Circles vinyl

When rapper and multi-instrumentalist Mac Miller died of an accidental overdose in 2018, he left behind an unfinished two-part album project: "Swimming" (released last year) and "Circles", which has now landed on wax after getting a digital release earlier in 2020. It's a musically diverse and mostly introspective affair, with Miller shuffling between styles wearily and switching roles (singer-songwriter, rapper, multi-instrumentalist, beat-maker) seemingly at will. While such role hopping could have resulted in a sonic mess, the set sounds surprisingly coherent, not least because the thread running through it all is Miller's painful soul searching and well documented mental health issues. As a posthumous full stop to a life ended all too soon, "Circles" certainly hits home hard.