The Crazy Beauty of Akron/Family
By Team JamBase Mar 28, 2011 • 1:34 pm PDT

Akron/Family is currently on tour. They play tonight, March 28, in Salt Lake City, UT. A full list of tour dates as they head to West Coast is here.
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What Seth Olinsky (guitar, vocals), Miles Seaton (bass, vocals) and Dana Janssen (percussion, vocals) have wrought just feels righter than ever, and yet still utterly their own. Yes, rock ‘n’ roll lies somewhere near the heart of things, but there’s really no naming all the cool tributaries that flow into Akron/Family, especially now – snippets of African music, worldwide spiritual sounds, true avant garde noises, jazz slipperiness and technicality and so much more. Though an overused cliché, Shinju TNT is their most organic studio outing yet, an album that unfolds with the natural grace and oomph of a good breeze or strong current, motion and life-force evident in each note.
“That’s cool, because it’s very electric; there’s maybe one acoustic guitar on the whole album, so, it’s not organic in the trite sense of strumming hippies,” chuckles Olinsky. “I do feel the process of making it was deeply organic in the collaborative sense. Without even having material written, we dreamed the record into existence as a group. Before with other records, we’d show up with some songs and ideas and different inspirations, put them on the table and then massage them until it became a group statement. With this one, part of that organic quality is before there was even an idea for a song we dreamed up what we wanted to express – not only what it would sound like but what we wanted it to be and do. Because we started from that place and it’s a really right brain visualization of what this thing would be, there’s s a real group think imagination to this album. We’ve learned how to make that happen, and on a whole, it’s a more deeply collaborative experience, especially on a psychological level.”
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“From the very first thought of this album’s creation it was full collaboration between the three of us,” says Janssen. “Usually we’d bring in songs that we’d been working on alone. With this album, we were in a van in Japan deciding if we even wanted to make another album. We did and we started brainstorming what we wanted to create, how we wanted to create it and things of that nature. The birth of this thing was just synergistic, which continued throughout the writing and recording.” Purposeful is a word that pops into one’s head listening to Shinju TNT, where one feels the strong intentions and emotional layering going on, both consciously and on a more subliminal level. Look out your window and the world is on fire right now. In almost direct response, this album is about connection and reaching beyond perceived borders, an effort to move us – even if only inches – from our closely guarded personal spaces and into a larger view of the universe and our fellow inhabitants.
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“We were so blown away and crazed that once we started to talk about it six months later and starting our envisioning for the next record, this experience is what kept coming up. We all felt we’d been going in a million different directions and hadn’t felt really centered in a long time. This felt like a critical point to return to our center,” continues Seaton. “The reality is if you don’t define it then it gets defined by the outside world. And then you’re crying, ‘Why don’t they understand me!?!’ Well, because you didn’t do the hard work of understanding yourself.”
“We went back to exploring some of the feelings and ideas we had when we first became a group that we’d perhaps progressed away from,” offers Olinsky, who also acknowledges that today’s trio lineup is a far cry from earlier incarnations. “Now I feel the palette is just SO broad. The three-piece sounds huge and it’s more unstable than the four-piece in many ways – on a personal level, on a sound level, there’s more space. It’s just like an unstable molecule, but because it’s unstable it’s also much more energetic [laughs]. So, both failures and successes are more energetic. When we succeed it’s HIGHLY energetic, and when we fail we dive bomb more energetically, too. The whole is just more dynamic and fucked up than ever before.”
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“When we first started it was just Seth and I, and we had this conception of the Akron/Family being an extended version of ourselves with a revolving community around us. So, there’s an element of it that’s a bit like open-source [code],” says Seaton. “When we became four, we got really excited about that iconic rock quartet thing, and we became obsessed with The Beatles and Zeppelin and all these bands we’d grown up with. That version of success became something we were vying for unconsciously. When Ryan left it went back to that open-source, and on [Shinju TNT] it felt important to come back to the three of us and reprioritize what we’re going for, which had been kind of lost for us. If we just return to that center from time to time, we’ll be fine. As long as we can go back to that, we can fuck around and play with a ton of people. We can always go back to that center and reboot. As long as we all know where we’re starting from it doesn’t matter where it goes.”
The rhythms on new album delve into new places, adding a motorik/Krautrock machine feel to the already existing rock grooves and African textures. Taken in total, this feels like an evolutionary album for Akron/Family’s low end.
“Part of that is our sound engineer, Chris Koltay (No Age, The Dirtbombs, Liars, Deerhunter, Holy Fuck), was able to capture it,” explains Janssen. “In the past, what we’ve attempted rhythmically and sonically didn’t come out as well, but this time it did. We had a great experience working together. We trust Koltay, Koltay trusts us, and that may be part what we captured on this album.”
