Miles Seaton from US-based joyous psych-folk trippers Akron/Family spoke to Tone Deaf’s Anaya Latter about the nature of sound, Michael Gira’s mentorship and how it feels to observe the New York skyline on a bike.
Akron/Family are one of those bands that make an indelible impact live. Seaton, the band’s sometime bass player and singer, revealed that factors such as lighting and audience interaction influence the energy and style of their shows.“[Sometimes it’s] a really energetic show, sometimes its a little more jammy a little more abstract. I remember the lighting [at a past Melbourne show] being a little bit dramatic – blue and green, but our whole deal is about creating an atmosphere where it feels as if its one room. To me the stage is only there so that people can suspend disbelief for long enough to relax so that you can jump into the audience whether literally or metaphorically and kind of turn tables on people.”
In terms of feeling a kind of symbiosis between the performer and the audience Seaton reflects that there is also a sense of expectation and a desire to encourage interaction. “It is a symbiosis, but I think when we go to a place for the first time, people are kind of expectant, especially in the indie rock world where people are like ‘impress me, do something!’ Where I feel like, we’re not putting on a movie. In our more recent shows we’ve been even more involved in audience participation and I think that comes from me growing up in a punk rock scene where people played on the floor and the only difference between the person with the guitar and me watching was that they were holding the guitar right then and it was going to be my turn next.”
Being present is vital, says Seaton: “I think there’s a level of [wanting to] rattle people and get them more involved, and on a more esoteric level maybe more present. Which is the purpose of good art I feel, to help people to feel more present.”
Akron/Family fittingly recorded their last album S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT in a cabin on a Japanese volcano, wrapped in a hermetic seal of music making. Seaton reveals that it was a time of inner exploration that in some way required the solitude.
“I feel like for us as a group not just metaphorically but in general when we made this record we felt the need to go back into ourselves and kind of rediscover our centre, and our relationship, our voice, and where we were at.
Despite hailing from band-incubator Brooklyn, Seaton reveals they didn’t spring from the scene.
“There was this level of us being sealed off from a lot of other bands, we weren’t friends with any other bands, it wasn’t like we were part of any sort of scene. I remember going on tour for the first time and people were like “Oh, you live in Brooklyn, do you know Animal Collective?” and I’m like ….I have no idea, like, what are you talking about?,” Seaton chuckles.
“And I feel like there’s this level of us trying to retreat into that space so I think there’s some really magical stuff that can happen when you seal yourself off from the world. At the same time it’s always an interesting process to make a record in a secluded way [when] you’re making this statement artistically that’s supposed to speak to people. So it’s a very social product that comes as a result of anti-social process. It was just to make sure that we had enough space to really hear what our hearts and artistic voices were saying.”
Akron/Family are unique, having a philosophical underpinning to their music which they call ‘AK AK’ and which is largely derived from John Cage’s understanding of music. Seaton explains: “It’s about a lot of things, [it’s] this weird private esoteric language we have about sound. I really learned a lot from reading John Cage and listening to John Cage’s music about this sort of notion of the world being full of sound and alive with sound. Those sounds don’t have an agenda or meaning but they are given meaning by the person receiving them. And I’ve taken that to really investigate sound and to really hear music in everything I can. I feel like that has created a lot of amazing experiences in my life, and it’s also made me feel a lot more receptive to so much and it’s made me more open as a person and all these other wonderful things.”
As a group Akron/Family try to expand beyond the usual parameters of music, and Seaton perceives that music is a kind of gateway to another world. “We practice being really open to all kinds of different things being musical. You know, it’s so cool that the hum of an electric fan somewhere in Europe sounds different than the hum of an electric fan in the States and when you record those things and put them together they make a really beautiful harmony. And so you can walk around and a door can slam or a train can screech on the tracks and it can sound more like a symphony than something that’s noise.
“It sounds a little esoteric but it’s real, I think just on a basic level it is. That’s what the psychedelic experience is all about, is the expansion of perspective. And you know, when it comes with the aid of chemicals it happens a lot faster, and a lot more disorienting and potentially lead to crippling madness and a bout in an insane asylum so I think music is maybe a better route to opening one’s mind so to speak.”
