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| 0 | LONDON: Cafe Oto |
|---|---|
| P | Sunday 6th November, 2011 |
| N | 8:00pm |
A two day residency centered around the duo of Aki Onda (cassettes) and Alan Licht (guitar) with special guests. The duo combines the textural dynamism of Onda's 'cassette memories' with Licht's free blues guitar for a sound capable of both intense pressure and delicate interplay. For the first night of their residency they will perform in a trio with acclaimed film maker Michael Snow on Synth, Radio and Piano...
AKI ONDA
Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project - works compiled from a "sound diary" of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda's musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch.
"There's a feline quality about Aki Onda in performance. He's one of the big cats, maybe: the stage his lair, as he prowls from a table full of cassette tapes and guitar pedals over to tweak the controls on a glowing bass stack, hair falling across his face and loose shirt cuffs flopping about. He's constantly moving and manipulating, grasping a cassette player and swinging it away from him, the fingering of the machine's tiny controls expressed through his whole body. The cassettes contain years of accumulated memories. Like some dilapidated temple in an oriental horror movie, the stage is full of ghosts, and Onda waves his arms like the swordsman who knows his weapons are useless against this invisible onslaught." Clive Bell, The WIRE, 2009.
ALAN LICHT
Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has traversed noise, pop and free jazz and minimalism through his solo records, groups The Blue Humans, Lovechild and Run On and collaborations with a veritable who's who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham). He is also a regular collaborator with fellow guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors.
As well as a musician and composer, Licht is a writer on music having published two books and penned the much-referenced minimalist music top 10 for Halana magazine that led to the rediscovery of classic sides by the likes of Charlemagne Palestine and Richard Youngs.
