‘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 @ instagram
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

@ SuperDeluxe, Tokyo, 2014

 

Cassette Memories/Radio Waves From Tangier @ NUB Project Space Pistoia, 2019

 

live @ bps22 Charleroi, 2012

 

Cassette Memories @ Louvre Museum, Paris, 2011

 

Aki Onda – Ende Tymes, 2016

 

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Cosmos (2025)

‘Onda’s most recent project, Cosmos (2025), which Onda describes as consisting of collage prints of “emulsion-coated dry glass plate photography, [which] was the standard of choice used by large astronomical observatories and surveys for documenting and imaging the sky. It’s said [that] more than 2.4 million glass plates were made in North America alone. These observations with optical telescopes traced 23 million light-years of intergalactic space – an enormous electromagnetic field. Lights as a transmission medium.” Although there is a history of astronomically-oriented painting, such as the stunning paintings of Vija Celmins, Onda’s work here is again focuses on a new kind of “cassette memory”, with traces of stellar light recorded and remembered on dry glass plates. That the form was abandoned in the 1970s amplifies the magic of the “recently outmoded” that Walter Benjamin discussed in relation to the Paris arcades and other abandoned forms of textual and image-based archive – a magic that opens up as the commodity form leaves the object – or in this case, the scientific value, leaving a vast archive of recordings of stellar light, historical but forgotten, stunningly complex and beautiful and real.’ — Marcus Boon

 

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5 recordings


‘Toward a place in the sun’


feat. Blixa Bargeld ‘In Windungen’


‘Flickering Lights’


‘Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking To Me’


Bruise & Bite

 

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5 collage on cassettes

________________
5 collaborations

Paul Clipson & Aki Onda – Ephemeris, 2011

 

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

 

Aki Onda and Raha Raissnia As If Someone Erased Outlines, 2012

 

____________
5 photographs

 

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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