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“Physically surrounding myself with an interesting environment was a color I wanted to add to my palette on this album. It created a swell in me that was different and unique as songwriter and collaborator and artist. Environmental input is pretty powerful, though I’m not sure if it’s conscious or unconscious. There is a big difference between writing a song sitting on the side of a mountain versus writing a song sitting in a studio in your bedroom,” says Janssen. “Just the explosive qualities and elements of a volcano – what it does, what it represents, how it relates to and reacts to the planet – was powerful. You can take that energy and sort of digest it and allow it to translate through you into the focus you want, be it songwriting or interacting with people. It was a really profound and awesome experience to have that involved in this album’s creation and visualization.”
Vocally, the new album is unquestionably Akron/Family’s high point, including shakingly lovely numbers like “Fuji II (Single Pane),” which lay bare a tenderness that’s touching.
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While there’s a good deal of immediacy to Shinju TNT, the greatest rewards come for those willing to take the full 13 track ride. What’s revealed is a song cycle of overlapping intricacies and bona fide spiritual density that’s also quite freakin’ listenable.
“The flow of it, the up & down of it, is meant to be a ride,” says Janssen. “You wouldn’t want to jump off a rollercoaster halfway through, right? There’s still a great hill coming up!”
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“It’s deeply spiritual to all of us, but nothing is being pedaled or pushed on anyone,” emphasizes Janssen, keying into Akron/Family’s innately cosmic and expanded-mind nature, which categorically refuses to ever be programmatic or preachy, something aided by the band’s embrace of humor and unvarnished silliness.
“A lot of people overlook the potential of humor,” says Janssen. “When you really accept it and use it, I think it can really add to the dynamics of the [live] experience or even just sitting down and listening to the record. It’s a good tool to have in your belt. And we are who we are. I can admit to myself that I’m silly. I’m not cool.”
So It Goes
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Like all Akron/Family albums, Shinju TNT is peppered with elements that one knows will blossom in the live setting. Their music takes on an ever-changing new life once their pagan congregation starts joining in on lines like, “Wherever there is laughter, dancing and honey, I’ll be there!” Their work is rife with such pleasure points, seemingly small features that chip away at the wall between audience and performers to create a shared, empathetic experience.
“One of the first times we ever did this was when we were recording ‘Ed Is A Portal’ [off 2007’s Love Is Simple]. We’d been working a lot with Lexie Mountain Boys, and they’re amazing. They came and just kind of freaked out with this psychedelic cheerleader thing, and it sounded incredible and really defined the song in many ways,” says Seaton. “When we went to perform the song live that element ended up being the emphasis of the song. It offered people a cool chance to participate.”
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“People ask us, ‘Do you improvise a lot?’ Improvise is a funny word. If you read Derek Bailey’s book on improvisation [Improvisation: It’s Nature And Practice In Music (1993)], you gain a new respect for what true improvisation is,” continues Olinsky. “A lot of the time when we go for something and fail, whatever pit we find ourselves in makes us REALLY improvise to dig our way out [laughs]. Oftentimes, that’s the most improvisatory moment. I remember Robin Williams talking about Jeff Bridges when they were shooting The Fisher King, and him saying, ‘If a mistake happens, go with it. It’s a gift from the universe.’ I find myself thinking about that sometimes. Or there’s Dizzy Gillespie, who said if you make a mistake then repeat it; then it’s not a mistake anymore. And that actor-improv thing of, ‘Always say yes.’ Whatever comes up, always say yes to it, go with it, follow it, and it leads you to things. When you say no you cut off the flow. So, the penchant for the trio to fuck up in a big way can also lead us to something potentially interesting and actual improvisatory moments.”
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“We all really loved the sound of The Black Keys’ records,” says Seaton, “It sounds amazing and that’s because there’s like three things happening and that’s it! It’s just cranked and everything sounds squishy and compressed and beautiful because there’s all this space. With [Shinju TNT] we realized we didn’t need to have a million tracks. We could have space, and that’s what ends up being most powerful. People go into studios and it’s almost like they making sculptures. I can see that angle, where everything is neat and interlocking and perfect as possible and everything is done in this meticulous way, but the music kind of lies flat for me. For me, it’s always energy music – real, raw expression – that I return to. The narrator is present. There’s somebody there to connect to. It’s like, ‘Wow, there’s another human I’m relating to!’”
“Trust has become a big part of the group, particularly as a three-piece,” says Olinsky. “The more we trust each other on an interpersonal, friendship and artistic level, the deeper our communication becomes. So, when we get onstage, there’s so much freedom because you’re never worried about where someone is going to be or if you fall if someone will be there to catch you. There’s a deep seated kind of camaraderie, and when we’re feeling that it flows into the audience, too, and emboldens and honors them with that same kind of trust. On a night where it works, it builds the space for wild, fucked up shit and crazy beauty to happen.”
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