PRESS
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Larkin Grimm | The Last Tree | Review
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Foxydigitalis.com | Joris Heemskerk These songs inhabit a warmer heart, a gentler but ultimately mysterious soul.Everyone has a little place in their minds which only they can access. It’s the place where every once in a while those hidden phantasies pop up. A strange fetish or that weird yearning for something you can’t ever get. Or maybe just a forbidden paradise where innocent virgins wave palmleafs at your wellsculpted body. Larkin Grimm already decided to give us a peak into her special phantasie spot on her debut, “Harpoon”, an arresting folkalbum that she described as acoustic blackmetal, which is a little off the mark but could easily be special place fetish for all I know. Most of the time, this new album wanders along at the same sleepwalking pace, her voice a whisper then an angelic croon. The minimalist acoustic decoration makes it sound naked but this is far from Dead Raven Choir acoustic black metal. These songs inhabit a warmer heart, a gentler but ultimately mysterious soul. Misanthropy ain’t living here but ghosts surely aren’t too far away. The album’s highlight is without a doubt ‘The Most Excruciating Vibe’, a fucked up murderballad with vocal contributions by Lara Polango......
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Akron/Family | Review
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www.sceneless.com | LJ Battaglia beneath the chaotic juxtaposition of musical elements lays a subtle, yet masterful song-writing abilityMeek Warrior2006 Young God Records What happens when four country kids relocate to Brooklyn, NY in the hope of making the next great American record? What you get instead is three rather interesting releases by a band called Akron/Family on ex-Swan Michael Gira's label Young God Records. Their latest release, Meek Warrior, is pure art school-gospel that is as confounding as it is exhilarating. Just when you thought the Brooklyn scene hit its creative peak with Return to Cookie Mountain earlier this year, Akron/Family has added another chapter to the ever evolving musical scene that is Brooklyn, NY. A serious reconsideration of the musical possibilities that lay ahead in the 21st century is a damned near unavoidable after the initial hearing of "Blessing Force", the opening track to Meek Warrior. It is staggering to the mind to hear four dudes unabashedly banging out their deepest darkest musical desires. How does it come across? Well, I think it's safe to say that Meek Warrior is THAT album that on a dark and stormy night your stoner friend or weirdo roommate will corner you and......
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Akron/Family | Review
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tinymixtapes.com | tameccompelling moments of grandeur, quiet bliss, and sheer cathartic slow-core noiseYoung God, 2005rating: 3.5/5Obligatory intro: Brooklyn 's Akron/Family are a bearded 4-piece recently signed to Michael Gira of the Swans' label Young God. The band has been opening for Gira's band Angels of Light on their current tour, and once finished playing their own material, remain on stage to play as the Angels themselves, backing Gira, who also produced this record. Young God has recently released the band's debut LP, and it ain't too shabby. Opening track "Before and Again" gradually adds string texture to a simply picked guitar melody and ethereal, breathless male vocals before things switch up and drums come in during the fourth minute. The "difference" element here is an intermittent beeping sound, which owes a lot to the title track of Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen, which began that record in a similar and equally pleasing fashion. The only other touchstone I could produce is Grandaddy -- beards, high voices, electronics, and on "I'll Be on the Water," the word "dream" is repeated, as in "Miner at the Dial-a-View" from the former band's The Sophtware Slump. But a song like "Running, Returning," featured here, is......
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Akron/Family | Review
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tinymixtapes.com | p funk philosophies, and musical genres explode Meek WarriorYoung God, 2006rating: 3/5With last year's self-titled debut, Akron/Family established themselves as the best emo-band-for-big-kids around. Sure, there was plenty of sundrop psychedelia tangled up in their songs, and their live shows quickly transformed into wild and wooly campfire theatre, with band members starting drum circles in the middle of the audience and interjecting with unexpectedly skronky sax outbursts. But if you want to talk about what animated their recorded material, you had to turn to some of the most naked, earnest lyrics this side of ŠAnd You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's Source Tags and Codes. The Family stuck their necks out with lines like "Thinking of you/ There's lightning bolts in my chest," and they actually came away largely unscathed, thanks to complex, even messy sonics that betrayed their fundamental maturity. Bald emoting burns so much cleaner when it's accompanied by spectral electronic manipulation that would make Brian Deck grin or uncanny guitar riffs that suggest a less calculating and pretentious Joan of Arc.A year later, the boys are feeding us far less sentimental remarks: "A true spaceship has no destination/ Only direction," they sing......
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Akron/Family | Interview
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Popmatters.com | Jennifer Kelly The band is heading to Texas soon to record number four with Andrew White11 October 2006With its third album in two years Akron/Family takes another snapshot of its continuously evolving musical journey. Meek Warrior's free jazz freak outs may surprise some fans, but bass player Miles Seaton shrugs it off, saying, 'We just want to keep capturing wherever we are along the way.&bbspAkron/Family needs to sleep. For the last couple of years, really ever since Michael Gira fished their home-taped demo out of the Young God slush pile, these four Brooklynites have been in constant motion, touring up one coast and down the other, writing songs in the back seats of vans and recording three full-length albums on the fly. The record shows that since signing with Young God in 2004, Akron/Family has played some 200 concerts in the US, Europe, and Canada. In recent years, dates have become so closely packed that "off" days are noted on the calendar and, one assumes, plastered with exclamation points and gold stars by band members. And, while other bands follow the same sorts of punishing touring schedules, few of them simultaneously record full-length albums. In a statement, guitarist Seth......