Akira

Electro beats, shouting and yelping, low frequencies, trebly guitars - Akira seem to deliver on the anime-inspired promise of their name. Multi-coloured ambidextrous and unpredictable, there's a lot to like here. Comprising of two males and a female, theirs is a sound indebted to no one.

Electronics sizzle and crimp upon guitars, drums and vocals, shredding any notion of computers stripping soul from music. An EP entitled 'Japanese Frequencies' is available now, and we suggest you listen to it, because the chances are the next release will sound nothing like it.

The sheer variety of the four tracks on offer here is bewildering, yet there are still slivers of Akira's DNA pulsing throughout the music. It's an exciting beginning to a band that have clearly ditched the rulebooks and decided their overwhelming power source is within - and it's charging their songwriting to the nth degree. - Playmusic Pickup

I would like to point out right now that CMU is in no way open to bribes. That said, the lollipops that Akira brought round to our office were very nice. That said, anyone thinking of doing the same should be aware that such gifts cause me to judge bands more harshly. I will eat your sweets while I pick holes in your songs and discard them along with the soggy paper sticks if I don't like what I hear.

So, it's lucky for Akira that the music they make is so fresh and exciting. The two videos on their MUZU page show off perfectly the range of influences they use to inject something new into indie rock - Arcade Fire-style multi-part vocals, punk ferocity, metal tension-building and techno basslines all find their way into the mix somewhere.

The band released their debut EP, 'Japanese Frequencies', via small but eagle-eyed indie label Filthy Little Angels earlier this year. However, now they are living under the umbrella of the unsigned band. How or why this is, I can't work out.

Sign this band now. - CMU Daily

Fine tuned fuzz forms the glorious melody of this London 3 piece. It's aggressive yet restrained punk energy housed in lo-fi exploration.
Opener 'Hard Feelings' has shades of Johnny Foreigner as you're enticed to follow it's intriguing beginning along whispers and light guitar plucks before the burst into it's Pavement / Flaming Lips feeling chorus cries of “throw me a shape, the shape I used to be”. A magical moment and the highlight of the EP for me.

'Tickertape' takes an altogether different direction into darker climbs. Surrounded by filthy guitars and harsh electric bleeps, it's anguished vocals tell a personal tale of a rocky relationship “you've already seen my past....you were my drunken intuition” before the climb to the feel-good power pop finish “you are special to me like the air in my lungs”.

'End#' Eerily grabs your ears by way of an apocalyptic countdown and angelic keys, all that's missing is the light at the end of the tunnel. A curious song to say the least, and nothing if not thought provoking. Devoid of any real vocal aside from the counting sample, coupled with what could be considered a dramatic title and slow burning backdrop leads to a feeling that could almost be described as a religious experience, if listened to in the right setting. It's close brings organ sized keys and marching drums until only a computerised “I love you” repeats over into the distance. A song that wouldn't feel out of place in a 2001 remake.

A fascinating journey of an EP from a band who's diverse musical kaleidoscope will impress and engage at every twist. - www.noizemakesenemies.co.uk

Ok, it would be all too easy to start with the obvious question: what the hell is a Japanese frequency? Surely a frequency is a frequency, regardless of race, creed or colour?

But let’s not quibble, as Akira (good name, don’t you think?) come fully armed with various attributes, such as: being good-looking types, being proper (as in seemingly trained), able to swap instruments, capable of doing fiddly bits (like... eh, musicians) and, lastly, being able to produce an eclectic and winsome cluster of songs.

‘Hard Feelings’, for instance, begins with a pulse and a nonchalant vocal; "I watched another girl undress,” goes the voice. Yeah, ok, we’re mightily impressed. But then it becomes a Bob Mould-esque indie melody-fest. Not so bad then. And dischordant guitar lines don’t harm things, mainly by adding a bit of menace.

Contrast this with the more straightforward rock of ‘Tickertape’ and the post-rock epic ambitions of ‘End’ and you have a band that seems to be pulling in all sorts of interesting directions.
- Artrocker Magazine

Bugger us if this isn’t well tasty, Akira are a London based trio who we’d rather like to believe you’ll be hearing plenty of in the coming months that is if this - their debut outing - gets the attention it so richly deserves. In many respects ‘Japanese Frequencies’ at times sounds like the work of two separate bands, one side featuring a brace of guitar led pop insurrections that usher in a subtle though distinct lineage that taps into the same melodic discordance and sense of collapsible chaos that once greeted those early radar pick ups of the Pixies, while more interestingly the flip side opts for a less frenetic habitat preferring a more mercurial application of key / computer based looping overtures and droning collages.

