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Akron/Family | Interview
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www.treblezine.com Jeff TerichAk Ak Was the Van They Drove In On 02.27.2006The line between reality and myth is often blurred in rock music. Ever since some members of Led Zeppelin may or may not have done obscene things with a groupie/shark sandwich, the oral history and off-stage curiosities about musicians have become almost as important as the music itself. The better the bio, the bigger the intrigue it seems, and this idea hasn't diminished at all today. Rumors and legends only seem to enhance how much interest the listener puts into a record. And no better example comes to mind than Brooklyn quartet Akron/Family.You may have already read the band lived in communal quarters. You may have already been told about the band's three-hour plus live performances, often resulting in lengthy renditions of existing songs, improvisational jamming, and the occasional noise freak-out. And then of course, you have the members' penchant for growing thick tufts of facial hair, which is present in most press photos. Add, on top of that, the bizarre fantasy images on the band's website and Myspace page, throw in an odd musical creed that the band calls "Ak-Ak" and you have the makings of one really......
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Akron/Family | Review
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SAN DIEGO CITY BEAT | Jed Gottlieb The inspired relationship between Akron/Family and Michael Gira Jan. 25/06NO, NO, YES, HELL YESIt's pure hubris to claim that everything glorious about rock 'n' roll is contained in the first eight minutes of Akron/Family's new album. But it's kinda true.Minutes one and two of Akron/Family & Angels of Light sounds like Sonic Youth dueting with Phish on a cover of Abbey Road's 'Sun King.' Minute three is John Zorn interpreting Hendrix interpreting Sun Ra, and the rest is the Beach Boys-meets-Yes, only folky. Yet, surprisingly, it wasn't Akron's range that impressed the band's patron, mentor and kindred spirit Michael Gira.'We were actually a little worried about playing our louder, electric stuff for Michael because he got into us through the more mellow, acoustic stuff on our first album,' says Ryan Vanderhoof, one of Akron/Family's four singers/multi-instumentalists.Vanderhoof didn't know Gira's history when the two met. If he had, he wouldn't have worried about scaring off Gira with a little dissonance. Gira's former band, The Swans, arose from the same NYC underground scene that produced Sonic Youth. For two decades The Swans made some of rock's biggest sonic messes. Now Gira is primarily a solo artist (with......
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Akron/Family & Angels of Light | Review
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dustedmagazine.com | Adam MacGregor There's something sunny and friendly about Akron/FamilyDusted ReviewsArtist: Akron/Family / Angels of LightReview date: Feb. 26, 2006 Proteges ex-Swan leader Michael Gira knows how to pick 'em. To wit: The success of current neo-folk darling Devendra Banhart, whose first few albums Gira released on his Young God label, while also having subsequently employed Banhart as one of his Angels of Light. Likewise, when it came time to for the most recent restaff of AoL's ever-mutable lineup, Gira employed Brooklynites the Akron/Family, which perform an admirable double role on this latest release, their second on Young God. As such, it's more of a "split-personality" release more than a split project proper, wherein the only difference in personnel among the tracks over both segments is the addition of Gira himself on the five AoL songs. Gira has discovered a strange and wonderful roots-rock boy band of sorts in A/F. Their first seven tracks exude a country and blues-inflected jubilance without succumbing to jam band excess. A/F's four-tiered vocal arrangements have invited a spate of Beach Boys comparisons; nonetheless, it's hard not to suspect that Brian Wilson or (shudder) the Lettermen may have had an inspirational hand in the album......
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Akron/Family & Angels of Light | Review
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dustedmagazine.com | Adam MacGregor it's more of a "split-personality" release Dusted ReviewsArtist: Akron/Family / Angels of LightReview date: Feb. 26, 2006 Proteges ex-Swan leader Michael Gira knows how to pick 'em. To wit: The success of current neo-folk darling Devendra Banhart, whose first few albums Gira released on his Young God label, while also having subsequently employed Banhart as one of his Angels of Light. Likewise, when it came time to for the most recent restaff of AoL's ever-mutable lineup, Gira employed Brooklynites the Akron/Family, which perform an admirable double role on this latest release, their second on Young God. As such, it's more of a "split-personality" release more than a split project proper, wherein the only difference in personnel among the tracks over both segments is the addition of Gira himself on the five AoL songs. Gira has discovered a strange and wonderful roots-rock boy band of sorts in A/F. Their first seven tracks exude a country and blues-inflected jubilance without succumbing to jam band excess. A/F's four-tiered vocal arrangements have invited a spate of Beach Boys comparisons; nonetheless, it's hard not to suspect that Brian Wilson or (shudder) the Lettermen may have had an inspirational hand in the album......
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Mi and L'au | Review
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dustedmagazine.com | Adam MacGregorMi's whispery delivery is intimate throughout, to the point where she might well be an inch from the listener's earDusted ReviewsAlbum: Mi and L'au Review Feb. 26, 2006 If there's a Young God Records "sound," it might be analogous to what one looks for in a high-quality acoustic guitar: earthy, rich, woody, resonant. Mi and L'au's debut album is all of this, but ensconced in a stately, very European air. Even the duo's back-story seems apocryphal in an old-world fairytale sense: Finnish model Mi meets French musician L'au in Paris; the two fall in love and forsake everything to retreat to a remote cabin in the woods of Finland to write and record their music in isolation. Whatever they did in that hermitage spawned an album's worth of songs spare and elegant, definitely removed from that of their acoustic-based neo-folk contemporaries, but never alienating. Despite the fact that these songs were written in the cold north, and that it includes its share of minor keys, tagging it as "dark folk" is misleading. Calling it "folk" in the traditional sense is just a little less misleading. Although lush and delicate acoustic guitar, strings, flute, and piano (played by Mi and......