NEWS: Russian Circles premiere track w/ guest vocalist Chelsea Wolfe via Rolling Stone, new album out in October
Press Release provided by Sargent House & US/THEM group
twitter.com/sargenthouse // twitter.com/usthemgroup
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Chicago trio Russian Circles premiere the title track from their forthcoming fifth album, Memorial today via Rolling Stone. The song features guest vocals by label (and tour) mate Chelsea Wolfe.
Russian Circles previously debuted the first track from the album via Pitchfork. Listen to the song "Deficit" HERE. Check out cover art and track listing below.
The band hit the road in the EU and UK with Chelsea Wolfe in October. Both bands will play full headlining sets. Russian Circles will tour the US in early 2014. Please see complete dates below.
twitter.com/sargenthouse // twitter.com/usthemgroup
____________________________
Chicago trio Russian Circles premiere the title track from their forthcoming fifth album, Memorial today via Rolling Stone. The song features guest vocals by label (and tour) mate Chelsea Wolfe.
Russian Circles previously debuted the first track from the album via Pitchfork. Listen to the song "Deficit" HERE. Check out cover art and track listing below.
The band hit the road in the EU and UK with Chelsea Wolfe in October. Both bands will play full headlining sets. Russian Circles will tour the US in early 2014. Please see complete dates below.
Perhaps the most immediately apparent characteristic of the fifth Russian Circles album, Memorial is its wide range of emotion. Vacillating from somber-yet-soaring melodies on one track to pummeling metal heft on the next, Memorial sounds like an album with split personalities.
Where
one song showcases guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncrantz and
bassist/keyboardist Brian Cook's mastery of lush melancholic melody,
the next exhibits their most abrasive underground metal leaning sound,
with washed-out 16th-note riffs and crushing rhythms. The band's
penchant for endless hooks remains a constant, but Memorial embodies their most dramatic ranges in tone.
"We've
always tried to balance our metal-influenced sounds with more nuanced,
pretty, orchestral elements," Cook says. "But this time, it's far more
polarized in that the heavy parts are much more blown out and exaggerated while the pretty moments are far more restrained, delicate, and atmospheric." In the two years since Russian Circles released their landmark fourth album Empros,
the Chicago trio toured worldwide nearly incessantly, encountering many
heavy acts whose music seemed needlessly complicated. "We set out to
make a straightforward, intense, heavy record," Cook explains. "We
subconsciously gravitated toward darker and more somber sounds. We
wanted to get away from the overtly flashy."
In
search of such a streamlined sound, the trio focused on each individual
song having its own emotional and musical characteristics. As such, Memorial
almost feels like stages of grief. That notion might be aided by 1) the
album's clever structuring, in which it ends in the same place as it
starts, and 2) special guest vocalist Chelsea Wolfe lending her hauntingly somber vocals to the album closing title track.
To a degree, the monolithic, juxtaposed moods on Memorial
is the band's reaction to the proliferation of iPod culture affecting
how bands write music. Today, most musicians are trying to mash together
disparate elements with results sounding as unpalatable as cooking a
meal blindfolded. Russian Circles wisely and deftly sidestep the
trappings of genre amalgamation. "I want to hear a band with a broad
palette," Cook says. "But it should find that weird balance with breadth
and width. We wanted to make a record with more extreme peaks and
valleys. I'm hoping that we can get away with making a schizophrenic
record."
Those
extremes are no more perfectly exemplified than on album opener
"Memoriam", which leads in with delicately plucked guitar notes and
synth haze hovering in the background, vaguely reminiscent of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here
album. But the mood abruptly ruptures as the next song, "Deficit"
forcefully kicks in with a wall of vicious, treble-bleached guitars
blaring over Turncrantz's half-time rhythm pummeling his drums with the
sound of an industrial machine re-fabricating raw materials. Tension
builds to a breaking point about halfway through, opening into a
skull-thwacking chugging riff that becomes the foundation for multiple
mutant variations slithering over the top. "1777" is possibly Russian
Circles' most epic and perfectly streamlined song of all time,
incorporating both the physical dynamics of the studio in its sound --
much like David Bowie's emotive vocals on "Heroes", but
instead with drum beats and guitars jutting outward in dramatic fashion
-- while also developing a slow-burn build of elements purely focused
on the emotional specificity of the song. Elsewhere, the uplifting
melody of "Ethel" features a chiming finger-tapping guitar line that's
heavily treated with effects making it sound like a vintage synth laid
over powerfully expressive drums and distorted bass notes cascading over
the proceedings with the forceful cadence of a lead vocalist. Album
closing title track, "Memorial" is a plaintive, somber ballad featuring
Wolfe's guest vocals. A hazy version of the album opening guitar notes
hang in the distance as Wolfe's reverb-soaked voice hovers above the
dreamlike melody somewhat reminiscent of Julee Cruise's Twin Peaks theme song.
Memorial
was recorded at the illustrious Electrical Audio studio in Chicago with
the band's longtime producer Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines
& Interpol who also helmed the band's two previous albums, Empros and Geneva.
Memorial will be available on LP, CD and download via Sargent House on October 29th, 2013.
RUSSIAN CIRCLES & CHELSEA WOLFE // EUROPE 2013
Oct 12, 2013 - Prague, CZ @ Meet Factory
Oct 13, 2013 - Linz, AT @ Posthof
Oct 13, 2013 - Linz, AT @ Posthof
Oct 14, 2013 - Bologna, IT @ Locomotiv Club
Oct 15, 2013 - Zurich, CH @ Rote Fabrik
Oct 16, 2013 - Fribourg, CH @ Fri-son
Oct 18, 2013 - Barcelona, ES @ Apolo
Oct 19, 2013 - Madrid, ES @ Shoko Live
Oct 20, 2013 - Porto, PT @ Amplifest
Oct 21, 2013 - Bilbao, ES @ Kafe Antzokia
Oct 23, 2013 - Paris, FR @ Divan Du Monde
Oct 24, 2013 - Brighton, UK @ The Haunt
Oct 25, 2013 - Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
Oct 26, 2013 - Glasgow, UK @ SWG3
Oct 27, 2013 - Dublin, IRE @ Button Factory
Oct 29, 2013 - London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
Oct 30, 2013 - Gent, BE @ Vooruit
Oct 31, 2013 - Karlsruhe, DE @ Jubez
Nov 1, 2013 - Utrecht, NI @ Tivoli de Helling
Nov 2, 2013 - Koln, DE @ Stollwerck
Nov 3, 2013 - Hamburg, DE @ Club Logo
Nov 6, 2013 - Helsinki, FIN @ Tavastia
Nov 7, 2013 - Oslo, NO @ Bla
Nov 8, 2013 - Gothenburg, SE @ Truckstop Alaska
Nov 9, 2013 - Copenhagen, DK @ KB18
Nov 10, 2013 - Berlin, DE @ C- Club
RUSSIAN CIRCLES // EUROPE 2013
Nov 11, 2013 - Dresden, DE @ Beatpol
Nov 13, 2013 - Vienna, AT @ Szene
Nov 14, 2013 - Budapest, HU @ Durer Kert
Nov 15, 2013 - Belgrade, SR @ Bozidarac
Nov 16, 2013 - Zagreb, HR @ Mochvara Club
Nov 17, 2013 - Munich, DE @ Feierwerk
Nov 19, 2013 - Moscow, RU @ B2
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