News


7 / 20 / 2010


Forthcoming Releases


I'm happy to let you know that my next solo album, Aki Onda "South of the Border" Cassette Memories Vol.3 (CD), will be released by Important Records at the beginning of 2011. Field recordings on this album were recorded in Mexico, a country which I have been fascinated for many years. One of the earliest memories - I saw Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo" back in the 80s,and that shaped my vision on that country.


There are more upcoming releases. The first trio album of Jac Berrocal, Aki Onda and Dan Warburton (LP), still nameless, due out later this year, will be released by a Belgian label, Smeraldina-Rima. The LP jacket will be a beautiful silk screen print. Also, a Brooklyn based label / publisher, Unframed, and I are producing an art-multiple, Aki Onda "Diary" - a book of my cassette collection plus a real cassette tape. This should be done in several months. Stay tuned.

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7 / 15 / 2010


Shot in Italy



Photo by Luca Ghedini

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7 / 2 / 2010


In Sweden


There are two good reviews for my performances. Swedish only.


Tidningen Kulturen
SVD


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7 / 2 / 2010


Eco-friendly Recycle


If you have cassette tapes from the 70s to 90s, and you don't need them anymore, can you send them to me? Doesn't matter if they are used or not. Somehow sound quality of the most of new tapes which were produced after 2000 is insufficient. The tape itself got thinner and the sound is too compressed like digital mp3 files - not enough richness. So I've been using old tapes over and over. Call me up!


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7 / 2 / 2010

Performance at Q.O.2, Brussels on June 3


Photo by fabonthemoon


I played voices from Morocco in the Arab quarter of the city.

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7 / 1 / 2010


After 20 Years


My first cassette recording will be broadcast at Radialx, Lisbon's unique festival dedicated to radio art, on July 1, 2010 (22:00 - 22:30).


Aki Onda - “First Thought Best Thought”


This is my first-ever cassette recording, made in Morocco in 1988. I was living in Brixton, South London at that time and bought a Sony Walkman at a market before leaving for Morocco. As soon as I arrived in Marrakech, I was fascinated by the city's exotic soundscape and wanted to record it since I had the brand new toy. My ears were also attracted by Moroccan traditional and modern pop music, which you could hear through radios, and street musicians playing. I remember music was everywhere in Moroccan people’s lives.


Then, I traveled to Tangier by bus. I wanted to go there because I was attracted by the history of bohemian life of the city - Paul & Jane Bowles, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg, Francis Bacon, and William S. Burroughs. I was twenty-one years old. Just dreaming and longing for that sort of life myself.


I recorded total three tapes during my visit to Morocco. However, I lost one of those and another one broke a long time ago. This is the only tape that survived until now.

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5 / 26 / 2010


Subterranean Space Music


You can listen to my duo with Margarida Garcia at below links.

Fotofono
Disquiet

Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet wrote... "The duo of Margarida Garcia, on electric double bass, and Aki Onda, on a small set of electronics, produce subterranean space music. Her amplified cello saws deep, thick drones while Onda wrestles with intangible static and, at times, wrangles snippets of vocals captured thanks to technologically enabled eavesdropping. Garcia and Onda are heard here in a live performance recently held at Fotofono, an art space in Brooklyn, New York.

According to a brief descriptive note at the Fotofono website, Onda’s tool set consisted of “one tube amp, a delay pedal and a hand-held radio.” The result of his inventive machinations might be likened to ghostly appearances, but why limit oneself to the unknowable, to the mystical, to superstition? The bits of radio noise seem all the more trenchant when thought of as just that: windows to the sound and signals that hover all around us, all the time. Garcia’s cello roots the performance in the earthy world, while Onda plucks his source material from the aether."

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4 / 16 / 2010



Dead Fingers Talk

I will be showing a sound installation in a forthcoming group exhibition in London this spring.

May 28 – July 18, 2010

Dead Fingers Talk: The Tape Experiments of William S. Burroughs

IMT Gallery, London, UK

Dead Fingers Talk presents two unreleased tape experiments by William Burroughs from the mid 1960s alongside responses by 23 artists, musicians, writers, composers and curators. The exhibition includes work by Alma/Joe Ambrose, Steve Aylett, Alex Baker & Kit Poulson, Lawrence English, The Human Separation, Riccardo Iacono, Anthony Joseph, Cathy Lane, Eduardo Navas, Negativland, o.blaat, Aki Onda, Jörg Piringer, Plastique Fantastique, Simon Ruben White, Giorgio Sadotti, Scanner, Terre Thaemlitz, Thomson & Craighead, Laureana Toledo and Ultra-red, with performances by Ascsoms and Solina Hi-Fi.

http://www.imagemusictext.com/

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4 / 12 / 2010


Me, Myself and I....

