Live Review: Akris and Descender in Manhattan, 09.27.11
Still very much in recovery mode from this past weekend, I made my way following a school obligation into NYC to catch Virginian bass/drum outfit Akris play at The Cake Shop. I planned on it being a kind of subdued evening — not much fanfare around the show, but just an excuse to get out and see a cool band do a set — and mostly it worked out that way. It was Tuesday, so even the tiny Ludlow St. had parking, and though there’s people out every night in New York (every day
is somebody’s emergency/celebration that requires expensive drinking), the numbers weren’t egregious or specifically annoying.
When I tried to take $60 out of the ATM, it rejected my card for insufficient funds. The show cost one-tenth of that to get in, and I had that at my disposal. Akris was set to play second, with Brooklynite four-piece Descender opening and Gang Signs — who I didn’t stay for, sorry — closing out, but nobody went on for a while, so I busied myself toward the rear of The Cake Shop‘s upstairs with email and whatever else it is people do with their phones. Games. Texting my wife. Whathaveyou.
Descender got going around 9:30PM, maybe a little after. They played the new post-hardcore, and by that I mean their breakdowns went to college and when they yelled, they did it like
grown-ups. Both guitarist Angelo Pournaras and bassist Jay Morris handled vocals, the former in the lead role, and the songs were good, if reminiscent of a screamy Pelican, some of the Translation Loss roster and probably a dozen or so obscure bands I’m not cool enough to know by name. The room downstairs, where the show was, wasn’t crowded. A couple hip-cats here and here, friends of the band talking shit to the stage, Pournaras, Morris and the other two members — guitarist Eric Palmerlee and drummer George Manolis — talking back, joshing. I like that kind of thing.
They weren’t bad for what they were doing — “And So We Marched,” which is the title-track of their new, Andrew Schneider-recorded EP, was a high point — but ultimately I was probably too exhausted to really engage the music as I might and probably will some other evening. I snapped a couple pictures and downed a Newcastle, which is my go-to beer for The Cake Shop. Eminently drinkable, but not at the sacrifice of flavor (you might say the same thing about Descender). I’d done a pretty decent amount of beering Monday after work — whose bright idea was it to make Tuesday a weekday, anyhow? — and so wasn’t looking for anything too exciting, even apart from the issue of transportation and being at the show by myself.
Still, I did also have a Paulaner Oktoberfest as Akris was setting up — 
at a certain point, you just need something to do with your hands — forgetting that The Cake Shop, in the fine tradition of Manhattan‘s lost basement dives, has tap lines dirtier than the sidewalks outside. I roughed through it in time for Akris‘ start and figured that was a decent enough conclusion to the night’s imbibing. Akris were suitably attention-consuming anyway, so it’s not like I got that “you’re not a human being” feeling that I usually do at shows by myself, sitting there in the quiet.
I first heard Akris on the compilation Son of the Transcendental Maggot (review here), where their song “Kentucky Russian” was among several highlights. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I sort of already knew the band. Bassist/vocalist Helena Goldberg (also currently in Lord) is an NYC expat formerly of a duo called Aquila, whom I saw play several times during their tenure, before Goldberg moved to Virginia. All the better, then, to catch Akris — in which the formidable bassist is joined by drummer Sam Lohman (ex-Sheer Terror) and hidden-behind-his-rig noise specialist Jon Simler (Cash Slave Clique) — as they rolled through her former stomping grounds.
Having nothing to compare their live set to but the demo I got at Stoner Hands of Doom XI in Maryland last month — which, fortunately, was recorded live — Akris seemed much fuller-sounding on stage. Part of that 
could’ve just been the massive volume of the Sunn Concert Bass head Goldberg was running through the traditional Ampeg 8×10, but I think Simler had a lot to do with it, as the static and manipulated samples occupied a lot of the sonic space that other instrumentation (i.e. guitars) otherwise might. Lohman had a sampler as well that he punished at several intervals during pauses in his drumming and between songs, and the overall result was that Akris seemed much more of a complete band.
I recognized a couple songs from the demo, among them the playfully malevolent “Fighter Pilot.” There’s something off-kilter about the melody as sung by Goldberg on that song, but intriguingly so, and I was glad to have the chance to see it live. The same could be said for the whole set, I guess. Akris‘ appeal seems to be in the exposure of raw elements. Goldberg handles riffs like they’re trying to run away from her hands, and Lohman has an underlying technicality to his 
playing that only makes it seem more unhinged. Their songs are intense bursts of sunspot energy, frantically thrashing at times, but capable too of slipping into and out of heads-down Melvinsian riff pummel — a groove that can be nasty and a nastiness that can groove.
They’re still pretty clearly in a formative period, but Goldberg and Loham were notably tight, and Simler‘s contributions gave Akris an experimental edge that one hopes they continue to develop. They reportedly did some recording at Seizure’s Palace in Brooklyn while in town, so I’ll look forward to hearing the results of that, and in the meantime, last night’s show might not have been the biggest draw on Ludlow — the rocker-pants dude I saw coming out of Piano’s on my way back to my car after Akris‘ set seemed to be doing alright — but it was a quality gig by a band I’m glad to have seen. Not bad for a Tuesday.
Extra pics after the jump.
Descender
Akris
