"Miljard? is quite an unusual release in the ever expanding catalogue of Finnish stoner rockers Circle. Actually, after ?Miljard? it is quite doubtful whether you can still put Circle in the stoner rock genre. On the whole two hours of the CD, you hardly hear any single guitar chord. At some points, Jussi Lehtisalo plays some bass and there are a few guitar notes by Janne Westerlund, but the large majority of the album consists of piano playing, although the piano is funnily not listed as an instrument.

In term of repetitiveness and meditative qualities, hardly anything can beat the latest Circle album. The two CD set features 5 long tracks per CD ranging from just under five to over 20 minutes. There?s hardly any real development on any of the all instrumental tunes. Everything slowly moves forward, patterns are repeated over and over again with very little variation and it?s impossible not to drift far far away to this music. ?Miljard? is so pleasing to listen to simply because it?s so slow. And despite all the repetition, there?s still something new to discover on any of the disc?s ten tracks at every new listen. Circle fans might be startled by ?Miljard?, but with releases like that the band just shows how versatile they are. 8/10 -- Stephan Bauer (30 January, 2007)