Axxa/Abraxas Axxa/Abraxas is the music and art project of Ben Asbury, a 23 year old from outside Atlanta, GA. His experiences as a record collector and music obsessive from a very young age ( I got into punk in the third grade ) are easily evident in his debut release. Axxa/Abraxas, released 30 April 2015 1. Ryan Michalak (Is Coming to Town) 2. Going Forth 3. I almost Fell 4. Beyond The Wind 5. Same Signs 6. So Far Away 7. Ride Into the Night 8. Painted Blue 9. On The Run 10.
Various locally distributed CD-R and cassette releases give way to this self-titled debut album, recorded and released with help from New York friends Jarvis Taveniere playing bass and rolling tape and Aaron Neveu drumming. Both Taveniere and Neveu also do time in the rootsy indie group Woods, and the dusty stamp of that band shows up on several of Asbury's tunes here
Ben Asbury, who records as Axxa, Abraxas, writes killer tunes. There are 10 of them on his new record. Axxa is a solo ‘project’ that’s found a suitable home on the ever-eclectic, ever-influential Captured Tracks label hailing out of Brooklyn NY. He writes some of the catchiest music ever committed to tape, all while drawing from a seemingly inexhaustible well of retro musical ideas and textures. If Asbury made this record in ’67, it would easily find a place on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 album chart; such is its beauty and genuine pop sparkle
Get weird or die boring.
Axxa/Abraxas is the project of Ben Asbury, a 23-year-old musician hailing from Athens, Georgia that has specialized in jangly lo-fi, guitar-driven psychedelia since 2012. After releasing several demo tapes on his own label, Asbury signed for Brooklyn-based Captured Tracks and with Jarvis Tarveniere of Woods on board worked on his self-titled debut set for release on March 2014.
The label enlisted Jarvis Taveniere (Woods, Rear House Recording) to record and produce what would become Axxa/Abraxas debut. It’s the artistic culmination of prodigious young songwriter putting it all together in an erudite way despite his tendency to write lyrics which ar. enerally directed at myself, often criticizing my shortcomings.
Axxa/Abraxas was mixed and engineered by Woods member Jarvis Taveniere, and much of it sounds like it could actually be a Woods record. It's a charming album from an artist with an love for writing shambolic, vaguely psych-infused rock songs but it doesn’t distinguish itself from any number of similar records from this sphere over the past few years. Asbury’s personality and his charismatic voice save it from being completely generic, and one hopes they'll carry him into weirder landscapes on future releases.
