A Perfect Circle released Three Sixty in the United States on November 19, 2013, through Universal Music Enterprises. Their first greatest-hits compilation gathered music from their first three studio albums and added “By and Down,” their first new original studio recording in nearly a decade. That song had already spent time in the band’s live sets before it reached the studio.
The standard edition allotted four tracks apiece to Mer de Noms, Thirteenth Step and eMOTIVe, moving through those albums in release order. Selections ranged from “Judith” and “Weak and Powerless” to the band’s version of “Imagine.” There was room for album tracks, too, including “Orestes,” a song tied to the beginnings of the group’s writing partnership.
Guitarist Billy Howerdel told RockRevolt that he and Maynard James Keenan were roommates when Keenan offered to sing the music he was developing. “Orestes” and “The Hollow” were the first two pieces Keenan received, adding words and vocal melodies to material Howerdel had been working on for a long time. Hearing those contributions helped convince Howerdel they had something worth pursuing. Both songs appeared near the beginning of Three Sixty, returning the collection to the work that had helped establish the band.
“By and Down” began with a much smaller audience. Howerdel was at a keyboard with his three-year-old son, trying to demonstrate a melody while the child pounded the keys. He captured the idea on his phone and began developing the chord structure. In his 2013 Rolling Stone interview, Howerdel described sending the idea to Keenan, whose response supplied vocal syllables and rhythm. Their exchange turned that keyboard fragment into a song.
Its route to a finished recording reversed their normal routine. A Perfect Circle usually made a studio version first, then worked out how to perform it. They played “By and Down” on their 2011 tour before completing the recording for Three Sixty. Familiarity with the live arrangement hadn’t made the studio work as straightforward as Howerdel had expected. The parts still needed to function as a layered recording, a different task from playing them in rehearsal or onstage. SPIN premiered the finished studio track on October 14, 2013; it became the standard compilation’s closing song.
The two-disc deluxe edition expanded the selection to 19 tracks, adding studio material and four live performances. Songs including “3 Libras” and “Gravity” appeared in concert versions, extending the collection beyond its overview of the studio catalog. A Perfect Circle had returned to performing in 2010, and those shows required fresh work on existing songs. Howerdel explained to RockRevolt that the eMOTIVe material in particular needed rearranging because reproducing the recordings hadn’t worked in a live setting.
The new song also remained open to revision. A Perfect Circle revisited it as “By and Down the River” on their fourth studio album, Eat the Elephant, in 2018. Howerdel told Kerrang! that further years of performing it helped shape a version that was “a little faster and more concise.” He re-recorded much of it in about four hours.
