Aki Onda
Aki Onda is a Japan born electronic musician, composer, producer, photographer, and visual artist based in New York. He is particularly known for his “Cassette Memories” — works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by using portable cassette recorder over a span of last three decades. He creates compositions, performances, and visual artworks from those sound memories
Aki Onda is a Japan born electronic musician, composer, producer, photographer, and visual artist based in New York. He is particularly known for his “Cassette Memories” — works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by using portable cassette recorder over a span of last three decades. He creates compositions, performances, and visual artworks from those sound memories
99 Cent Dreams
*110 copies limited edition* "I recorded these sound fragments between 1998 and 2003 in and around the Lower East Side (LES), an area in New York City that extends roughly from Canal Street up to 14th Street and from the Bowery (3rd Avenue) to the East River. In the formative years of my cassette practice, I had a habit of walking around with my recorder and capturing very short snippets of sound – at times less than a second, as if taking a photo – as well as some longer segments of deep listen…
Transmissions From The Radio Midnight
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* This project, entitled Transmissions From The Radio Midnight, started around 2006, when I acquired a Sony TCM F59 — an AM/FM radio and cassette recorder combined in a slim, handheld body. Since then, whenever I went on a trip, I would throw it into my suitcase and take it around with me. No matter which country I was in, upon returning to the hotel room I made a habit of listening to the radio into the late hours of the night. As soon as I would snuggle into bed…
Night of Rain
*Limited edition of 200 hand-numbered copies. 100 color pages.* Night of Rain is the second art book by musician and artist Loren Connors, following last year's Wildweeds (Recital, 2021). The book is composed of two parts: 'Night of Rain,' which Loren describes as "seascapes, or expressions of the sea and shore. [They are] about the power of rain and the sea, lagoons, bays, tides." Taken from small pencil and black ink drawings enlarged again and again at a copy store. The pieces would often be …
Nam June's Spirit Was Speaking To Me
A spellbinding tribute from one multi-faceted artist to another. New York-based artist Aki Onda (b. 1967) conjured a transduction to the Korean multi-media pioneer Nam June Paik (1932-2006).
A Letter from Souls of The Dead (Book + 7" flexi)
Last copies The soundtrack for Aki Onda's the first major solo exhibition "A Letter from Souls of The Dead" at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) from July 10 – September 4, 2021. Commissioned by PICA and curated by Kristan Kennedy, Artistic Director and Curator of Visual Art, this exhibition will feature collections of found objects such as bells, surplus electronics, photographs, and old-fashioned slide projections.
The soundtrack for this exhibition was composed by Onda in collab…
Gi n ga
**Edition of 300. Limited Edition CD. Hand-numbered edition of 300. 6-page digipak with silver foil stamp, packed in hand-assembled glassine paper with hand-stamped seal. Printed in Indonesia** Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda have been collaborating extensively in recent years. Though differ in generation and performance practice, these Japanese sound artists share an astonishingly inventive, open-ended, and in situ approach to the infinite and variegated possibilities of sound. Suzuki and Onda often u…
Make Visible the Ghost
**350 copies** Packaged in 6-panel fold-out stickered poster-sleeve, audioMER is happy to announce the release of a new LP, Make Visible the Ghosts, with music by Aki Onda and images by Paul Clipson. This album is the follow-up of Aki Onda's Cinemage project Lost City with Loren Mazzacane Connors and Alan Licht released in 2015.On Make Visible the Ghosts, New York-based musician Aki Onda composed the soundtrack for the images of the San Francisco experimental filmmaker Paul Clipson, who suddenl…
A Method To Its Messiness
During my one month travel in Europe and UK in June 2017, I recorded snapshots of radio programs as a daily practice. Starting from Brussels to Kassel, Toulouse, Amsterdam, Brussels again, then London, Berlin, and Bordeaux... In any city I was in, I would just turn on the radio and randomly capture news, talk radio, music, or, if between frequencies, just noise. I used a compact AM/FM analogue radio, as opposed to a shortwave or Internet radio. Therefore I could focus on local programs, althoug…
Ke I Te Ki
Room40 release Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda's Ke I Te Ki. "Akio Suzuki and I have been performing together frequently for the last five years; we have a tendency to perceive sound as space, or to always consider sound in relation to space. We don't usually hear sound sources as they actually are, since they are always modified by a space's acoustics and its reflections, absorptions, and attenuation. Sound is affected by the conditions and characteristics of a particular setting. We respond to the ex…
Un Jour Tu Verras
Limited edition of 300 screen printed LPs, individually handcoloured by artist Wouter Vanhaelemeesch. Loyal followers of the late Paris Transatlantic will definitely recall the tour diary of a 2005 live adventure shared by Dan Warburton (and his violin) with blasphemous trumpeter Jac Berrocal and cassette wizard Aki Onda. To those not familiar with that story I suggest to give it a serious read. At least one can get a picture of what happens when artists not warmly greeted by the stylish cliques…
Lost City
Lost City project started as a series of photographs shot by visual artist and composer Aki Onda in New York starting right after 9.11 in 2001. A decisively introspective response to the major world event taking place, his pictures were devoid of direct references, but documented his immediate surroundings, focusing on how what happened resonated on a personal micro-level.Since 2005, Onda has been presenting this series as slide projections, which function as a visual score for improvisation, a…
ma ta ta bi
Akio Suzuki, analapos, stones, wood pieces, nails, hammer, room echo, bottles, etc. Aki Onda, radios, walkmans, amps, tape echo, cymbals, bottles, etc. Initially a 3 hours long performance recorded on June 2013 in an abandoned space, in Brussels. 'Sound artist Akio Suzuki is well known as a pioneer of sound art, but the breadth of his activities and the form of his works far exceeds the normal boundaries of sound art. With partner Aki Onda, he performs on a wide range of unique instruments inclu…
Cassette Memories Volume 3: South of the Border
"South of the Border is the third installment of my Cassette Memories album series. All field recordings were taped in Mexico, a country I've had a special fondness for since I was a little child. My first memory was watching photographs and Super-8 films my father shot in Mexico City from his time there during the 1968 Summer Olympics, where he competed as a member of the Japanese national hockey team. It made me realize there is a place completely different from Japan, and I started dreaming a…
Five A\'s, Two C\'s, One D, One E, Two H\'s, Three I\'s, One K,
The Snow/Licht/Onda concert was proof that the most unconventional of instruments can be used to create imaginative soundscapes. Canadian pianist/electronic manipulator Michael Snow has led a life of diversity as a celebrated avant-garde filmmaker and improvising artist. New York-based guitarist Alan Licht has operated in a variety of musical spheres, influenced by everything from the minimalism of Steve Reich to no wave bands like Sonic Youth. Japanese-born, New York-based Aki Onda is an equall…
Everydays
Debut collaboration of New York artists and long-time duo partners Alan Licht and Aki Onda, whose combined history connects artists straddling the pop and experimental worlds, including Fennesz, Loren Connors, Takemura Nobukazu, Lee Ranaldo, and Toriko Nujiko. In the past decade their montage-inspired solo work - Licht's permutational guitar and tape pieces on Rabbi Sky and A New York Minute, Onda's field recording recontextualizations on Bon Voyage! and Ancient & Modern - has co-existed with th…