Al Angel on Miles
Thoughts on Miles Seaton from the precipice of winter in Antarctica:
The first I ever encountered the musical collective known as Akron/Family was in the form of an article in a weird, slightly-soiled indy hippie magazine I discovered behind a couch in the laundromat around the corner from the house I shared with my ex, three cats, and an itinerant posse of cockroaches in the Clinton Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn. The thing that drove me to look for one of their albums in the record stores I frequented was an intriguing couple of sentences about the group’s (failed) attempt to bring up the house lights while they were playing a gig, the reasoning having something to do with the idea that the audience, being intrinsic to the performance, was as much a part of the show as the band. The reason I scrambled to by the first album I found the moment I saw it was that my favorite jazz drummer was featured on it. It was the first perfect coincidence of many I’d have with them.
My experience with that album, Meek Warrior, would have been enough to cement my love of this group by itself, but as it turned out, they were scheduled to play the Bowery Ballroom the following month. This turned out to be during a period of time when the band Megafauna was both opening for them and then joining them onstage as a double-quartet—something I’d only ever heard of Ornette Coleman or King Crimson doing—this was some serious sound-nerd shit, and man, I was into it. They started their set with a lullaby-soft rendition of “Afford,” rich, and quiet, aching and heartbreaking, and beautiful. It was a gorgeous and delicate moment that was shattered into dust when all eight of the people on stage picked up drums and started thundering in unison. It was a moment of perfect sonic clarity. It was a koan without words. I had never seen anything like before.
From that night until I left New York for the heartbreak of the Seattle mists, Akron/Family never played another show in the city at which I was not at the foot of the stage, staring up at them like an overexcited puppy. Whatever the configuration they appeared in—quartet, trio, big band, random-ass collective—they managed to hold a mirror up to my full-to-bursting heart. There are countless musicians in this wide and twisted world that make music that I want to listen to; there has never been a band that made music I so badly wanted to play. And of course, at every show, there was Miles, singing with his clear, rich, soulful voice, playing bass, and making a beautiful goddamned racket with a huge grin on his face.
I remember a show they played at the New Museum in SoHo in Manhattan. It wasn’t a space designed for performance; it was literally just a room. I wonder if maybe it was the absence of a formal stage that discouraged other people from crowding in front of the band with me. Regardless of the reason, I felt a bit out of place standing closer to the three dudes making sound than the other people who’d come to listen. I was thrown even more off guard when, in the middle of a song, Miles thrust a tambourine into my hands. I admit that the thought “holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, I’m in the band now,” did momentarily pass through my mind. And while I immediately saw it for the fantasy it was, it was something that was ultimately actually true for all of us, any time we shared a space with that group. This was Miles’s aesthetic, as it was Seth’s, and Dana’s, and Ryan’s. Not only was Akron/Family able to create music the felt like it had come from the most vital part of my deep and private self, they were able to curate an experience of which every member of the audience was a fundamental part, a fact which I believe every one of us felt. That gift is something I won’t ever be able to forget.
In the wake of learning about Miles’s passing, I’ve been reading stories about the group’s early days. I knew we all walked the same New York streets, smelled the same New York smells, saw the early summer sun set against the same New York skyline. I hadn’t realized, however, that the shop where Miles met Seth was directly across the street from the bookstore in which I worked, at which I met the people with whom I would myself make art, which also defined my creative and social experience of that city. I hadn’t realized we’d lived and worked in the same neighborhoods, hung out at the same bars, had so many of the same foundational experiences, all just a few years apart. I doubt there’s any deeper meaning to it—it’s just the latest perfect coincidence—but when you learn that a musician whose work has meant something profound to you has died, a piece of what you mourn is the part of your own life for which their music was the soundtrack. Glad as I am be where I am now, I miss that time. I miss the people I knew then. I miss the New York of the mid 00’s and the small, fleeting life I lived there. I am grateful for all of it, and for the places it has lead me since.
Thank you, Miles. Thank you for your music. Thank you for being some part of the life that has brought me here, watching bergs calve off the McMurdo ice shelf and drift into the fast approaching austral winter as I listen to “Crickets,” and your voice carries me to another time, another season, another place.