But music isn’t limitless, argues Seaton. “I think sound is limitless, music is limited. But that’s just me getting persnickety about semantics. John Cage is really hardline about it when he talks about it, music for him often had too much of an agenda, and when we worked with Michael [Gira] every bit of sound, every single thing that we made had to have a full meaning and I think that I’d like to go back and forth between both…
“I want to be able to have the limitless understanding of sound, but I also want to be able to connect it to humanity and to passion and to real human experience. I feel like the limitation of music is kind of what defines music – it does place a limitation on a limitless energy. And so I feel like it’s just a matter of trying to figure out how to limit it. I feel like there’s so many different ways to choose that and I think that for me, when we made the record it’s trying to place the right set of parameters on all the different ideas and different feelings and eventually just settling on something because it kind of never ends.
But then when we perform, I think all of us are trying to be in a place where we’re trying to learn how to be more open and less limited. And to try to allow things to have more of a free and unhinged quality, and to be a little bit less controlled. Because then I feel like you’re really opening up the doors for magic to happen. Because performance – everything is happening in that moment, a recording is just a representation of many different moments it’s not actually a performance. So when we’re actually there in the flesh I feel like the music that we’re making trying to find a way to really make that as connected to that limitless experience, limitless energy as possible.”
Michael Gira from Swans has been a strong presence for Akron/Family, giving them faith in their existing recordings and encouraging them from the outset. “Michael co-produced our record with us, one of the major production moves that he used with us was [when] he said he wanted to put out our record, and we had recorded probably 3 and a half hours of music and we were like ok, we’ve got all these songs we’re ready to go into the studio and record them, and he’s like “Oh no no no, we’re going to use the things you’ve already made.” And we were like “What??” So that was a huge decision that I felt like he helped us make. In that way he really did produce us, and really got involved with us with vocals like encouraged us, and he found us our first booking agent and he helped advise us on how to approach the music business, he was really amazing. He was a profound influence on us.”
Seaton reveals that no one in the band lives in New York anymore, but that it still holds a special place in his heart. “I left NY a while ago and I was riding my bike across the Brooklyn Bridge and across the Williamsburg Bridge and I was looking at this incredible skyline, and feeling the breeze, there was just so much vitality, there’s always some like amazing thing happening. You’re walking down the street and some homeless bum is singing some beautiful song and someone’s practicing tap dancing on their fire escape and it’s like there’s just an incredible energy about New York… it’s really magical… Now I feel sad,” he admits.
But there’s a lot of brightness on the horizon for Akron/Family. Seaton observes, “I feel like we’re doing a lot of things. We’re going to do a European tour which should be pretty fun, and we’re going to go to Spain, we always like going there. But you know, I’m going to be moving to LA, and Seth is living in Tucson, Dana is finishing up his first solo record, we’re all really excited for him about that. You know, all of us are trying to figure out what the next step is. So we’re all kind of getting our hands into different things so that we can all continue to be as expressive as possible.”
For three musicians who perceive a world permeated by sound and who have developed their own private language to describe it, the pursuit of open expression and expansion seems like a given.
Akron/Family play Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle from 30 Sept to 4th Oct.
BRISBANE
Friday 30 September
SURREALISM UP LATE – Gallery of Modern Art
Tickets available via: www.qtix.com.au or 136 246
SYDNEY
Presented by Handsome Tours, Pedestrian and FBi 94.5
Saturday 1 October
The Annandale
with Richard In Your MInd
Tickets available via www.handsometours.com,
www.annandalehotel.com or 02 9550 1078
MELBOURNE
Presented by Handsome Tours, Pedestrian and 3RRR 102.7
Sunday 2 October
The Corner Hotel
with Richard In Your Mind
Tickets available via: www.handsometours.com,
Corner Box Office (57 Swan St Richmond 11am-8pm Mon-Sat), 03 9427 9198 or online www.cornerhotel.com & Polyester Records (City & Fitzroy)
FREMANTLE
Presented by Billions Australia & CoolPerthNights
Tuesday 4 October
Mojos Bar
with Apricot Rail and Mental Powers
