6 Albums that Influenced Brian Cook of Botch and Russian Circles

Minutemen
Double Nickels on the Dime

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Double Nickels On The Dime

Minutemen

2021

Alternative Rock, Hardcore, Punk

2 x Vinyl, Album, Reissue

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“I first bought Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime when I was 14 or 15. I was just starting to play bass, and someone at my high school told me, “if you want to learn to play bass, listen to Mike Watt.” It was the early ‘90s, and my perception of punk music was more in line with speed and angst than whatever weird funk-infused truncated classic rock San Pedro’s finest were dishing out on this double album. It was the first instance I can think of where I heard an album, didn’t like it, yet felt compelled to listen to it because I wanted to understand it.”

“It gradually became one of my favorite records ever. I’ve owned some version or other of this album for thirty-two years and I still feel like I hear new things on it every time I listen to it. I’m not sure I really culled all that much from Watt’s bass playing, but I think the overarching themes that run through the album, the egalitarian nature of the song writing, the jam econo principle, the way every member brought something to the table, and the duality of high-brow concepts with low-brow presentation all played a formative role in my approach as a musician.”

“If memory serves me correctly, I first bought this album on CD around 1991, maybe 1992. It really started to click with me after about six months. Bought it again on vinyl in ’97, mainly because I needed those three extra songs that were cut from the CD… and from all digital versions too. I bought the nicer copy I own now a year or two later. Wild that a staple of the SST catalog now fetches upwards of $100 on Discogs.”

Undertow
At Both Ends

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At Both Ends

Undertow

1994

Rock, Hardcore, Punk

Vinyl

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“By the time I turned 16 I had already been to a few shows and bought a bunch of punk records, but I hadn’t really experienced the magic of being a part of a local scene. I’d seen Fugazi and Dinosaur Jr and Social Distortion and Pantera, but they were all big touring bands that existed outside of regional scenes. They belonged to the world. Especially if you lived in Hawaii.” 

“Even when my parents moved us just an hour south of Seattle to Fort Lewis at the peak of the grunge explosion, it felt like the region’s “underground” bands were still unapproachable figures on the television screen. And then I saw a local hardcore band called Undertow and that all changed.”

“From the fall of ’93 to fall ’94, it felt like Undertow played somewhere in the Puget Sound area every weekend, and my friends and I did our best to catch every show. They were way darker and heavier than the ‘80s hardcore stuff I listened to. Sonically, they were almost more like a metal band, but lyrically and aesthetically they were a deeply introspective and socially aware punk band. At a time where all ages shows were largely banned from the Seattle area, Undertow found basements, youth centers, rental halls, and DIY spaces where they could play, and it made their music feel simultaneously more dangerous and more deeply personal. Despite the intensity of their music, they were approachable as people. All these factors—the intense live show, the do-it-yourself resourcefulness, and that sense of community they embodied were lessons that my high school band Botch took to heart. They provided the road map, and on some level I feel like everything we accomplished was because they paved the way for us.”

“This was another album I initially owned on CD but replaced with a vinyl copy sometime in the ‘00s. Unfortunately, my used copy is missing the lyric sheet insert, which features a live shot of the band playing at OK Hotel, where you can see me singing along in the upper left-hand corner of the photo. I guess I need to buy another copy just so I can flex that I was there.”

Nomeansno
Live & Cuddly

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Live And Cuddly

Nomeansno

1991

Rock, Hardcore, Punk

2 x Vinyl

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“Botch broke up when I was 24 and I immediately joined up with some friends that had started a math-metal band called These Arms Are Snakes. The guy who formed the group wound up quitting after three or four practices together because we weren’t really latching onto the complicated riffs he was bringing to the table, and that left us with a blank slate in terms of what kind of music we wanted to make. We were essentially a band full of ex-members of other established bands who had always played supporting roles in our other projects. So there was a little bit of aimless jamming for a few weeks before I decided I would just start bringing song ideas to practice so that we could at least have a jumping off point.” 

“But what do you do as a bass player when you’re trying to steer the ship? Well, if you were me in my mid-twenties, you tried to play like Rob Wright from Nomeansno.” 