A Berlin based filmmaker Thomas Kutschker's new short film "Me, Myself and I in the Age of Download." features my composition. There will be the premiere screening at European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany on April 22, 2010.

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2 / 14 / 2010


Onda Radio...

Found in Barcelona.

 

 

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2 / 1 / 2010


Drunken Boat

An online journal of art and literature, Drunken Boat, features my music in their current issue.


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1 / 1 / 2010


Happy new decade!


New cover photographs by Michael Schmelling.

 

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12 / 1 / 2009

 

 

Soundwalk

 

Let’s walk and hear sounds in the city. You can listen to my new composition at below link here.


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11 / 20 / 2009


The Wire feature download

 

You can download The Wire feature about my work, published in September 2009 here.

 

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11 / 18 / 2009


Send + Receive 10 Years of Sound

 

I contributed a full album length piece to send + receive’s 10th Anniversary audio + video DVD set. This is documentation of my Cassette Memories performance at Send + Receive in Winnipeg in 2005. I edited 42 minutes piece from 4 hours of recording.

 

send + receive’s 10th Anniversary audio + video DVD set features performances of David Grubbs, Lee Ranaldo & Dean Roberts, Martin Tétreault, Oren Ambarchi, Oval, Taylor Deupree and others. The set contains over 11 hours of audio, a beautiful booklet and a feature length documentary!

 

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11 / 16 / 2009

 

 

Suzanne Fiol Memorial at St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn

 

It was a very moving and beautiful memorial yesterday. Suzanne has gone. But, her sprit and love will always be with us.

 

You can read more here, and here.

 

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8 / 17 / 2009


Aki Onda is featured in The Wire

 

I’m happy to let you know that The Wire runs six pages feature about my work in their September 2009 issue. The feature, which is written by Clive Bell, discusses my projects Cassette Memories and Cinemage, as well as collaborations with other musicians. It also reveals about my childhood memories.

 

Also, you can see an exclusive video of my solo performance at The Wire’s website. The footage was filmed by French filmmaker Vincent Voillat (Collectif MU) at the European Sound Delta / Ososphère in Strasbourg in 2008. I played in a boat cruising on a river at that time.

 

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8 / 1 / 2009

 

Some media mentions recently...

 

I contributed a text about my Cinemage project for NY Arts Summer 2009 issue. The article is nicely printed with a 2 pages’ size photo. You can peak at their online version here.

 

Here’s my funny interview on RUIS magazine in Ghent, Belgium. Download the article here. The interview was translated into Dutch. So I added the original English version on the last page.

 

Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice edited by Angus Carlyle, and published by CRiSAP in UK, has won the Qwartz Electronic Music Compilation Award few months ago. The book seeks to draw together a number of different perspectives on how the environment is made audible through sound. It’s indeed a good book. I contributed a diary which I wrote in 2004 and still photo images of my Cinemage project. Download the article here.

 

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6 / 15 / 2009


I will be performing solo in Cut & Splice in London on June 19. Cut & Splice performances and artist interviews will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s "Hear and Now" on June 27 and July 4 at 10.30 p.m. and will be available through the Listen Again service for one week after broadcast.

 

http://livingrooms.cutandsplice.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/hearandnow/

 

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5 / 20 / 2009


KUNSTRADIO in Vienna broadcast Alan Licht & Aki Onda's concert at WORM in Rotterdam on May 17. They posted the mp3 file on their website. So you can listen to some of our new compositions anytime.

 

http://www.kunstradio.at/2009A/17_05_09.html

 

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4 / 19 / 2009


I produced 7 songs for a Cologne based singer Niobe's new album "Blackbird's Echo." The album will be released by Tomlab in May 2009. We recorded these beautiful songs in New York with amazing musicians such as David Grubbs, Trevor Dunn, Clifton Hyde, DJ Olive, Ches Smith, Shahzad Ismaily and Eyvind Kang.

 

www.tomlab.de

 

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4 / 13 / 2009

 



Alan Licht and I will be touring in Europe this spring. We released duo album "Everydays" on Family Vineyard last year. And, this will be our first Europe tour since then.

