Akron/Family - S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT (2011)

Akron/Family is a well known Post Freak-Folk band that have made experimentations but always very acoustic and easy to listen, that was until they dropped S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT and not only because the music is very experimental, but also because of the freaky story behind the project.

For starters the producer behind the album is Chris Koltay (also producer for Holy Fuck!, Deerhunter and Liars), and also because of the weird circumstances that the album was presented to the record label. The press release suggested that the band submitted the album in a box sent via mail, and the declaration went like this.

Opening it revealed a sincere, but poorly made, diorama of futurist swirling spaces filled with toy astronauts and dinosaurs, four blown-out song fragments on a TDK CDR in a ziplock bag, three pictures, a tracklist written in crayon, and a typewritten note from Akron/Family. A post-it on the bag declared that the band refused to send the full album to anyone but the vinyl pressing plant, for fear of leaking and possible lost revenues.

The Album is full with very raw electronic and distortions with a variety of natures, some songs with very loud drumming. The thing that they don’t loose here are the vocals and the way of creation of the music, they reach a new weird seen in bands like Animal Collective but they keep their sound, it could seem that has no relation to the previous albums, with songs like Set 'em wild set 'em free with sweet vocals and sweet acoustic guitars, but as strange as can seem, this is still very Akron/Family hard to process but very cleaned up with the production.

This album reaches levels of absolute brilliant and shows a truly evolved and futuristic sight never seen previously in this guys, it stays true to sounds found in very original bands like The Books or Animal Collective.

Tracklist:

1. Silly Bears
2. Island
3. A AAA O A WAY
4. So It Goes
5. Another Sky
6. Light Emerges
7. Cast a Net
8. Tatsuya Neon Purple Walkby
9. Fuji I (Global Dub)
10. Say What You Want To
11. Fuji II (Single Pane)
12. Canopy
13. Creator

Rate: 7.5/10

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