Instrumental rock trio Russian Circles aren’t afraid to admit that their live show is their strongest asset. After playing frequently around Chicago, the trio released a well-received eponymous EP, followed by their debut full-length, Enter, on Chicago label Flameshovel Records. Enter is filled with the trio’s trademark long, epic instrumental songs, a movement which has been dubbed “post-rock,” thanks to successful breakthrough acts such as Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and Explosions in the Sky. Yet Russian Circles also take cues from 70s prog acts such as Rush, King Crimson, and Yes, as well as contemporary metal influences such as Chicago friend Pelican.
Popcorn Youth recently spoke with bassist Colin DeKuiper during this year’s hectic South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. DeKuiper spoke about his favorite Chicago bands (The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, just to name a few), loving Led Zeppelin for the first time, and another album in the works.
Popcorn Youth: So how is SxSW going? Are you going into it differently your second time around as Russian Circles?
Colin DeKuiper: We’re doing less but it seems more hectic, I think because we’re on a more substantial tour right now. We’ve all been kind of sick for the past couple of days, and we’ve already been out on the road for the past two weeks, so it just feels a little bit more hectic. We’re kind of like, “Ehhhh” … we just want to go back to 5 o’clock load ins, have a casual dinner, and then you’re set. You know, avoid the hassles of getting around, parking, the usual stuff. But we do love it! Last year, we definitely played a lot more shows. Last night, we played the SPIN [magazine] party, and tonight we have the Flameshovel [Records] showcase. So we are doing substantially a lot less, because last year we played a ton of parties. But honestly, I do like it, but this year, for the band, it has seemed to be a bit more of a headache. But that’s not to say that I don’t love the festival! (Laughs)
So bands typically play more than one set?
Well, the house that we’re staying at, we’re staying with the band The Black Lips, who are on Vice [Records]. And yesterday, they played five shows, and today they have six.
Despite sickness, are there any bands that you absolutely want to see play?
Unfortunately, you get down here, and there just isn’t a ton of time, especially because we’ve been really lucky to have the opportunity to do interviews and stuff, and that sort of cuts into the time that you would have to see showcases. And since we’re only here for two days, we elected to get paid instead of getting badges, which means that we can’t go to see the showcases at night, but we can see parties during the day. But of the people that we know, we were able to see the Hydra Head showcase and the Jade Tree showcase last night. They were both great. The Hydra Head showcase was just awesome. We were on tour with Pelican, we’re good friends with them, and so it was great to see them. We also saw Daughters and Jesu, which was great. For Jade Tree, we wanted to see Young Widows and These Arms Are Snakes. They were both really great.
How did Russian Circles originally come about?
Colin DeKuiper: Well, guitarist Mike [Sullivan] and I met at DePaul University. I’m from Michigan and he’s from St. Louis, and we met our junior year of college and started Dakota/Dakota. As we started to play more as Dakota/Dakota, we were playing with the band Riddle of Steel, that Dave [Turncrantz], our drummer, was in. Dakota/Dakota did a split 7″ with Riddle of Steel, and Dave had also played with Mike in high school, and he was ready to get out of St. Louis and move to Chicago, and we were like, “Well, Dakota/Dakota isn’t really doing what we’d like it to do, we’d really like to push the music harder, so why don’t we stop doing our band, and you leave your band, and we’ll start a new band. And that’s how it happened.” (Laughs)
I’ve heard you’re a big fan of Sonic Youth. Has that influence come through in the Russian Circles?
Well, we all come from very different places, and I definitely lean a little more towards experimental stuff such as Sonic Youth. Mike comes from a metal background, and Dave really listens to all kind of stuff. He listens to more hip-hop than either Mike and I do, and I think he’s really attracted to the beats and the sort of things that can be done there. But I think that our ambient segues and the openness in parts of our songs is definitely cultivated from years of listening to bands such as Sonic Youth.
So in that way, you guys expose each other to different kinds of music?
Yes. I think every band sort of has that aspect, and it’s a good thing, and it can be an annoying thing too, because someone’s always got something that someone else doesn’t want to hear. But there definitely is stuff that we turn each other on to.
What is it like being a musician in Chicago? Are people supportive of the local scene?
Well, Chicago has a great history of always having a strong music community. I think part of that has to do with the location - being stuck in the Midwest, bands don’t always get the same exposure as bands would in New York or Los Angeles, so bands aren’t necessarily vying for the top food chain immediately. So being in Chicago allows you to be a little more innovative or creative right off the bat, push boundaries a little bit more right from the start, because you just really are playing to play. You’re playing for yourself, and you’re hoping that people will like it. And I think that is the root of what makes a lot of Chicago bands really great, but then the bands don’t get the kind of exposure that they deserve. Sometimes, bands tend to have a shorter lifespan.
We’ve been lucky enough to be connected to Flower Booking, who gets us out on the road and traveling. But I’ve seen a lot of really great Chicago bands come and go, unfortunately.
Do Chicago musicians tend to collaborate and play with one another?
Yes, and I think there’s a lot of diversity in the music that comes out. A lot of it disappeared unfortunately when the Fireside closed. It was an epicenter of sorts when it did exist, because they had free Monday nights, and every musician in Chicago would seem to congregate there. We still kind of have that with the Empty Bottle, which does a free Monday night, and you’ll see all sorts of people. I think we would all agree that we feel very at home in Chicago and we feel very comfortable there. We’re surrounded by likeminded people who want to accomplish similar goals
You’re on Chicago label Flameshovel right now. How is that going?
