After spending time on the island of Hokkaido, off the coast of Japan, in a cabin built into the side of an active volcano, partial Portlanders Akron/Family have emerged with a new record that sounds as if it should score a Photosensitive Epileptic seizure.
At least, that's what can be gathered from this teaser track, composed of four song fragments burned to a CDR and delivered in a ziplock bag:
Akron/Family- "SHINJU TNT"
Which is just about all that the band will let on sonically about ST II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT; Akron/Family refuses to send even a song in its entirety to anyone—including Dead Oceans/Secretly Candian, their label—before it reaches the vinyl pressing plant. This is a precautionary measure, in order to avoid record-sale assassination by way of the internet's samurai sword.
Here's a bit more behind the motivation of this curious body of work, courtesy of our friend, The Press Release:
Akron/Family spent the end of 2009 and half of 2010 exploring the future of sound through Bent Acid Punk Diamond fuzz and Underground Japanese noise cassettes, lower case micro tone poems and emotional Cagean field recordings, rebuilding electronic drums from the '70s and playing them with sticks they carved themselves. Upon miraculous resuscitation of the original AKAK hard drive, the album layers thousands of minute imperceptible samples of their first recordings with fuzzed-out representations of their present beings to induce pleasant emotional feeling states and many momentary transcendent inspirations.
And more! A trailer, complete with Japanese subtitles.
Akron/Family's fifth full-length album, S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT is due out in stores February 8th, 2011.