Geneva (Black Vinyl)

VINYL FORMAT. Unite three musicians - playing three unique roles; each compelled to move in the direction of what is timeless, to draw on history and take from where they've grown and from the traditions of music made decades ago - and you'll craft a moment, a Rite of Spring, a new foundation akin to what Russian Circles have accomplished on their third album, Geneva.

For an album like this to work the composer's focus must remain with the songs, on the effectiveness of the song writing, and the inherent artistic value of the whole, rather than the cheap emotion of a simple soft-to-loud dynamic. "Malko," like many of their finest pieces, is a precise attempt to reconcile the paradox of the group's Cold War aesthetic; it's a fast 80's cocaine song with a shred-guitar intro that blasts at the nexus of the humane and the coldly mechanical. It also provides a fitting example of Sullivan's approach to composition: a steady evolution of patterns that rarely repeat themselves note-for-note. "Expression is everything you love, all mashed in the brain, all applied," he says, "creative expression extends that and moves it toward a result."