Akron/Family have announced their follow-up to 2011's Akron/Family II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. Sub Verses is out April 30 in the U.S. (April 29 in the UK) via Dead Oceans. The album cover artwork up there is by Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))). Check out album cut "No-Room" below.
Sub Verses was recorded in El Paso and Seattle, and was produced by Randall Dunn. Akron/Family have also announced a spring tour. See dates below.
Two members of the band have released artist statements to accompany the album announcement, poetically and sometimes nonsensically discussing the music.
From Seth Olinsky:
The album started with visions of large monumental sounds inspired by Heizer and Turrell; American works on a grand scale, monuments, dirty hands and an epic American masculinity. Dust, Stone, Sky, Earth.
These broad, bold strokes would come to pass but not quite as expected.
A Sci Fi aesthetic narrative emerged. Tackling distant pasts and future humanism, the pain and idiocy of our contemporary culture. How to deal with it open heartedly? The boredom, the sadness and speed. The plots within plots of Dune mirrored in many layers of sound. Creating 3D sonic atmospheres that our songs and singers inhabit.
Our story, a story, all stories. Told in verses, in underground language, in sub frequencies. Not audible, only felt, intuited, imagined in some deepest psychic space that you are yet to know. A strange story. Of the future, of yourself. Of everyone. We are all we are, only this and yet we move forward. Along some line to somewhere. And who knows?
From Miles Seaton:
As with other Akron/Family records the Idiomatic perspective shifts restlessly. From Shamanic hypno-mantras to Noise-damaged Soul anthems to North african street frenzy, from Droning Microtonal Balladry to modular synthesizer destruction to Lynchian Doo-Wop and back again. The sound is propulsive and driven by it's physicality, and a disciplined acknowledgement of Lineage. Akron/Family is here, with drums and guitars like divining rods calling on Sonny Sharrock and Link Wray, on Elvin Jones and John Bonham, on Jimmy Garrison and Aston Barrett. But when we sing we are calling on ourselves, on the deep river of inspiration that connects the whole. We are singing Old Stories. The narrative thread is one of the Desert, that ancient ocean floor, long dried to reveal a barren expanse of scorched fossils. Of Life and Death and Time, of a vision of a people, weary and traumatized - driven from their nobility and sense of purpose to the brink of total nihilism under the lash of information overload. Intelligence giving way to remix culture, nothing to do but blindly live as customers, stumbling, content drunk through the digital bazaar. A bunch of fucking Payers. All of us. The hot wind is blowing hard on us and what is there todo but turn our face to it and sing?
There's also a two-page letter from Swans' Michael Gira, who put out early Akron/Family releases on his Young God label. It features hand-written notes he took while listening to Sub Verses. One taste: "Grizzled Beach Boys, fully bearded and flea infested willfully surrendering to the lysergic gas attack. Hold your shriveled ego and watch it unfold like a purple meat-flower in your grubby hand."
In related news, I want to read Michael Gira's stream-of-consciousness commentary on everything ever.
Here's "No-Room":
Sub Verses:
01 No-Room
02 Way Up
03 Until the Morning
04 Sand Talk
05 Sometimes I
06 Holy Boredom
07 Sand Time
08 Whole World is Watching
09 When I Was Young
10 Samurai
Akron/Family:
01-29 Santa Barbara, CA - Muddy Waters
01-30 La Jolla, CA - UCSD The Loft
02-01 Sacramento, CA - Blue Lamp
02-02 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
03-09 Denton, TX - Dan's Silverleaf (35 Denton)
04-09 Albuquerque, NM - Low Spirits
04-10 Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
04-11 Lawrence, KS - Jackpot Saloon
04-12 Iowa City, IA - Gabe's Oasis
04-13 Minneapolis, MN - 7th St. Entry
04-14 Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon
04-16 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
04-17 Cincinnati, OH - MOTR Pub
04-18 Ann Arbor, MI - The Blind Pig
04-19 Toronto, Ontario - Lee's Palace
04-20 Montreal, Quebec - Il Motore
04-21 Allston, MA - Brighton Music Hall
04-24 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
04-25 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's
04-26 Washington, DC - U Street Music Hall
04-27 Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle
04-28 Durham, NC - Motorco Music Hall
04-29 Atlanta, GA - Drunken Unicorn
04-30 Birmingham, AL - The Bottletree
05-01 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon
05-03 Austin, TX - Red 7
05-04 Dallas, TX - Club Dada
05-06 Phoenix, AZ - The Crescent Ballroom
05-08 Los Angeles, CA - The Echo