digitally mixed/re-recorded parts of the album again. Tofu still considers "Bankjunkies" to have come out in 2002 since "...that's when it would have been released, as well as the music really typifies who I was and what I was feeling in 2002. I couldn't, and didn't write SWBJ in 2005, so it remains a 2002 release in my eyes."
In 2003, the most important contribution to Tofu Bot's sonic arsenal came into the fold. An inexpensive drum machine that he went on to dub killbot_6900. Killbot would be used in practically every project Tofu has been linked to from then after, and marked a defining change in the sound of CiRCLE no.5. So much so that it took till 2005 before any new material would be done or released using this new tool. Tofu always considered Killbot to be an actual member of the band, and has even posted pictures of himself with Killbot on promotional material for CNO:0005, stating "I make the noises, he makes the beats. That's how it works."
In 2005, CiRCLE no.5 released it's first piece of work since "Better Living Thru Discotech EP" in 2000. A purely digital instrumental concept album titles "Beta Testing for the Masses", beta testing was to tell the story of what exactly happened to Tofu Bot in the last few years. "I wanted it to have sparse vocals, but honestly, I just didn't have the equipment to do it at the time. I started writing when I just got a new Mac and was fooling around in Garageband back in Vegas. The first thing that popped up when i wanted to make a song was what i wanted to title it, the first thing that came to mind was what I was feeling like at the moment. And thus, the song 'Trainwreckage' was born... When I moved back home to the valley, I was feeling dehumanized, sort of like I was losing touch with reality and becoming more of a mechanized version of myself. The more that I recorded and wrote 'Beta Testing' the more cathartic it was, and I became reconnected with the warmth I once had. It wasn't a conscious effort, it just ended up that way, so when it came time to put all the songs in sequence, it's very chronological to how I wrote the album, so it sort of became more of an interpretative sonic sculpture of where I was and where I ended up."
During the Beta Testing writing, Tofu took up his old job of working back at a bookstore where he met future A Screaming comes across the sky/Not Will Porter band mate and collaborator Grady Turnbull (Gradie Ossirian in ASCATS), as well as good friend and driving force behind Operation: Liquid Octopuss, James Kannedy. Both of which became sounding boards as well as collaborators for not only "Beta Testing" but the next work that Tofu had been working on immediately after, "Literally Speaking". Literally Speaking was a direct result of working in a book store, since all the titles were to come from book titles of authors Tofu liked. "I wanted to sort of tell the story of the book through song at first. Thankfully I abandoned that idea when the project started, when it became more of an expression of how the title of the book, or the book itself left me feeling." This led to the album being very multi-faceted and schizophrenic at points, as well as far more experimental than previous works. Literally Speaking received very little attention after it's 2007 release, though Tofu cites it as "some of my favorite work I've done, as well as some of the most fun."
Post Literally Speaking has seen Tofu Bot and Killbot working on the next album, a concept album proper, titled <3 (pronounced heart less than three, or heartlessthan3). The album is intentionally an industrial rock album, with more straight forward song writing, and a verse/chorus/verse song structure. "I wanted to write that Nine Inch Nails album I was trying to write when I first started all this mess." The story of the album revolves around a post-apocalyptic world where machines have taken over and enslaved mankind, and one human worker is picked at random by a bugged program to be taught all the secrets of how human kind used to be prior to the end of the war. Tofu Bot has described the story of "all my favorite Man versus Machine sci-fi stories in film and literature sort of pureed in a blender with some old Wax Trax albums. If I was hired to score the Terminator, this is what I would have wrote."
In 2008, unfortunately Killbot_69000 stopped functioning after years of hard use. Tofu Bot broke the news to his fan base as if an actual member of the band had died, and has treated it very much like if he had lost a true friend. Currently, there has been no news on the acquisition of a new drum machine, or if it'll be treated in the same manner as Killbot.
Tofu Bot has hinted that in the future after <3 is released, there's the plan for at least three albums waiting to be made, but is "...just taking it day by day at this point". Other plans are the release of the often referenced, yet never materialized B-Sides collection "Scrap Metal", which will be released as a Box set in 2010 to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of Better Living Thru Discotech. It'll contain any and all b-sides still in existence that are available. It will also be the first physical album release since 2005's Beta Testing for the Masses.
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CiRCLE no.5 Lyrics
anthem A nation stands with heart in hand To sing their anthem…
ctrl+alt+teh1337 Control alt delete through your circuitry Control alt delete…
God Bless the Astroman If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd hoped for all…
y r u a n00b? Forever Forever lost Forever lost in this tragic play Dro…
You're Just Data It's nice to be lonely for a while You're feeling down…