‘Aki Onda is a New York-based electronic musician, composer, producer, and a photographer. Onda has released a string of exquisite solo albums featuring contributions from musicians as diverse as Blixa Bargeld and Linda Sharrock. These include 2003’s Cassette Memories series and the highly acclaimed albums Ancient & Modern and Bon Voyage! which Onda performs with multiple cassette recorders and electronics, using sounds he has field-recorded himself as a diary for more than fifteen years.
‘In 1990 Aki formed the Band Audio Sports, together with Eye Yamatsuka and Nobukazu Takemura in Osaka. Quickly, he established himself as a producer and soon became a sought-after studio technician due to his in-depth knowledge of music production. From 2002 on, Aki started to dedicate more and more time to his art, in which he chooses to go against the development of technology by working with old school Walkmans and cassettes.
‘For more than twenty years, he has been using the cassette Walkman for making field recordings, which he keeps as a sound diary, the Cassettes Memories. In his performances, he mixes the collected sound memories live, using old tube guitar and bass amps, instead of a conventional speaker system, in order to deliver the warmth and depth of cassettes. “By documenting fragments of sound from my personal life, something is revealed in their accumulation. The meanings of the original events are stripped of their significance, exposing the architecture of memory.“
‘Onda has worked and played with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, MV Carbon, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jean-François Pauvros, Jac Berrocal, Lionel Marchetti, Linda Sharrock, and Blixa Bargeld. As well as musician, visual artist, curator, scholar and record producer Onda’s critical thought and unique sensibility in understanding music are manifest in numerous articles and reviews he has written for Japanese magazines such as Improvised Music from Japan and Studio Voice. Many underground musicians and composers have become acquainted with each other in Japan through his writings.’ — collaged
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Further
Aki Onda Official Website
Aki Onda’s Blog
Aki Onda @ Soundcloud
Aki Onda Discography @ Discogs
Aki Onda Bio & Tour Dates
Aki Onda @ Asian American Arts Alliance
‘Forget Aki Onda’
‘Reeling in the Years: Aki Onda’ @ The Wire
‘Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound’
‘Walkman sound performances by Aki Onda’
‘Autumn Leaves’
Aki Onda’s ‘First Thought Best Thought’
Aki Onda: Beautiful Contradiction’
‘Aki Onda: Cinemage Exclusive’ @ The Wire
Aki Onda’s ‘Towards a Place in the Sun’
Aki Onda’s ‘Diary’
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Profile
Aki Onda and Hellen Homan Wu ‘A Different Sort of Value’
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Interview
from Vibrö
Rui Eduardo Paes: You used to work with samplers and computers, you have a long experience as a producer and a studio technician and you’re specialized in sound synthesis. With this digital background, what really made you turn to audio cassettes?
Aki Onda: They are just tools for making music. Digital and analogue equipment have different sound characters. I use both of them to bring out the best they have, and to combine them together. It’s impossible to get the warmness of cassette sound by using laptop. But when I do serious and tedious editing, I prefer using a computer and Pro-Tools. It depends on what kind of music you make, and your music determines the method. The reverse is not true.
However, I love the texture and timbre of the cassette sound. It’s obscure, not clear enough for the reproduction purpose. Sound wouldn’t be the same as the sound you listen to, it would be changed in a characteristic way. It’s interesting that it gets richer because of its fault. Also, when I play cassettes, I plug them into an old guitar or bass amp, such as Fender, Vox, or Ampeg, instead of using loudspeakers. I can get the perfect sound for me from this combination. Although the amps should be vintage tube ones. I have a problem with the sound of new amps, even re-issued ones. It’s too clear, and not punchy and cranky enough.
As you know, I only play field recordings I have been collecting for more than a decade, and I consider them as memories of my personal life. They are not just sound, I could say… I also play memories. So, in a sense, I make the determination of sound quality by mimicking the human memory system. We don’t remember things clearly and mathematically, like digital media does. Rather, the details of our memories are distorted and compressed, like fuzzy images wedging themselves into the realm of oblivion. My sound should be closer to those memorial images I have in my mind.
