Akron/Family are a four-man band based in Brooklyn, of assorted rural origins (in Pennsylvania, California and upstate New York) and now roaming all over a wide, open space where antique folk balladry, primal drone and explosive improvisation meet and melt in a woodland psychedelia that answers an age-old musical question: What if Pink Floyd gave birth to Ummagumma in the Band’s basement at Big Pink? There is nothing retiring about the first nine minutes of Meek Warrior — “Blessing Force” is practically an album in itself, a mounting-hysteria suite of Hawkwind-like overdrive, healing-ritual chant and free-jazz blowing. The middle of the record (Akron/Family’s third, counting their 2003 split disc with Michael Gira’s Angels of Light ) is softer communion — pagan sing-along and log-cabin jamming — that turns wild and electric again in the ecstatic, tumbling rock of “The Rider (Dolphin Song).” Joining singer-instrumentalists Ryan Vanderhoof, Seth Olinsky, Miles Seaton and Dana Janssen … [Read more...] about Fricke’s Picks: What If Pink Floyd Gave Birth to Ummagumma in the Band’s Basement?