The rock trio from Chicago Russian Circles – Brian Cook, Mike Sullivan and Dave Turncrantz – is coming back to Prague on the 20th of November, where there will present to you their newest album Guidance. The evening is opening American Cellist Helen Money, who is also performing her latest record Become Zero.
At the end of 2014, Chicago trio Russian Circles celebrated the10-year anniversary of their first show. A decade is a long time for any band to persevere, let alone a band that mines the relatively unmarketable niche of protracted instrumental dirges. But whereas many bands on the louder end of the rock-based instrumental world are content to work within the confines of the crescendos and washed-out timbres laid out by their predecessors, Russian Circles persistently expand their creative boundaries by working with a wider swath of sounds and structures. In many ways, their last album Memorial was a fitting cap to that first decade; it was an elegy to the past, a token of remembrance to the aural explorations of the band’s formative years. It encompassed the many facets of the band’s catalog: harrowing gloom, cinematic majesty, primitive bludgeonings, bittersweet dexterity, and morose minimalism.
With their sixth album Guidance, Russian Circles carry on in their quest to conjure multi-dimensional dramatic instrumental narratives and to scout out new textures from their respective instruments. Songs aren’t constructed out of highbrow concepts; they’re forged out of gut instinct and base emotional response. Nor was the band—as is often the case with artists later in their career—interested in testing their fans’ patience or securing a new broader audience with a radical reinvention. Instead, Russian Circles use Guidance to continue examining the polarity of quiet and loud, complexity and simplicity, ugliness and beauty. Every Russian Circles album has had its share of new sonic vistas, and Guidance finds the band still searching out new sounds while continuing to play to the collective strengths of guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncrantz, and bassist Brian Cook.
Under the pseudonym Helen Money is hidden Alison Chesley. She studied classical Cello and we can find her music on many different albums from Mono, Anthrax, Broken Social Scene or even Russian Circles. Last year she released an album together with the singer Jarboe (Swans) and this year was her latest record Become Zero released by Thrill Jockey label. The songs were composed after the death of her parents and we will find special guests like drummer Jason Roeder (Sleep, Neurosis) or pianist Rachel Grimes.
Line up:
20:00 doors
21:00 Helen Money
22:00 RUSSIAN CIRCLES
