After 15 Years Mike Sullivan Still Doesn't Know Where Russian Circles Are Going

All-instrumental post-rock is very much a niche subgenre, with a reasonably limited although fiercely committed, audience across the globe. It is a style that gets minimal to no support from radio, little coverage beyond specialised press and is generally quite a hard sell. So it begs the question, do musicians choose post-rock or does it choose them? Guitarist and co-founding member of US post-rock stalwarts Russian Circles, Mike Sullivan, speaking from LA, gives his thoughts on the matter.

“I’ll speak for myself,” he begins. “I can’t say we chose it, I think the post-rock genre accepted us, but we didn’t aim to be a post-rock band. In this I can speak for the band – we all grew up in the punk rock scene, and we all played in punk rock and hardcore bands. We met and we all quit our respective bands and started jamming, and as we get older we start appreciating different types of music. Metal was my first conduit into music, my brother got me into Faith No More, Metallica, Pantera, Van Halen, all that stuff. And then from there it was Fugazi and more independent music.

“Ultimately, post-rock kinda popped up without us really knowing about it!” he laughs, before going on to explain how they came to turn their interest in the genre into a career. 

“It’s been really kind to us, the post-rock genre," he says. “We had very humble beginnings: the goal at the start is to hang with your friends and write some good songs that satisfy yourself, and then you play live, and try to keep refining it and make it better and better. It has nothing to do with money. When it comes to money, we’re horrible businessmen.

"We’re really a bunch of lucky dudes."

“So it’s not so much pride what we’ve been doing this for so long, it’s more like gratitude, especially being in LA where so many of our friends do music, and they just grasp at straws to keep their head above water and have just not had the ball bounce their way. That kind of stuff just makes me realise that we’re really a bunch of lucky dudes. We just make sure we don’t bitch in public, we bitch behind closed doors,” he laughs again.

2019 marks a decade-and-a-half together for Russian Circles. Sullivan has to pinch himself a little realising that it has been so long. “We started jamming together 15 years ago, this year,” he recalls. “Where did time go? Nobody gives a shit about the 12-year or the 14-year mark, but 15 years? Man, that’s something, huh? When did that happen? You like to think you’re the same bright-eyed, bushy-tailed fella from back in the day. We don’t have anything to judge ourselves against – we’re just the same jackasses doing the same thing the whole time, and we’re slowly becoming elderly men here, but long story short, we just feel fortunate to be here. It’s crazy that it’s been so long.”

"Will we make it to another 15 years? Who knows?"

And the band are far from done yet, Sullivan hinting that he's always open to new influences, and maturing as a band. “There’s something about ageing gracefully in aggressive music,” Sullivan says. “Will we make it to another 15 years? Who knows? I’d just like us not to be afraid to venture into more exploratory genres, whatever they may be. 

“As I sit here I don’t want to know which direction we’ll head in, I want to find out through curiosity where it goes. There are bands I’ve never even heard of yet that will influence us, bands where we hadn’t even started playing when they’d broken up. There’s so much cool music out there that I haven’t been exposed to yet. I just want us to grow and become something different while still retaining our roots, who we are.”