FoCoMX x Circles Drum Samples

We're proud to partner with Circles Drum Samples for the festival this year. Read all about their amazing organization and the ties to the Fort Collins music scene straight from founder Stefan Runstrum

I’m a musician, producer, and the founder of Circles Drum Samples, based in Fort Collins, Colorado. This town is really where everything started for me. I grew up here, learned how to play drums here, played in local bands here, and came up in a music scene that gave me a real foundation early on. That eventually led to Tickle Me Pink, which I started with friends in high school, and that band was the beginning of my life in music in a real way.

We got signed when I was 20, and from there I got thrown straight into recording, touring, and the chaos of trying to make a life out of music. There was a lot of momentum, but there was also a lot of loss. The day our debut record came out, our bass player Johnny died, and that changed everything. We kept going, we toured, we did our best to hold it together, but it was brutal. That whole chapter taught me a lot about grief, about people, about how fragile bands are, and about how hard it can be to keep something alive when life hits it that hard.

After that, I spent a lot of years trying to figure out where I fit. I moved around, played in different bands, made records, chased opportunities, and kept asking myself how I was actually going to build a life in music. At a certain point I realized I needed to stop waiting for some outside path to open up and make something of my own. That became Circles.

I started Circles without much money and without really knowing what I was doing. I just knew I loved drums, I loved recording, and I had this instinct that I could build something meaningful if I kept at it. Over the last 10 years, that thing has grown way beyond what I ever expected. More than 50,000 producers in over 100 countries have downloaded Circles packs. Circles samples have ended up on Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather and Lunch, and in the hands of people like John Mayer, Trent Reznor, and Butch Vig. I’ve heard Circles samples show up in places like Succession and Apple announcements, and every time that happens it still kind of blows my mind.

What means the most to me is that none of this came from some master plan. It came from years of playing, failing, learning, adapting, and trying to stay close to what felt real. Circles is built from that whole history. It’s built from being a drummer, from being in bands, from losing people, from starting over, from loving sound enough to keep going. And at the center of all of it is Fort Collins, the place that raised me and gave me the foundation for everything I’ve built.