 

Alan Licht & Aki Onda Europe Tour 2009

 

April 25 ZDB, Lisbon, Portugal
May 1 Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon 2009, Ulrichsberg, Austria
May 2 No-D, Prague, Czech Republic
May 5 Alchemia (trio with Noël Akchoté), Krakow, Poland
May 8 Ausland, Berlin, Germany
May 9 WORM, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
May 13 Cave 12, Geneve, Switzerland
May 14 Le 102, Grenoble, France
May 15 Instants Chavires, Paris, France
May 16 Rencontres Musiques Electroacoustiques / Forum de la Madeleine, Chartres, France
May 17 Cinema Nova, Brussels, Belgium
May 22 Culture Lab, Newcastle University (organized by No-fi), Newcastle, UK
May 23 s51 factory (organized by Sottovoce / No-signal), London, UK

 

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3 / 20 / 2009

 

As a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) grant, I will be performing cassette music, followed by a discussion about my sound diary and relationship between music and memory moderated by Alan Licht.

 

Sunday, April 12, 2009
An Afternoon with Aki Onda - solo performance and talk
@ ISSUE Project Room
4 pm, Admission free (donations welcome)
www.issueprojectroom.org

Aki Onda is a 2008 Artists' Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). This presentation is co-sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a public program of NYFA. This presentation is co-organized with Paris London West Nile.

 

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12 / 12 / 2008


I'm happy to announce the new CD of Michael Snow, Alan Licht and Aki Onda trio on a Canadian label, Victo. We have been performing together since 2005, and this is our first album. It features two exquisite live recordings from our concerts at Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in 2007 and the Goethe-Institut in Toronto in 2005. The beautiful artwork is by Michael Snow.


Michael Snow / Alan Licht / Aki Onda "Five A’s, Two C’s, One D, One E, Two H’s, Three I’s, One K, Three L’s, One M, Three N’s, Two O’s, One S, One T, One W"

"The trio's hour-long performance, while not its first, found them still very much in exploratory territory, looking for ways to shape sounds ranging from spare and atmospheric to dense and industrial. While there was little relationship to the familiar, the set had its own form, even if suggestive of a relentless barrage of sound. Snow, at various points, put a portable radio up to a microphone, broadcasting whatever he happened to find, including a radio announcer discussing a festival taking place in Victoriaville. Like many other moments during this often intense spatial-temporal audioscape, serendipity reigned --the postmodern self-referentiality of the radio announcement being a prime example. But perhaps what made the set so interesting was, above all, the audience' awareness that many of the sounds being produced by Snow, Licht and Onda were as new to the artists as to the audience. Improvisation as texture, not as rhythm, melody or fixed form." --John Kelman, All About Jazz, Victoriaville May 18, 2007.

 

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11 / 13 / 2008


I'm showing Cinemage project in European countries this fall and winter.

 

2008
November 14 Cinemage with Noël Akchoté in AURORA, Norwich, UK
November 29 Cinemage with Jean-François Pauvros in Cimatics in Brussels, Belgium
December 4 Cinemage with Noël Akchoté and Jean-François Pauvros at Foundation Cartier in Paris, France

 

2009
January 23 Cinemage with Noël Akchoté in International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands
March 1 Cinemage with Noël Akchoté and Jean-François Pauvros in at La Casa Encendida Cultural Centre, Madrid, Spain

 

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Photo by Stefano Giovannini

4 / 29 / 2008


Alan and I have been performing as duo since 2002. Finally, our debut album will be released by Family Vineyard (worldwide) and Headz (Japan only)! We'll be touring in Europe and UK in May 2009.


Alan Licht & Aki Onda “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 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 their experimental sound / visual projects Text of Light (Licht) and Cinemage (Onda).

 

Everydays is five grandly formed soundscapes that mix Onda's poetic/textural cassette sounds and the rhythmic/lyrical pull of Licht's guitar. Morphing from recognizable structures to dissonant hammered chunks and rapid cut-ups, the album perfectly weaves their signature applications of sound diaries, minimalism, grainy fidelity, looping and free blues into a dynamic and ambitious statement.

 

www.family-vineyard.com

 

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4 / 1 / 2008

 

Last year, a New York based filmmaker Ken Jacobs and I collaborated in Brussels. Now, the documentation is up online.


Ken Jacobs & Aki Onda “Nervous Magic Lantern” Performance
Bozar (co-organized by Argos), Brussels, Belgium, October 21, 2007


http://argosarts.blip.tv