Really well. We’re very much an odd man out on the label, because it seems to be much more pop-focused. But it is also a Chicago label and Chicago-focused. We love Maritime, they’re from Milwaukee, we love the Chin Up Chin Up guys, The Race. Those bands are significantly more poppy and have a different sound, but there’s definitely a kinship among those guys to what we do as far as having a similar attitude.
What’s your approach to collaboration?
Well, our drummer Dave just played on The Narrator record that’s about to be released. And now they have a full-time drummer, but at the time, they were ready to make a record, so Dave went in and played drums for them. I don’t have any major side projects, but I occasionally play with Trevor [de Brauw] from Pelican in this band, it’s sort of a noise thing where five or six guitars play a half-hour set of just one chord, and everyone plays a different note that makes up the chord.
What’s your set-up like live?
Because we are a three piece, we really take advantage and use looping pedals. Mike can have three guitar lines going at once, or I can have one or two bass lines going, and that will all overlap, which creates a much denser sound than if we were just going straight into the amplifier. And because we’re also instrumental, we try to be subtle with our effects, but we do like to vary the tonalities of the instruments as much as possible, because essentially, [the instruments] are the voices that we are not singing.
2006 really saw metal emerging as a trend, especially with bands such as Pelican, Isis, Om, Boris, and Sunn o))). How would you explain this?
It’s also instrumental metal, I mean, it’s never simply “metal.” It’s more complicated. It’s almost an entire new kind of progressive music, it’s much heavier. It does have a certain dissonance to it, and all of the bands use distortion, but it’s not an Iron Maiden kind of thing at all. It’s becoming more popular with listeners, maybe because for someone who grew up listening to pop music but still likes something heavy, it’s something that they can latch on to, because they think, “Oh, this is great. Someone is not screaming at me.”
Are you guys influenced by prog as well?
Oh yes, very much so. But that’s not something that we really found out about until the last three or four years. And it’s not like it wasn’t something we didn’t know about, but as you grow older, your reference points continue to expand.
When we were in high school, no one really listened to King Crimson or Rush or Yes or Genesis or Gentle Giant anyway, but even bands like Led Zeppelin we were really tuned out on because we were listening to bands like Fugazi. We were like, “Screw that classic rock stuff!”
But a year ago, Mike and I got way into Led Zeppelin. It’s pretty ridiculous that we didn’t get into them until we were 25, because unfortunately we were kind of biased against it. But now we are able to appreciate what they did. And even though they were lumped into the “classic rock” tag, Led Zeppelin was very progressive - and probably the best rock ‘n’ roll band ever. They really connected the points for all of the rest of those prog bands that I just mentioned, and that kind of stuff just totally blew our minds.
It’s funny, because Mike and I, when we would occasionally gete write ups as Dakota/Dakota, people would compare us to King Crimson or Yes, and we just weren’t all that familiar with it. We were like, “Well, apparently we’re really influenced by this stuff! I guess we should check it out!” (Laughs) I don’t feel embarrassed by it, because you can’t really know every band. Obviously we want to listen to as much as we possibly can and we want our vinyl collections to grow and get bigger, but it’s tough.
We were also more tuned into that stuff via bands such as Don Caballero and other instrumental bands from the mid 90s that probably also hearkened to the sound of progressive rock of the 70s. So it was coming through a filter of those bands, and was how it also got passed down to us.
So I bet you’re into Battles.
Oh, yes, yes. I love Battles. Love ‘em.
I’m interested to hear their new record.
Yeah, I am too. I’ve been waiting to hear that one for a long time. Those bands definitely were all stuff that we were all into.
Do you feel as though Russian Circles somehow fits into a great tradition of the Chicago avant-rock continuum that includes things like Touch and Go, Quarter Stick, Steve Albini, that sort of thing?
Well, that’s all stuff that we listen to! I would love to be considered to be connected to it. We were able to record at Electrical Audio, which was amazing for us. We’re huge Steve Albini and Shellac fans, and we love The Jesus Lizard. All of that kind of stuff. But I don’t know if we’re really that close to it, outside of the fact that we listen to it. But it’s definitely influenced us for sure. We don’t know any of those people particularly well, we’ve met a few of them here and there for a minute, but we love that music very much.
Russian Circles is a relatively new band. How has the Internet played a role in your success?
I will say that it helps. Unfortunately, it makes it much harder to sell records in this day and age, but it’s much easier to spread the word of mouth. We like our record very much, but we’ve seen that our live show is kind of what grab people a little bit more than our record. And so I think that with the Internet and mp3 format of downloading and MySpace, a lot of people hear just enough to get interest and then they want to check it out live. And then hopefully they can see the payoff of the interest that they found out through the Internet. I definitely do think it’s beneficial, but it is unfortunate in that we do really want to make records, in an album format. We’re very attached to the LP format and having something that includes the art and put together coherently in a way that makes a lot of sense. And at least if it doesn’t have an overall concept, it’s at least thematic in the telling of a story and of a narrative. And I think with internet downloading, with grabbing a song or two in an mp3 format, is kind of shutting kids off from that.
Is there a second LP in the works?
Yes, we’re writing. We took a fair amount of time off because we toured so heavily. We have a couple of songs right now, but we are very slow writers. We’re very meticulous, and tend to edit.
Is the songwriting process collaborative?
Yes, Mike usually starts with a guitar part, and that will start everything in motion, and Dave and I will write to that. And we’ll usually construct something that needs to be stripped down a lot. We’ll always need to change something, and sometimes we’ll end up with five different versions of one song. (Laughs)