R.E.P.: I feel there’s a distance between the way you present your proceedings and what we hear in your work. Knowing that you mix different field recordings from different time-spaces, it’s with some surprise that I hear very musical pieces, with what seems to be instrumental sounds, sometimes more present, even, than the field recordings recognisible as such. And you use loops very often, even to structure the pieces with a repetitive rhythm. So, in your records you don’t give us only the sounds you collect in your travels. Not only you mix them, but you also process them (at least, it seems), you loop them, but you make us, listeners, not to focus in that side of your work. When you play live, yes, it’s easy to understand that you’re manipulating your cassettes, but listening to the records can be a bit puzzling if we follow your words about it. You insist in a “I found it” approach, forgetting the “I made it” part of the thing. Why?
A.O.: When I play cassettes, so to speak my memories, I try to open up my unconsciousness, it’s like automatic-writing, leave it wherever it goes. Sometimes, it takes me to a place where I wanted to go, sometimes it leads me to a place I didn’t expected. I try not to control music, just control sound, the music itself does the work for me, as if the music made itself, and I just welcome it as it were. That means; I’d like to take off any intention at that very moment. And now, I’m talking about musicality, which is an abstract idea, but you are talking about the process of making music, or music production, which is the concrete idea. They are different, right?
R.E.P.: You’re a radical experimentalist, you worked as a pop producer, you already told that encountering hip-hop and house music changed your life, and you worked until recently right in the middle of the electronics “establishment,” in the Electro-Acoustic Music Studio at Dartmouth College. How do you deal with all this? Are you the product of those “transversalities”? Do you feel divided in some way? I suppose we can’t point you as an “experimental academic” or a “popular electro-acoustician” …
A.O.: You’d better stop giving a definition! It’s a sickness (laugh)! I’m not a strange animal like “experimental academic” or “popular electro-acoustician,” not even a radical experimentalist. I make music, and music tells you everything, period. Why don’t you leave it as it is? I think it’s quite normal to have this kind of mixed background nowadays. If I had studied, and developed music in a specifically established world like contemporary music, jazz, techno, or whatever, I would have taken a different path. But I was self-taught, and I still am. I always learn something from my own experience.
R.E.P.: You’re also a photographer, and you use in your visual work the layering procedures we can find in your music. So, here is the question: why the layers? (Niblock would tell me, as he did, that, when those layers are in phasing, he can obtain some shocks of frequencies and “phantom” sounds/crazy harmonics, but that’s not your case…) Is it to achieve density? Intensity? What?
A.O.: In a sense, I don’t recognize so much difference between audio and visual. I’m not talking about the nature of the media, just talking about my sensitivity. They were raised together like twins inside myself. It’s not easy to separate one from the other. That’s probably why I’m still engaged in both. It seems like my music suggests some kind of visual images. It’s funny that many concert organizers who asked me to perform, believed that I’d like to use visual images in my concert (laugh). But I prefer not to use any visual images when I play music, and I want to leave the visual side open for listeners.
They can imagine whatever they want in my music. Then, the “phantom” effect happens by the collision between my sound and the visual images in their mind. Also, if there are one hundred people there, there are one hundred different images there, in the space. They would cause another “phantom” effect as well. If you want to create a strong energy, it’s better to hit with something different. I suppose the idea is basically the same as Phill’s, just our approaches to the effect are different.
I’m now working on audio-visual pieces. They are basically a series of still photo images which are shown by slide projection, and it would work as a film (The style is like Chris Marker’s La Jetée, I eventually would like to transfer them to 16 mm film). Then, I ask other musicians, mostly a solo guitarist, to improvise on the slide projection = film. So each time would be different because of the different music. I call it Cinemage, which means homage to cinema, or images of cinema. In this case, I’d like to avoid making both music and picture myself. I guess, my sensitivity towards both media is too close, so that if I do both, it wouldn’t cause strong “phantom” effects. Maybe, maybe not… I have to try more before finding it out.
