Three Point Circle: Layered Contingencies / by Steve Peters

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Oct. 5, 2020

One month ago the first CD by Three Point Circle was released on the Palace of Lights label. This is an ambient “group” featuring Marc Barreca, K. Leimer, and myself. I met them both around 1980. We did a couple of small trio gigs in Olympia back then. I played on Marc’s first solo album, and have released several albums of my own on PoL, the label Kerry began in Seattle and now runs in Hawaii. And Kerry and Marc have made four excellent duo albums together. But we have never done any recording with all three of us. So this collaboration was long overdue. At one point back in 2017 I casually said something like, “Hey, if you ever want to do a trio thing…” Careful what you ask for!

Everything was done via email, sending audio files to each other to be modified, added to, or discarded as we each saw fit. Although we all clearly share a certain aesthetic sensibility, we each have quite different approaches to our work. Marc and Kerry seem to have figured out a process for working together, but I definitely felt like the odd one out. We began with what seemed like a viable game plan, which soon stalled. After a long delay on my part (basement remodel that ate my life), we eventually resumed, scrapping most of what we had done previously and starting over. By the end of 2019, we had not one but two albums worth of material we were quite happy with; the second CD will be released in early 2021. We are especially pleased with it because none of us can easily distinguish our own contributions from those of the others – a very satisfying result of collaborative work.

Of course we hope you’ll want to purchase the music on CD or download, but you can also listen for free on YouTube. No matter how you listen, we hope you’ll enjoy it.