Wholly unhinged and curbed with an underlay of unravelling psychosis the Pixies-esque ‘hard feelings’ opens the set, dispatched with a dislocated demeanour and a wired mindset this slice of freewheeling frazzled folly splinters and fractures to rupture with a strangely manifesting off kilter and skewed slacker-esque aura that’s craftily dimpled with stuttering fuzz charges and brought to an impacting finale amid a glorious haze of lysergic Elephant 6 Collective meets early Animal Collective styled effervescent fanfares.

The throbbing power surging ‘tickertape’ is the next up to the plate again deliciously wrapped with a warping discordance, buried beneath the hazes of feedback showers, chaotic time signatures and growling riff struts the barely detectable echoes of a soaring pop gem is located alas its impishly cradled and smothered by the toxic thumbing of ‘bug’ era Dinosaur Jnr styled hysteria.

‘God’s warning to the people of England’ presents the set with its briefest moment clocking in at a slender 1.06 only to disappear into the ether though not before orbiting tenderly into your affections adrift in spectrally tipped lunatic climes.

All said and done though without doubt the show stopping centrepiece comes courtesy of the parting ‘end #’ - a sub eight minute epically carved slice of majestic grandeur, a glacial ice tipped beauty lushly sculptured amid pirouetting chiming serenades and crunchy snow printed beats, a sweetly bleak cosmic intermission that to these ears sounds not unlike a distant communication from a far swept galactic void from where an exiled Vangelis is found forlornly tapping out tear strewn mayday calls into the endlessly empty heavens. A bit of a gem if you ask me. - www.losingtoday.com

Car crash music shouldn't sound so sexy, seriously, the whole term should conjure up the image of a fused mangle of seperate genres - the band themselves bleeding to death making genres blend that just shouldn't. Take for instance Post Rock, it's all all about the texture, the timbre and the sheer intensity of it all, right? Now take pop - Sheer slinky accesability decked with bubble gum hooks and try to mix mentally mix the two together. Hurts, doesn't it?

So the fact that the three multi isntrumntalists - Joel Janiurek, Gbenga Adelekan and Sarah Donachy - that form Akira have managed to meld the two, along with art punk and electonica is a fete in itself. Though it might also go some way to explaining why it's taken them so damned long to find their way from the live circuit into a proper studio to record their first official Ep. Yes, there's been a few unofficial releases, but none that weaves through the musical genres with quite the same sense of fun as 'Japanese Frequencies'.

Kicking off with the slow pulse of 'Harding Feelings' with it's oh-so-quiet build up bursting into discordent pop gold. It's The Future of the Left fronted by Tim DeLaughter developing a bad case of the horns. 'Tickertape' machine guns across the 'nu-rave' into the background yelps over the off kilter power pop that most people wish Ash would get back to bloody making.

Even the one minute ditty 'God's Warning To The People of Earth' doesn't feel like filler as hauntingly "Show me the face I want to see" echoes after the intro dirge straight out of the Fuck Buttons back territory. Which leaves 'End#' to polish off the affair with it's extended take on M83 style post rock, just with less 80s hysteria. Yep, it's a little rough around the edges and maybe a tad repetative with the fuzzed out "I Love You" but it's a gorgous track once it kicks in. - www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk

The talented trio that make up Akira have an interesting story behind them. The clever buggers met at Cambridge University after converging from Lagos, Brixton and Southgate, and decided to form a band after discovering mutual tastes.

It wasn’t for two years though until they decided to play a gig, what with writing and recording and the getting of fancy degrees. Now though, they are all about the music and gig their asses off with their unique mixture of frenetic punk energy, classic rock and turbo-pop.

As a result they’ve found friends in all the right places, with fawning reviews from DrownedInSound, Artrocker and CMU Daily. Members Joel, Gbenga and Sarah embark on a UK tour this spring, and may well be worth a gander or two. - London TourDates

Bangers & Mash Present: Akira
Proud Galleries, Camden - 13 March 2009

The cobbled floor vibrated with a pre-gig energy and, coupled with the two hanging jellyfish optics, provided a touch of electricity to the main room at Proud Galleries, Camden. I waited, and drank in anticipation, for Akira; the musical beast with three heads.