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Show
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5 solo performances
Travel Notes for C.M., de Aki Onda, Centre Pompidou, 2014
A Study for “Space Studies”, Sausalito, CA, 2016
live at bps22 Charleroi, 2012
Cassette Memories at Louvre Museum, Paris, 2011
Aki Onda – Ende Tymes 2016
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Photography
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5 recordings
‘Toward a place in the sun’
feat. Blixa Bargeld ‘In Windungen’
‘Flickering Lights’
‘The Little Girl In Tangier’
Bruise & Bite
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Cinemage
‘Cinemage refers “images for cinema”and”homage for cinema.” On this project, I show still photo images by old-fashioned slide projections. At times, with music which is improvised by solo or duo guitarist(s), or without music, silent. Cinemage can be shown as a performance, or an installation in gallery space.
‘The visual images are snapshots taken from my daily life. I apply similar methods developed from my work as a composer, particularly the ongoing project Cassette Memories, in which I play field-recordings which I keep as a sound diary. By documenting fragments of my personal life, something is revealed in their accumulation. The meaning of the original events are stripped of their significance, exposing the architecture and essence of memory.
‘For this project, Loren Conners & Alan Licht, Noël Akchoté & Jean-François Pauvros, and Oren Ambarchi play guitar as solo or duo along with my visuals. The music is equally important as the visual images, and not just accompaniment. These musicians have been examining the relationship between visuals and sound in other projects, and bring a deep understanding of its possibilities to Cinemage.’ — Aki Onda
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5 collaborations
Paul Clipson & Aki Onda – Ephemeris, 2011a
Ken Jacobs & Aki Onda “Nervous Magic Lantern”, December 12, 2012
Akio Suzuki & Aki Onda performance at Hara Museum, Tokyo, Sep 20, 2014
Nao Nishihara & Aki Onda – November 10th, 2016
Ken Jacobs & Aki Onda – Nervous Magic Lantern Performance 2007
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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ha ha, honestly, a couple is probably sufficient. Nice gift for the mum. My favorite all time Bryan Ferry cover is ‘The In Crowd’, which I’m sure is in that box somewhere. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Oh, excellent about the new Godard vis-vis the US. Yeah, the IFC Centre is where I saw ‘GTL’. Bradford seems to have mellowed, internally at least. Dude, that frustration you speak of majorly sucks, yep. Curious to read your reviews, of course. Everyone, Mr. Erickson has two reviews for you to read today, and please do. First, here’s his review of photographer/filmmaker Lauren Greenfield’s GENERATION WEALTH, and here’s his review of NICO, 1988. ** Bernard, Hello again to you and yours. Thank you. You should plagiarise them. That’s almost their intended lot in life. Sweetness about that long poem-in-process. You are one of that form’s unsung masters to be sure. Oh, well, what people see in my writing matters a huge lot to me, actually, or I really think so. For example my pupils just having dilated (or the opposite) at your astute observance about mechanisms in my work, which I sometimes think is nothing but them, albeit with some kind of volcano underneath or something. Strangely, I feel no affinity with Poe. People often think I do. Never did. Don’t cotton to his writing itself. As far as I can remember I have never read Lovecraft. So sorry about those two bonified hampers to you P-town time. That’s a lot. Let me know what you guys come up with regarding the preservation of Kevin’s work. Yay magnified that you’ll be in NYC for the Lincoln Center shebang. Bachelard and Petrarch … that’s a strangely fixating duo, as I know you know. Very lovely to see you, maestro and dear friend! ** Corey Heiferman, Really? That would explain a lot. Huh. I have had the Sun Cruise Hotel in at least one blog context, and, as you guessed by guessing that, it drives me both mad and in the direction of TripAdvisor. Whoa, thank you for the Macton link and even more so for the cull/summation. That’s dreamy. Oh, okay, hm, about the backstory on Jewish tradition. I’m so extremely not into the God thing, so that’s a toughie. I am, in fact, in a relatively rare moment where I’m not reading anything because I have to creatively output too much right now, and I don’t have any inlets or something. Our films’ business models? Hm. PGL was funded by a French government sponsored grant and a grant from a private