“Nomeansno was initially just a rhythm section duo consisting of brothers Rob and John Wright. Their earliest recordings sound like a mash-up of Devo and jazz fusion. The bass lines were super intricate. John was a gifted drummer too. He played traditional grip. They eventually added a guitarist and started playing a little leaner and meaner. But the rhythm section continued to run the show.” 

“Live & Cuddly captures the band playing a set in the Netherlands back in 1990. Live albums can be hit or miss, but Live & Cuddly is my favorite Nomeansno album, full stop. It’s a greatest hits of sorts, and it strips away any potential studio sheen and showcases just how locked in they were as a unit. I still think Rob has one of the greatest bass tones ever too.” 

“These Arms Are Snakes released an EP before our drummer quit the band, so Erin Tate from Minus the Bear stepped in as an interim drummer for the process of writing our first full length. Erin was a big Nomeansno fan, too, so we would slyly work all these Nomeansno-isms into our songs. Nothing close to plagiarism, but we would take a cue from their work, like on “Angela’s Secret” where the bass and guitar trade off on playing the primary riff while the other member rides one note… a trick we borrowed from Nomeansno’s “It’s Catching Up.”

“The majority of the Nomeansno catalog is long out-of-print, though it seems that Alternative Tentacles is slowly reissuing some of the albums. I hope they get to this one soon because my personal copy is beat to shit.”

Stars of the Lid
And Their Refinement of the Decline

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Stars Of The Lid And Their Refinement Of The Decline

Stars Of The Lid

2015

Electronic, Modern Classical, Ambient

3 x Vinyl

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“This is a record that had an impact on me later in life, when I had just turned 30 and started playing with Russian Circles. Russian Circles were already a band with an album under their belt by the time I started playing with them, and I wasn’t necessarily there to impose my tastes or ideas. We were all older guys with diverse tastes, and our hope was that we could take those interests and use them as fodder to find our own sound.”

“I was listening to a lot of the Mooney– and Suzuki-era Can albums. I had gotten way into Khanate’s Things Viral a few years prior. I was also pretty obsessed with Magma’s Üdü Ẁüdü. All three of those bands expanded my horizons in very significant ways. But if there was one record that really knocked me off my axis and made me rethink my approach to making music, it was the final album by the ambient duo Stars of the Lid.”

“I liked some drone music and was down with some of the more minimalist post-rock that was happening at the time, but I didn’t know much about Stars of the Lid besides a few tracks. That said, I liked what I heard enough to weasel my way into their sold-out show in support of Refinement in Seattle. It was a seated concert, and me and my plus-one were relegated to standing at the bar. I figured we’d hang around for twenty or thirty minutes – however long it took for our feet to start hurting. But we were transfixed for the entire duration of their performance.”

“I didn’t understand how Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride wrangled such ethereal sounds out of their guitars. Hell, I still don’t. But their ability to turn the electric guitar into this helium-grade symphonic instrument was a huge inspiration. For my whole life, playing music had been about brute force and momentum. Stars of the Lid made me want to explore the other tonal possibilities of my instrument, to learn the power of restraint, to employ a broader range of dynamics.”

“I bought Refinement on iTunes the day after the show and listened to it on my iPod when I was going to sleep on tour for years. I rarely stayed awake for more than five or six songs. When I finally plunked down some cash for the 3xLP reissue, I was able to parse out the LPs like it was three separate albums, and it’s almost like I had two new Stars of the Lid records to immerse myself in. I get it, folks don’t like to flip records over every twenty minutes, but I’ve always found I have an easier time absorbing the entirety of an album when it’s divided into chapters instead of one big, long piece. The last two Stars of the Lid records are long and sleepy, but it’s not musical wallpaper. There’s a lot happening in their music, and it’s worth listening to them in a format where you’re more engaged with the unfolding of the album.”

Phrenelith
Desolate Endscape

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Desolate Endscape

Phrenelith

2017

Rock, Death Metal

Vinyl

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“Around 2011, my buddy Aaron and I started talking about doing a musical project together. His old band ISIS had just broken up and he was looking to work on something new. I pitched the idea of making a raw death metal record and trying to pawn it off like it was some long-lost cassette-only obscurity from the late ‘80s / early ‘90s. Aaron countered with the idea of doing a more freeform version of heavy metal. His main reference point was Caspar Brötzmann Massaker. I was sold on the idea… albums like Der Abend der Schwarzen Folklore, Koksofen, and Home had been big influences on me since the Botch days.”

