PRESS
-
Freak folk destroyed
()
VOIR-Montreal Weekly | Steve Guimond Akron/Family is a dense musical canvas that defies categorizationAugust 18th, 2005 New York's Akron/Family blow it out their live show Akron/Family convened in New York City in 2002 with the goal of making music. And make music they did. Three albums' worth of material was laid down, inspiration and desperation found in equal measure in their squalid surroundings. Miles Seaton - multi-instrumentalist and vocalist like other members Dana Janssen, Seth Olinsky and Ryan Vanderhoof - takes us back. "We were living in a place where it was totally miserable and brutally hot, with five people in this 800-square-foot open space, where there was dirt everywhere... The only thing that was at all rewarding and redeeming in our life at that moment was really pouring our heart into the music. There's a certain level of creating to save our lives that I think is contained in some of that stuff." Seaton is referring to Akron/Family's self-titled debut, released on Michael Gira's (Angels of Light, Swans) Young God Records in early 2005. Gira has been a pivotal figure, taking the band under his wide wings. "It's pretty incalculable, the impact he's had on us, just as far......
-
The Angels of Light Sing 'Other People'
()
outsideleft | Alex V. Cook...this may be his best creation yetApril/05 I SAW THE LIGHT The Angels of Light Sing 'Other People' (Young God Records) Control seems to be the subtext of our current cultural condition. Companies are advertised more for the quality of the customer service, the options it gives the customer in the name of tailoring the experience of buying lawnmowers to our personal busy lives of providing the self-same customer service down the line, instead of what they actually may do for you as a default. I harbor theories that this customer society may devolve into a meta-existence of never-ending, never-finished service requests, and maybe this is the way of all things. Nature is a clockwork with no easily definable hands showing on the dial - the gears ultimately serve to spin the other gears. its a harsher cosmic view than that of it all being a giant puzzle, where if we had enough distance and good enough vision, we would see the Big Picture. This is where the role of the artist comes in. They manage to distill a moment of the universal dogs-eating-of-dog on canvas, in words, in song. They are the only ones that......
-
AKRON/FAMILY AND ANGELS OF LIGHT
()
pitchfork media | Matt AmisAkron/Family, Angels of Light to Release Split LP, TourFor the past year or so, Michael Gira has been the Mr. Miyagi to Akron/Family's Daniel-san. Or Charlie Moore to their Dennis Blunden (remember, "Head of the Class" LOL?!). Under the Great Swan's tutelage, the young New York psych-folkies have grown from just another bunch of weirdo beardos to an acclaimed band in their own right. Akron/Family acted as both the openers on Gira's most recent tour and his backing back on his most recent album, Angels of Light's Sing "Other People". Earlier this year, the group released their self-titled debut LP, which was greeted with much critical huzzah-ing (8.0, bay-bee). But the student hasn't overthrown the teacher just yet. On October 31, Gira's Young God record label will release Akron/Family & Angels of Light, a split LP containing seven new Akron/Family songs and five new songs from Gira with the Fam on backup. Recorded live, mixed and finished in a lickety-split nine days, the album was assembled just one week after Gira and Akron/Family's last U.S. tour. Tracklist: Akron/Family: 01 Awake 02 Moment 03 We All Will 04 Future Myth 05 Dylan Part II 06 Oceanside 07......
-
ANGELS OF LIGHT AND AKRON/FAMILY
()
pitchfork media | Matt AmisAkron/Family, Angels of Light to Release Split LP, TourMatt Amis reports: For the past year or so, Michael Gira has been the Mr. Miyagi to Akron/Family's Daniel-san. Or Charlie Moore to their Dennis Blunden (remember, "Head of the Class" LOL?!). Under the Great Swan's tutelage, the young New York psych-folkies have grown from just another bunch of weirdo beardos to an acclaimed band in their own right. Akron/Family acted as both the openers on Gira's most recent tour and his backing back on his most recent album, Angels of Light's Sing "Other People". Earlier this year, the group released their self-titled debut LP, which was greeted with much critical huzzah-ing (8.0, bay-bee). But the student hasn't overthrown the teacher just yet. On October 31, Gira's Young God record label will release Akron/Family & Angels of Light, a split LP containing seven new Akron/Family songs and five new songs from Gira with the Fam on backup. Recorded live, mixed and finished in a lickety-split nine days, the album was assembled just one week after Gira and Akron/Family's last U.S. tour. Tracklist: Akron/Family: 01 Awake 02 Moment 03 We All Will 04 Future Myth 05 Dylan Part II......
-
The Angels of Light Sing 'Other People' | Review
()
STYLUS MAGAZINE | Mike PowellGira's most careful studies drudge up both beauty and profound weirdness3/16/2005 Writer, vocalist, and prime Angel Michael Gira has come a long way from the soul-bleaching extremism of the Swans. The Angels’ third full length studio effort, 'Sing Other People' wrings out the cheapo transcendence of either sheer volume or wild dynamics for work that is more intricately arranged, thoughtfully textured, and generally subdued. Much of this has to do with Gira’s own self-professed desires to nuance and limit his music, but even more seems to do with the musical aid of recent Young God addition Akron/Family, whose rustic, screwy-eyed whimsy bears a palpable but unobtrusive levity and gentleness, lightening the Angels' husking Americana noir and softening Gira's occasionally heavy hand. Despite the fact that it remains philosophically impossible to tease out the innumerable contours of human existence while remaining within our own very human understanding, huge amounts of artistic output of all disciplines has built its dreams on some variant of the "portrait"; in short, the aesthetic articulation of a person. We gauge the success of a portrait to evoke the details of a personality (or reveal something unseen) in the absence of the person......