Russian Circles
Being an instrumental band has its ups and downs, but Russian Circles are embracing the challenges with gusto, having just released their seventh album Blood Year. Just don’t called them post-rock…
The US post-rockers discuss the merits of instrumental music.
“We never know what the next record will sound like and, for us, there’s no formula. I think that’s pretty prog rock.”
Mike Sullivan
“We’re a progressive band in that we don’t know what we’re doing!” laughs Mike Sullivan, the guitarist and founder of heavy instrumental rock’n’roll darlings Russian Circles.
For 15 years, the band – completed by co-founding drummer Dave Turncrantz and bassist Brian Cook who joined in 2009 – have been hailed as pioneers of American post-rock. You’ll see why once you give them a listen, as their postmodern soundscape is built on experimental, technical riffing being supported by an energetic backbone of a rhythm section. Complementing primal grooves with tapping shreds, there really isn’t anything else in the current heavy music sphere that sounds like Russian Circles. However, as evolved and futuristic as they seem, the trio don’t want to be called ‘post’ anything.
“‘Post-rock’ just seems to be a blanket term for any sort of protracted, dynamic, instrumentation-focused brand of left-ofcentre rock music,” Cook shrugs. “It doesn’t encompass any sort of creative philosophy, ideology or code of conduct. If you’re a grassroots hardcore band, for example, you’re dedicated to playing all-ages shows and eliminating the boundary between artist and audience. What are you dedicated to if you’re in a post-rock band?”
“Once you have a genre, you can start having generic clichés,” Sullivan adds. “It whittles the music down to something so formulaic, when it could be a lot more. We never know what the next record will sound like and, for us, there’s no formula. I think that’s pretty prog rock.”
Whatever you wish to label Russian Circles – prog, post-rock or even metal – there’s one tag that fits them like a glove: rebellious. They formed in Chicago in 2004 and released their debut, Enter, in 2006, at a time when being an instrumental band practically set you up for failure.
“My favourite instrumental bands that I grew up on were already breaking up around that time,” remembers Sullivan. “The overlap we had with other instrumental bands was pretty minimal when we were starting. We even considered getting a vocalist ourselves, but our song structures were so all over the place. It would be a hell of a feat for the vocalist to entertain themselves as we did these passages, or to sing over everything
going on. We just thought we would have more freedom as an instrumental band.”
Even Cook, who – before adding himself to Russian Circles’ ranks – lived in the bustling music city of Seattle, found that rock without any form of singing attached was struggling to survive in his hometown.
“I definitely felt like there was generally a pretty low ceiling for instrumental bands at the time,” he says. “In Seattle, we had instrumental bands, like The Swarming Hordes, who were loved and revered by other musicians, but only other musicians would go out to see them play.”
With their contemporaries minimal, Russian Circles formed their multifaceted soundscape by drawing from more esoteric corners of the aural world. Among their biggest heroes are the 70s synth masters Goblin, the obscure Italian instrumental troupe best known for scoring classic horror films like Suspiria and Deep Red. Elsewhere, Russian Circles’ powerful riffs and exciting grooves can be traced to the space rock maestros Maserati, whose blend of heaviness and alien segues conjures up images of fast-moving, science-fiction landscapes.
“It’s exciting when all these instrumental bands have their own voice,” says Sullivan. “There’s so much room for instrumental music; it shouldn’t be its own genre. Not everything needs a name or a tag. Just be whatever band you want to be and let other people decide what you sound like.”
Cook adds, “I think we started out inspired by a wide enough swathe of sounds that we have a lot of room to explore. That’s kept us from getting burned-out or formulaic.”
But being an instrumental band has its upsides, too.
“A big part of our original fanbase was international,” Cook recalls. “Mainland Europe and south-east Asia embraced us early on. There’s a cultural ambiguity to instrumental music. Someone in Russia or Malaysia could download our music and appreciate it on a level that might not be possible if someone was singing in English over it.”
“In English-speaking countries, this kind of music is not earmarked for success,” explains Sullivan. “Nothing’s happened for us overnight: there’s no guarantee of playing on late-night talk shows, and friends’ parents aren’t going to say they like one of our songs. They’re most likely going to be turned off by it because it’s too aggressive or doesn’t have a vocal melody.”
Things may not have happened overnight, but over seven albums Russian Circles have been on an upward journey, adding more varying dynamics to their canon with each release. While their debut flaunted its soothing and toe-tapping technicality, newer efforts have emphasised multi-layered heaviness, achieved through unique usage of looper pedals and relative newcomer Cook’s storied history in hardcore punk bands.
“Every recording process is a giant learning opportunity,” Sullivan explains of their subtle evolution. “With time, you look back on records and think, ‘OK, I would have done that differently now than I did then.’ There’s even stuff on our new record that I’m looking forward to not doing again next time.”
The new record in question is Blood Year, Russian Circles’ seventh album, which arrives over three years after its predecessor, Guidance – the longest recording gap in the band’s history. However, the full-length makes up for its lengthier incubation period through ominous dynamics, bombastic riffs and to-the-point rhythms. All the while, the adventurous spirit of prog still permeates, felt throughout from the Middle Eastern soundscapes of Milano to the cosmic, Pink Floyd-esque undertones of Sinaia.
“This is our darkest album,” Sullivan says. “There’s a duality to the band: there’s heaviness, but also a folk side that we play with sometimes. This time around, we thought, ‘It’s more rewarding and honest for us to write darker music.’ So, we decided to take it easy on the folk stuff and focus on the darkness.”
Russian Circles expanded their esoteric inspirations to include more bleak and direct sources for Blood Year, even stretching as far as the raw, low-fi and incessant realm of Scandinavian black metal.
“I went through a heavy Darkthrone phase,” Cook admits. “They have this very austere, no-frills approach. You don’t get the sense that they are obsessing over having the right gear or the perfect take. There’s something way more human and visceral about it, and that was really inspiring.
“But don’t expect Blood Year to sound anything like Darkthrone,” he adds, to Prog’s relief. “Or you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“We even considered getting a vocalist, but our song structures were so all over the place.”
Mike Sullivan
Blood Year is out now via Sargent House. See www.russiancirclesband.com for more information.