foundation. It cost 125,000 Euros from start to finish. So it has no debt and doesn’t need to make money, although that would be nice. LCTG was funded partly by a company called TLA who paid for half the budget in return for the DVD rights in four countries, and partly by two individuals. I have no idea who they are. LCTG cost $40,000 from start to finish. That film’s producer is ‘mysterious’, to put the most positive possible spin on it, and Zac and I don’t know if the film earned back or earned anything, and I doubt we ever will. Wojnarowicz is having his day in NYC, yes. I’m participating in a reading at the Whitney show in September. Have a good one. ** Damien Ark, Hi, D. Oh, cool. Glass elevators give me vertigo. Cool that you contacted that publisher. Fingers very crossed. I like what they’re doing, and they do seem pretty daring. Oh, then Mark went to Grove Press which was, and may still be, across the street from the Strand bookstore, which isn’t really all that funny of a store, I don’t think? ** Jamie, Hi! Nah, really, even I doubtfully would have watched all of those vids if making the post didn’t semi-require me to. Tricks are fairly okay. Yours? Melatonin works for me, yes. I know people who say it does and others who say it has no effect. I take it nightly, and it works on me. Try it? Oh, man, yeah, be careful obviously about eliminating the slowness for reasons that are detached from its central purpose. Hm. You’re into it, good, and you’ll sort it, no doubt. Your boss is strange. Would you be into working in a comic book if he asks? My Thursday was good. Met with Zac and got through about half of a edit/revision of the film script, which we’ll finish today. Met my pal Torbjorn at the train station and ushered him to Zac’s (now his) lodging and hung out and ate food and stuff. Nice day. And your today? May it win gold in your life’s Olympics. Presto-changeo love, Dennis. ** Statictick, Hey. I’ve only eaten at two revolving restaurants, and the food was miserable like low cost airline food, and I wonder if that isn’t on purpose for some reason. Yeah, I’m just a weirdo about Liz Phair. It just never broke through my no doubt problematic surface. I think if I listen to The Hold Steady right now it won’t work, but I have noted them to try when I start getting guitar-friendly again, thank you. ** Caitie, Hi! Oh, no, god, I can’t say how much I hate this whatever glitch that has turning this blog’s commenting into a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey kind of situation. Sorry. My favourite winter memory? All I can think of is one time in the late 70s when I was walking down the street in NYC and it started blizzarding extremely and it was the first time in my life that I had experienced snowing. Just the feel of it, I think. I’d have a write a poem or something to make it seem like it was. What’s yours? I guess if you like the beach or that sort of thing the summer must be heavenly or something, I cannot even begin to imagine. Liking the smiling hustlers makes total sense. I like them too, and the really sad looking ones. One or the other. I hope life starts zapping words back into you, if that’s not too greedy to say. ** Right. I’m giving the blog over to Aki Onda who’s one of my very, very favorite music/sound makers and whose work was quite influential to me in figuring out how to write the gif fiction and who Zac and I are going to collaborate with on some kind of film project at some point. Anyway, he’s great. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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I know I’ll enjoy this music but I’d either have to be at a live show or in the right mental state, likely with drugs as a shortcut whenever I decide to take a break from what’s been a very fulfilling stretch of sobriety. Maybe it’ll be the time after a long walk a cold shower and chamomile tea.
My hunch is that I’ll enjoy it because I was taken aback by a friend’s live performance on one of those big bell-like things that work as amplifiers for very old phonographs. He made scratching sounds on it and layered them together.
I think cutting the addictions, keeping my flat clean, cutting unnecessary commitments, and charming my boss and coworkers have made more space for writing, but in that space I feel the crazies coming back, and start to fear that they’ll take over my whole life again and tank it, even though I know they won’t. That and if the writing is going “too” well I feel like I have to actively keep reclusive tendencies in check lest my mind get lost in itself. How have you balanced solitude and socializing over the years? I’d imagine it’s much easier if one can get around having a day job.
