Akron/Family
Subscribe
X

Get the latest from Beat

Akron/Family

akronfamily.jpg

This perceptive restlessness pervades Seaton’s approach to music, acting as a stylistic catalyst to the part that he plays in Akron/Family, as well as how he approaches sound in his everyday life. From the brisk, bristling prog of Everyone Is Guilty from the band’s 2009 outing Set Em Wild, Set Em Free, to the heady tribalism of Ed Is A Portal from 2006’s Love Is Simple, it’s clear that this is a band who are not content to take traditional melody and song structure at face value. “I definitely try to set sound free as much as possible from agenda, and then try to suffuse it with as much character and personality and truth as I possibly can when I’m making music,” he says. “Things like reading John Cage or listening to abstract compositions or freeform music, I’ve had the good fortune of [having] those guide me to try to hear music in every day life. I really try to hear music everywhere. That’s something also that hallucinogens did; they turned ordinary sounds into music and ordinary images into paintings.”

This is a challenging way to approach music. Accordingly, the styles and ideas traversed by the band on record are dizzyingly diverse and occasionally overwhelming. And live, their goal is to transpose as much of this giddy experimentalism onto the audience as possible by way of schizophrenic sets performed with precision and volume. “Our performances are incredibly interactive; it’s not just a presentation,” he says. “We’re energetically trying to confront people and encourage them to question their role in a situation. There’s so much about performing that I really love. It’s hard to quantify, but it’s this palpable feeling of connection to people around me that I really love. I love performing rock music. I like making loud sounds. I love the feeling of sounds that are too loud peaking against my ears.”

True to the traditional modus operandi of a psychedelic rock band, Akron/Family are also intrepid improvisers, which is always a brave move for anyone prone to the brutally flippant scrutiny of indie rock critics. “Ideally, we try to improvise as much as possible within the framework of a show. It’s improvisation and not just jamming. All of us are good enough musicians that we can kind of jam, but I feel like improvisation takes guts, y’know? You’ve gotta kind of jump off, and sometimes that shit sounds bad!” he laughs.

The title of their new record, S/T II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey Of Shinju TNT, alludes to a nebulous narrative concocted by the band to symbolise a kind of spiritual and essential return to form. “It was a story of us fighting internal complacency,” explains Seaton. The eponymous character, Shinju TNT, was borne out of the group’s experiences writing and collaborating with local musicians while living and travelling through Japan in late 2009 and 2010. Internet folklore has it that much of the album was concocted in an isolated cabin on the side of an active volcano; a novel idea which certainly fits with the record’s theme of eruptive, catalytic rebirth.

“Shinju TNT was the weird totemic reference to this idea that we had of being reborn within ourselves. This idea of getting back to the explosive radiant energy that all of us really identify with in performance and with music,” Seaton continues. “We were so inspired by this explosive energy that we felt there creatively with all of the artists that we collaborated with, that it was really almost this shorthand reference for us [to] think about this character Shinju TNT. It was this cosmic birth and journey of this character, which was… It’s us freaking out, drinking too much coffee, being wild, and just going with it.”

Although the title of the record borders on the absurd, the music is among the most accessible and beautiful they’ve released. Seaton insists that the success of the album stems from the band’s refusal to take its themes too seriously. “We definitely looked at it and were like ‘this thing… this is ridiculous!’ But what do you do, make some sort of literal, dry reference to everything?” he asks. “There are plenty of white people telling stories about their lives, you know? I feel like it’s kind of an artist’s job or a performer’s job to point to magic in the world, which can easily be drained out. Life breaks you down, and I think art should really ennoble the human experience as much as possible,” he says. “One way to do that is to allow yourself to be ridiculous!”