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Steeqhen, Oops, feel better. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed about a famous person. Wonder what that means. Everyone, Steeqhen would like you to know that he that he’s posting on his substack Steeq’s with increasing frequency of late which is your cue to hit that link and ideally subscribe, yes? ** Misanthrope, Okay, I detect some glimmers of pleasure in your NYC tale. As I think I’ve mentioned, I’ve seen Mr. Chalamet on the street here maybe 8 times already. I just remember thinking he looked exactly the same in the real world. Celebs often don’t. Fingers crossed additionally re: Amazon + David  =  ⃤ 🧃 ** Alistair, Hey. I’ve never creased Anna’s Archive, but I definitely will now thanks to you. Same downside but at even greater cost/hassle of living in Paris when you mostly read experimental American fiction published by micro presses. ** Carsten, Hi. Mm, I think I’m not an ear reader. I think I might even be the opposite, whatever that would be. Although I do love hearing people talk. Once ‘Permanent Green Light’ was properly formatted as a traditional script, it was 51 pages. I don’t write in a regular script-like way whatsoever initially, so it’s hard to say with the new one because it’s early stage. I quite liked Barcelona, but I have nothing to compare it to. Yeah, we showed our first film at the Sitges festival. I can’t imagine going there for any other reason. Okay, family, and a tight group. So presumably no domestic surprises in store. ** robert, Hi! Sometimes my blog eats comments and they never arrive, I’ve never gotten a clear story as to why. Spectacle Theater: I think Zac’s and my previous film ‘PGL’ showed there, but we weren’t in NYC for that. Very cool. Reads as a really valuable place from over here. You worked at Film-Makers’ Coop! That’s like a cathedral to me. Wow, I’m impressed! You done some extremely interesting things. I followed you on Insta, so now I can keep up. Maybe you’d be willing to talk with Zac and me regarding ideas about how to show our new film in NYC/ thereabouts. We’re trying to figure out how to go about that. But no pressure at all if that’s not of interest or inappropriate. Anyway, lovely to speak with you. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. I think I can say ‘TI’ is less difficult than ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’. Great that you’re still forging through that. I can’t remember if I looked for help or just winged it. ** Bill, Haha, re: the exhaustion. The principals’ side treks into J-Pop of course makes me even more curious. I’ll hit the site. Thanks! ** scunnard, God, fund-seeking nail-biting is something I know horribly well. We’re still just writing the script, so we’re early on. And trying to keep the film as inexpensive as we can without making it uninteresting for the aforementioned, nail-biting reasons. ** Happy Pancake, Hi. Well, thank you for being welcoming too. Wow, dreamy to read about your experiences at Disney World. And you were a character performer, double wow. I become a little kid about that kind of stuff. Tall … so you must have spent a little time wrapped in a Goofy costume? You’re a flutist. Is flautist the same thing? Good old James. I wonder what in the world happened to him. He posted that he was having trouble commenting one day and then, whoosh, he disappeared. Vegetarian since you were 3! I’ve always been proud that I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 15, but not anymore. Great, hi, Ian. That’s not a shabby name either. ** Adem Berbic, Hey! Zac was just asking me if I’d communicated with you of late, and I said I hadn’t, and I was about to attempt a breakthrough. (1) I’m good, writing the new film, trying to give ‘RT’ a good life, busy with that. (2) ‘RT’ is submitted to two festivals in London, and we’re waiting to hear. We’re expecting no’s, so then we’ll try other angles. (3) Our future locations depend on whether we’re off at a film festival somewhere, but chances are I’ll be here, and, if Zac doesn’t escape to the south as he often does in the late summer, he’s likely to be here too. Hope so. It’d be great to see you. How do I get these books of yours? Where can I buy them? Do you have a site? Pony up, man. Exciting! Great that you and James/Ssnake have connected! That’s terrific news. Beautiful take and verbiage re: Rivette. I’m with you. Delay Grounds: Don’t know him but will endeavor to. Ace! ** Dom Lyne, You’re boiling there. Yikes, I hope that heat isn’t coming our way. Editing one’s novel is the best part, so enjoy the fuck out of that while it lasts. Heads up when the DW audio-drama is hearable, yes? And thank you for sending your book! I’ll go scour my email and find it. Hugs back, non-sweaty ones. ** julian, Hey there. I, of course, have ventured down to San Diego a fair number of times given that I grew up LA-wise. Also my dad lived in San Clemente for a long time, and driving down to San Diego was the preferred way to escape when visiting him. I will say it did seem very pleasant and not wildly exciting. Growing up in LA absolutely and immensely influenced my writing, for sure. The way I and, thus, my characters talk, the randomly structured city layout where they vaguely seem to live, and pretty much everything else about knowing LA. I can’t even imagine being a writer not from LA. My floater muse helped me finish a draft of our new film script, so I owe him/her/them, yes. Now they’re taking a much needed rest. Seattle’s nice, or has been when I was there, pretty much always to do readings. Well, and I spent a week there in the early 90s hanging out with Courtney Love for a cover story I was writing about her. But she didn’t let me see much of it. ** Darbz 🕷️, Agree. Maybe your drawing of your brain can be the Portrait of Dorian Gray. I don’t know that makes sense, but it sounded good to my brain. Really, about the Nagle exhibit? No, pure coincidence, how odd. Might be fate? I will be patient about the Wain ceramic cats then. That is very peculiar about the fucked up books delivery. It sounds kind of magical though. Thanks, I’ll try to rock my week, and you do the same. Neil Young is not until July. I have time to find a real gig in a little club before then, and I’ll check my local listings. ** HaRpEr //, That is very, very interesting: what R-G said about Pinget’s writing. Huh, very interesting. It’s interesting how avant-gardists of earlier generations are still influenced by the social drift of their younger days. I’ve mentioned that I’m friends with Catherine R-G. I asked her once what she and Alain thought of Pinget, and she said, ‘We didn’t know him very well because he was gay.’ Strange, no? I don’t know, like I said, the only way I can suggest to gather fellow artist comrades is to find a situation to collaborate with them on something. That’s kind of the only method that has ever really worked for me. Is there anything possible there? ** Justin D, Hi. Yay, if ‘The Inquisitory’ fills the bill. I read something about ‘No Dogs Allowed’, I can’t remember what. The trailer looks good. The young actor exudes an interesting quality. Thanks, I’ll look for it. Monday … emails, some film stuff, watched a kind of appealing documentary called ‘Dark Sanctuary: The Story of The Church’ about a legendary goth-y club in Dallas, made a blog post. Pretty lowkey. Was your Tuesday a particularly good day? ** Nicholas., The cost of doing this blog is pretty doable. Well, I dream of my blog existing forever, but that would necessitate someone paying the bills when I’m dead and repairing all the decaying posts, so I don’t know. When I started, I posted every day even Sunday. It started much more modestly and grew into its current unwieldy size. I always responded to the comments on the main page only because I thought was what you were supposed to do. I never post anything from tweets/tik toks, so I’m not sure. Wait, it’s your birthday? Happy one. I’ll eat something sweet but Japanese so not insanely sweet just for you (and me). Reading logs … I’m not sure what you mean. I’m obsessed with lists. Like favorite things lists, best seller lists, movie earnings lists, and that sort of thing? ** Okay. Today I present a post about one of my very favorite composers/ music makers/ sound artists. Aki’s work was a big influence on my gif novels when I was making them. And Zac and I have a dream of making a film with Aki. He would be on the set recording whatever he wanted during the shoot, whether or was the sound of the camera or talking or random sounds or whatever, and then he would edit//transform those field recordings into the score of the film. Might happen one of these years. Anyway, enjoy his work, hopefully. See you tomorrow.