In classic apologist style I’ll keep the religious conversation going on non-religious turf. I read “The 120 Days of Sodom” more than five years ago, and I remember being taken aback by the very casual reveal toward the end that the four libertines were each cheating on all of the restrictions they made up for themselves the whole time. This was kind of a letdown to me and it’s hard to figure out why. Maybe I got wrapped up in wanting everything at the castle to be as evil as possible, and using people without rules seemed like a lower form of evil than using people with rules. I think it’s coming back to me in some sort of connection with my reading of Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg trying to make sense out of how the Nazi regime could make extermination a stable ideology and carry it out in a bureaucratic fashion.
[awkward transition not really on purpose but I’ll just run with it…]
I’m glad to hear that the spirit of artistic patronage is still alive in Europe, and wish you it in abundance. From my USA upbringing I’ve always been mystified by how European governments put significant tax money behind very far-out-there stuff, even going so far as to make serious investments in basket cases like Fassbinder.
When’s your New York reading? If it’s within the first few days of September I can probably make it!
It’s Natalie Wood’s Birthday.
As I rust you recall, Dennis, back when I was researching Cukor’s files I discovered his correspondences with Robert Bresson, in one of which Bresson declared that he wanted to make “Lancelot du Lac” with Burt Lancaster and Natalie Wood.
Hey Dennis, frantic week here. Have to finish packing and get to the airport soon, so this will be short, sorry. Love the Winter and Jacques Perconte days. I’ve never seen Onda’s photos; very nice. Will catch up on the other side of the ocean. Have a good weekend!
Bill
Hey Dennis,
Got to be quick as I’m going out for dinner. Thanks for introducing me to Aki Onda. My afternoon became quite beautiful with his music as a soundtrack. The Little Girl in Tangier blew me away.
How was Friday? Mine involved cleaning the building I work in from top to bottom, like I do every Friday. One of my best friend’s birthdays is today, so going out to celebrate. I bought him a Madonna t-shirt.
Hope you got some good script work in with Z & you had a nice time with Torbjorn.
How’s that weekend of yours looking?
May everything come up Dennis.
Fragicalistic love,
Jamie
Well, I have definitely hired a P.A. for my film. Now I just need to hire a sound man – it’d be great if the guy who was really hung ho about the project earlier in the week would return the E-mail I sent him on Tuesday.
Here’s my article UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB AND THE AGE OF TECHNOPHOBIA: https://www.fandor.com/posts/unfriended-dark-web-and-the-age-of-technophobia?position=4§ion=feed
If GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE were made by a young director, it would play for a week at Anthology Film Archives or the Film Society of Lincoln Center if it got US release at all. Godard’s name helped greatly, but it got a level of attention (winning the National Society of Film Critics’ prize for best film of the year, not just best foreign language film of the year) I never expected. His new film sounds like a full-fledged avant-garde essay film akin to a feature-length HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA, so I wonder how American audiences and critics will respond when it goes into theatrical release here. BTW, I’m seeing the Dziga Vertov Group film VLADIMIR ET ROSA tomorrow.
Hi!!
How are you? How is/was your week? What’s happening over there? Have you started the “normalizing” of the script? (It’s awful to even ask this.) If so, how’s it going?
Well, you and me both. I thought this translation job quietly died too but it didn’t, apparently. I’ve started working on it right away: I’m doing a rough translation at the shop between customers as a first step. I’ll finalize it at home when I’m finished with that. Well… the sayings of White Eagle are certainly not my thing, let’s say only that much, but… I like the process of translating texts so it’s not a complete misery.
Other than this, my life seems to be kind of a non-event right now, hah. I’m obsessing over Aquaria and going kind of retro by reading ‘It’ by Stephen King tonight.
Have a wonderful weekend, Dennis!!
