Here are some quotes on the record from trusted bloggers round the world:::::
“No Recognize is stuffed to the brim with primitivistic guitar stompers and gritty road tales perfect for helping you plan a weekend of adventure and debauchery. Or, like, it could probably make going to Home Depot and buying paint seem like the shit. Either way, we think you’ll enjoy this” – Noisey
For new project Cy Dune, Olinksy is louder and prouder, though certainly not “folk,” except in the sense that rock’n’roll was a dominant vernacular form of expression in the 20th century. “Make it loud / They can’t ignore us,” he sneers, demanding more and more, again and again, on new Cy Dune song “Move the Room.” – SPIN
“Akron/Family have certainly flirted with righteous dosages of heaviness during the last decade. On “MBF”, for instance, they blasted through walls of Bastard-sized noise; on a 2005 split with Angels of Light, they teasingly crept toward stillness, only to catapult into blasts of distortion-and-volume damage. But none of that adequately presages “Where the Wild Things,” the glorious wrecking ball that leads No Recognize, the debut EP from frontman Seth Olinsky as Cy Dune.
These three intense minutes suggest Japanese freaks Fushitsusha playing pop-punk with equal-parts precision and madness. This is the most urgent missive to arrive from any member of the Family in years.” – Pitchfork
Some music has a certain intensity that brings out something animalistic in people. It’s a primal feeling; they want to dance –or just kind of move around. It’s music that energizes the spirit. Cy Dune‘s new EP, No Recognize is music that energizes the spirit- Surviving the Golden Age
Check out this awesome BWC interview about their new record that they are working on. They are headed into Dub Narcotic studios to record next week!!!! The new jams are SOOOO good. I could just sit around and listen to the demos.
We have just finished a new Akron/Family record titled Sub Verses! It is due for release on April 30th on Dead Oceans.
We are extremely excited about this one. It really feels like an absolutely new sonic space for us while feeling totally us as well. We recorded it last Fall 50 miles east of El Paso in an old Adobe structure on a 2,000 acre Almond Ranch that touched right up to Mexico.
The record was produced and engineered by the incredibly talented Randall Dunn who has also done records by Sun City Girls, Sunn O))), Earth, Wolves of the Throne Room, and many others…..he also has an incredible band called Master Musicians of Bukake…check him out.
Randall introduced us to Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))) who warmly agreed to do the album artwork and logo for the record. We couldn’t be more happy with it.
We also put together some words about the new recording process with me, miles, and our old friend and patron saint of rock/n/roll Michael Gira::::::::::::::
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The album started with visions of large monumental sounds inspired by Heizer and Turrell and large American works. Monuments. Dirty hands and a large scale American masculinity. Dust, stone, sky, earth. Broad.
These Broad, bold strokes would come to pass but much differently then we expected. As we started recording the record developed in multiple unexpected ways - the imagined sound of titanic heaviness, the sonic field monochromatic blacks and whites, silvers and golds of Sunn O)))) or Led Zeppelin were met with an undulating videodrome field of static fluorescence.
A kind of Sci Fi aesthetic narrative emerged, a dealing with old pasts and future humanism. The pain and idiocy of where our culture is now and 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 songs and singers can live in.
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?
Seth
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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 to do but turn our face to it and sing?
Miles
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it was a century ago when I first saw akron/family perform, in the tiny back room of a bar in brooklyn that held perhaps 20 people.
akron sat in chairs on a small stage festooned with red velvet and small theater light bulbs, their plentiful gadgets and musical toys littering more than a few
tables – always seemingly on the verge of collapse. The four young men awkwardly held their guitars in their laps or gently played drums/percussion,
apparently trying not to knock anything over (to disastrous results) mid set. cables and extension cords laced through their legs. they proffered a sort of delicate,
improvisational experimentalism, laced with occasional rock grooves, but most extraordinarily, often punctuated with beautiful 4 part harmonies… time passed,
and I recall seeing them at a sold out show somewhere in europe and thinking “ wait! this is fucking Led Zeppelin!” - and that is a huge vote of approval. they sounded nothing like LZ of course, but something about the supercharged commitment and force of the sound evoked a similar full blooded ROCK, albeit with an adventurous,
skewed bent and a marked tendency to let things suddenly collapse into utter chaos, then snap back just as quickly into focus in a moment of pure, unabashed
sonority. absolutely thrilling, stunning, and great fun, too… more time passed, and they worshiped at the throne of late period beatles, filtered through the lens of
their own idiosyncratic tendency to mash things up and change atmosphere/context in an instant… more time passed and free jazz improv and deep sonic meditations
came to the fore, always brought into focus with their unique brand of vocal harmony and frankly trenchant melodies… more time has passed, and now we find them rocking (still rocking) but now in a skittering kaleidoscope, the shards of music styles and influences flung through the speakers from all directions, congealing for a second, then
just as quickly dissolving into something new and unexpected. they’re amphetamine crazed jugglers of sound and texture, but there’s always those vocals, rooting the thing
in a deep and satisfying place. seems to me lots groups these days view the whole history of music as fair game for their palette, which might be understandable, since
it’s all there at easy access now, but most of it seems like playing dress up to me, and certainly it exists in inverted commas. there’s no inverted commas in the world
of AK. they’re inside the music, grinding it, fighting it, chewing it, digesting it, then spewing it up to the sky in a multicolored spray of endless sound and love.
Michael Gira
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We will be out on the road this year playing these songs. We have enlisted the help of ace musician/synth man/percussionist M Geddes Gangres from Los Angeles as a 4th musician who has a new record out on Holy Mountain as well as working on an amazing record with Sun Araw and the Congos last year.
See you out in the world, if we don’t see you in the internet cafes first!
Bad Weather California made Daytrotter’s top 50 in the Best 200 Songs of 2012!
Go BWC! Keep ears and eyes out for new radical musics from BWC in 2013 too. They are heading to the Olympia WA/K recs hq Dub Narcotic studio to start tracking amazing new material this winter, after winning studio time in the Dub Narcotic contest.
