[Photos by PSquared Photography]
To paraphrase the Beatles, I thought I knew Akron/Family, what did I know. A band that I had returned to see live ten or so times were “must-see” because their shows have always been immensely enjoyable — celebratory and tribal, the material has alternated between melodic and hypnotic jamming and sweet (and sometimes very quiet) ballads. The current tour for the new album Sub Verses (officially released today April 30) is a very different affair indeed. As I tweeted during the Bowery Ballroom show on Wednesday, this current incarnation of Akron/Family is dense and very heavy. There wasn’t much banter or crowd participation, as we’ve experienced at older A/F shows, but the music was equally moving in a profoundly different way. The band has added electronics wiz M Geddes Gengras for this tour and his contribution of throbbing electronic bass and crunch/noise fits perfectly with the thematic nature of Sub Verses, which has been described by the band as having a “SciFi aesthetic” and “propulsive and driven by it’s physicality”, which are both very much accurate. At Bowery, the band played all but one of the new album’s 10 tracks, and just two songs of older material. We are streaming “Sand Time” below. The current tour swings South this week before finishing in LA on May 8.
I recorded this set from our standard balcony rail location in this venue and mixed with an excellent board feed provided by Akron Family’s FOH Tom Tierney. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!
Stream “Sand Time”:
This Recording is now available to Download in FLAC and MP3 and to Stream at Archive.org [HERE].
Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.
Akron Family
2013-04-24
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY
Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix
Soundboard + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper 2013-04-28
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:36:21]
01 [intro]
02 No Room
03 Way Up
04 Until The Morning
05 Sand Talk
06 Light Emerges
07 Sometimes I
08 Holy Bourbon
09 Drums
10 Sand Time
11 Samurai
12 [encore break]
13 When I Was Young
14 Ed Is a Portal
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Akron/Family, visit their website, and purchase Sub Verses from the Dead Oceans Records website [HERE].
Track 8 should be “Holy Boredom”.
Also, Many many thanks! (Sorry, hit “Post” too fast.)
I like Bourbon better.
I misread Seth’s handwriting and then when I checked it against the tracklist at Dead Oceans, I completely missed that.