Dennis, I was tired as a bitch the last couple nights. Ugh. Though last night I got in bed and just lay there for hours or days or something. Maybe got 5 1/2. Yikes! I’ll be hitting the hay early tonight too.
Hmm, so Onda. With days like these, I usually just pick random ones to listen to. The ones I picked all seem…really slow? Not the vids playing slow but his compositions. I don’t know, I guess I just don’t know enough about music to appreciate what he’s doing. I don’t hate it, I guess it just doesn’t appeal to me the way more traditional forms of music appeal to me. Then again, even with those, I have to listen to them hundreds and hundreds of times before I “get” them. It’s the 20% hearing loss. Weirdly, sometimes I’ll get something I didn’t get before with it really loud or really low. Just will hit my ears a certain way.
It’s supposed to rain 3-4″ here tomorrow. I wish it would just rain a little bit overnight every day and leave me alone during the day. In the meantime, while getting good sleep, I plan on doing a lot of novel work. My 12th chapter I let “marinate”…and I’m glad I did. Totally need to re-work the dialogue that’s in it. And then on to the 13th chapter. There will be 14 and then something a bit crazy afterwards. 😀
Hi, again. Ah, thank you for such a warm welcome. I mean, it’s warm already where I am (Germany) but I couldn’t even dream of being able to communicate with one of my favorite writers, in the fiction vs. reality game my life is.
Now, holy shit. I didn’t know Aki Onda did dadaist-photo-montage.
!!!
You’re still opening brand new worlds for me. Is there more to these?
Lastly, and I hope I’m not getting too much, I’d like your opinion on my list of 2018 records that I update constantly -don’t mind the obnoxious title please- but I think you might be able recommend me something or find something for you there.
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/woah_bro/the-only-2018-records-that-matter-a-journal/
Take care!
Have you heard the new EP by gqom producer Griffit Vigo which was released today? I loved Dominowe’s album, but even for me most gqom has a tendency to come across too harsh and forbidding: there was a gqom compilation last year with the song “Cruel Banger,” and that was a perfect description of its sound. The second song on the EP, “Gqom 6,” sounds like a 5-second loop repeated for 5 and 1/2 minutes. The first and third songs, “DJ” and “Come To Durban” interest me more in the ways they throw together about 5 different sound sources in various combinations through their length and slowly build from very minimalist beginnings. Even singer Babes Wodumo’s album GQOM QUEEN, VOL. 1 basically consists of her vocals (and a rapper who performs on every song, although he does not get credited as the main artist) over 2-chord synth riffs on top of polyrhythmic drum machine tracks for 90 minutes, although it caught Kendrick Lamar’s ear enough that he gave her a feature on the BLACK PANTHER soundtrack.
I finally spent the gift certificate I received for my birthday at Academy Records, getting DAF’s FUR IMMER (which also could live up to the title “Cruel Banger”), a twofer CD of Curtis Mayfield’s ROOTS & SWEET EXORCIST, a reissue of the very obscure psych band Hunger’s STRICTLY FROM HUNGER, the Cramps’ PSYCHEDELIC JUNGLE/GRAVEST HITS, and a DVD of SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER. They had the Criterion discs of CHUNG KING EXPRESS in the window for $80 and THE THIRD MAN for $150, so if anyone out there owns these, you have a collector’s item!
Oscar Wilde’s last years weren’t as bad as all that.
Stephen Saban obit
Alain Resnais’ masterpiece of masterpieces “Providence” Is up on You Tube again Grab it before they take it down!
hi dennis
does hector bannister still post around here? i haven’t seen anything from him in a Long Time and i don’t know if i’ve ever verbalized that “cigarettes” is likely my fav post on this entire blog …. maybe ….
anyway, THE WEAKLINGS (XL) took me three days to blast thru, largely because I have read maybe half the poems before in various places (of course, they were reread, and will continue to be reread)….once again i’ve never heard of today’s feature, aki onda. the aural stuff seems to be the main draw for me, so on the road to check out a bunch more…