“For me, the goal was to fill a void. I loved the sludgy mid-tempo songs on all those ‘90s Morbid Angel albums and I wanted to hear death metal bands lean into that vibe, instead of making these pristine, technical, unnaturally perfect records. There were a few scattered bands like Vastum and Pissgrave that were doing that thing, but there hardly seemed to be a “scene” around that sound, at least as far as I could tell.”

“Nick and Aaron were doing a much better job of paying attention to that end of the metal world. On a European tour back in early 2019, they took me to a death metal record shop in Copenhagen called Extremely Rotten and it was a total game-changer. The shop carries an international range of artists, but a big chunk of their inventory is dedicated to Danish death metal, and holy shit, Denmark is KILLING it in the death metal world. Undergang, Deiquisitor, Chaotian, Sulphurous… there’s so much good shit that’s scratching that itch I’ve had for years. But the record that really roped me in and sent me down the rabbit hole was Phrenelith’s Desolate Endscape.”

“Desolate Endscape has just the right balance of musical proficiency and unmitigated aggression. The recording is perfect: the riffs are catchy as hell, everything cuts through, but it still sounds like a real life band made up of humans jamming in a room together. None of that grid-built sterilized mechanical bullshit. This resurgence of old school death metal gets me excited because, in my eyes, it has more in common with the hardcore scene of the ‘90s than it does with the current heavy metal scene. Xerox fliers, DIY labels, cassette demos, zines… all that stuff.”

“It’s exciting to grow older and expand your musical horizons, but man… what I really needed five years ago was to hear something that excited me on a very lizard-brain level. And on some level, it’s pushed me to be a better player, because even though the old school death metal world relishes the caveman-level of knuckle-dragging riffage, it’s by no means an easy style of music to play.”

In Wantlist

The Complete Recordings Vol. 3

Jackson C. Frank

2015

Folk, World, & Country, Folk

Vinyl

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“I’ve played bass in loud rock bands for thirty years, but when I’m at home I play more acoustic guitar than anything else. Some of that might have to do with spending most of my adult life living in apartments… you’re less likely to piss off other tenants playing acoustic guitar than amplified bass. I might go weeks without playing bass, but it’s rare for me to go more than a day or two without playing acoustic guitar.”

“Given the frequency I play it at home, I should really be much better at guitar. But I usually just spend a little time tinkering with fingerpicking patterns or short musical phrases, not running through exercises or lessons. I stockpiled enough little song fragments that when the pandemic hit I figured I should hunker down and do something with ‘em. So in the winter of ‘20/’21, I wrote a solo album based around the acoustic guitar under the moniker Torment & Glory.”

“I could list off dozens of singer-songwriter records that were influential in the making of the Torment & Glory album. Bob Dylan’s Blood On the Tracks has always been a favorite. Silver Jews’ Bright Flight is another one. The rough-hewn marriage of homespun folk and distortion of various Microphones and Mount Eerie albums could make the list. The lo-fi experiments of the Elephant 6 collective probably deserve some mention too. But I’m gonna go with the final recordings by folk singer Jackson C. Frank instead.”

“Jackson C. Frank’s self-titled solo album from 1965 gets a lot of love, particularly due to the popularity of the oft-covered “Blues Run The Game.” Bad luck always followed Frank. He initially learned guitar in a hospital at the age of eleven after he was badly burned in a furnace explosion at his school. Things got worse after the release of his debut album. He became a paranoid schizophrenic, was partially blinded by a pellet gun, and wound up homeless. Frank passed away in ’99, but a fan named Jim Abbot got him off the streets a few years beforehand and helped him record a few demos.”

“The Complete Recordings Vol. 3 contains those final songs, labeled in the liner notes as “The Kitchen Tapes,” and they’re easily my favorite works of his. The recordings are rough. Some of the songs seem like variations on the same chord structure. But there’s something pure and beautiful about songs like “Maria Spanish Rose,” “Singing Sailors,” “Night of the Blues,” and “(Tumble) in the Wind.””

“I’d listen to the Kitchen Tapes on The Complete Recordings Vol. 3 and remember that THAT was where the magic resided. In the songs. You don’t need to be a shredder. You don’t need to be a songbird. You don’t even need to be a wordsmith like Dylan. You just need to have faith in the song.”