Fresh off their recent lengthy tour and the release of new impressive album Gnosis on Sargent House, Brian Cook of the heavy instrumental post rockers RUSSIAN CIRCLES joins us for a brief end of the year wrap-up, featuring some interesting music tips and thoughts about the past couple of months. Gnosis, their eighth album, eschews the varied terrain of their past works as it razes a path through the most harrowing territory of their sounds by employing a new songwriting technique. Rather than crafting songs out of fragmented ideas in the practice room, full songs were written and recorded independently before being shared with other members, so that their initial vision was retained. The album was engineered and mixed by Kurt Ballou at God City with additional tracking done at Chicago’s El...