The band; Gbenga, Sarah and Joel took to the stage and what ensued was huge, cutting, upbeat, cross-breed pop. They create a driving, euphoric sound, which you sense does not take itself seriously yet is worthy of the attributed respect. For a three piece their music is a broad, enthralling, panoramic assault complete with devastating drums, authoritative, crunching bass fused to gliding synth and warm, melody-conscious guitar.

It’s jovial and a touch funky in an epic fashion and is delivered with a playful jab set to an intense tempo. All members provide vocals and switch instrumental duties. With each of these shifts in musical assignment, the different playing styles of each of Akira gave the illusion of a different band playing each track. The bands songs and music evolve with their group dynamic. It is, perhaps, to this variety that Akira owe their full, well rounded sound and live performance.

Their set was engaging and was over before I had even had a chance to categorize this strange species, to pinpoint and get my head around the bright organism whose makeup was constantly changing as the audience looked on. Mystery Jets were supposed to be playing a DJ set later that evening though, after Akira, I left satisfied. - Mad Dog Magazine

With little regard for conventional convention Akira posses a certain benevolent futurism, their own smear of madness for the musical world to dissect at their whim. They do not exist entirely outside the boundaries of tradition as that would indicate the music they create is inaccessible. However they occupy a space on the rim if you will.

They understand the fundamentals of music and most importantly melody. Coming together in Cambridge in 2001 they confess to have an average of 8 months gestation period for each song with bewildered guitarist Joel Janiurek rubbing his head with a distant mystification quietly utters “it really shouldn’t though, it should just take a week. I think our shortest time working on something was a month. Our methodology of getting songs sorted out is just really bad”

With their particular chaotic approach bassist Gbenga Adelekan produces a laid back smile and continues “I think we suffer from being a complete democracy... most bands have one person who writes all the material and to varying degrees he or she are interested in what the rest of the band think, but they drive things forward…”

Laughing Joel adds “…but me and Gbenga are both like that. One of us will come up with an idea or sketch for a song and go let’s do it like this and the other one will fuck it up as much as possible. They’ll be arguments, detours, we’ll try and do this and do that. We’ve lost about 10 songs like that”.

Making up the band is drummer Sarah Donachy who moves between electronic drums as well as a traditional set up with the three of them amalgamating vocals which have seen receive comparisons from everyone to Nirvana to Fugazi, Mogwai to God Speed You! Black Emperor with a little of Battles experimentalism added in.

Over the past 8 years they have been going at their own pace releasing their own records with a string of well received outputs but it wasn’t until last year ‘Japanese Frequencies EP’ that they were picked up by Filthy Little Angels who had already been more than familiar with the band to which Gbenga circumnavigates a response.

“A slight digression” he remarks before continuing “I remember I was talking to Al from Youth Movies just after they signed to Drowned in Sound and he said something like Drowned in Sound had to sign them because it was getting embarrassing that they’d given them so much coverage but no one had signed them. And with Filthy Little Angels we’d been on what 4 or 5 compilations over a year… Our tracks were, I don’t want to say the best, but they were the better tracks. They eventually went why don’t we do something more”

To which brings us back to a comment he made earlier in the night that because they have quite a long history of doing mail outs and blogs they pretty much sold out the EP before it was releases through pre-ordering.

To keep the momentum going they have decided to release their latest single themselves with the haunting melancholic space pop of ‘Together’ which lovingly cries over cosmic samples and insatiable hook laden melodies. Whilst the other side ‘Winning A Nuclear War’ is saturated in spine tingling atmospherics.

“At the moment we’re trying to work on songs that need people to make them work” explains Joel with regards to the ‘Human Orchestra’ they are working on.

Gbenga “we need an audience to sing a long to them. At the moment we’re getting in to bands whose shows are more than standing on a stage playing a bunch of songs”

As the evening draws to a close the pair ponder the aesthetic that they are trying to create as Gbenga glances to his left as a knowing resigned sigh and a shake of the head comes from his band mate’s direction “Joel will disagree with the way I phrase this. But we’ve been talking a lot about what is the essence of a song. What is the irreducible nugget of music or emotion or centre of the song” with a side glance and grinning he continues “Joel did philosophy so he doesn’t like me saying things like this….”

“…metaphysical junk...” Joel distastefully spits back.

Gbenga “…whatever you build around it, it needs to remain true to that irreducible nugget”

As he mock-rolls his eyes wearily Joel shrugs “the thing Gbenga is trying to say is you need to write good songs”


‘Together/Winning A Nuclear War’ is out now in iTunes.


Lee Puddefoot
- Artrocker