Toshimaru Nakamura & Tetuzi Akiyama: Meeting At Off Site Vol. 1(Various Artists) 2002

Minimal, Japanese, Experimental, Improvised, Improv, Avant Garde; Taku Sugimoto, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, CD

Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetzui Akiyama are two of the leading lights of the “new wave” of Japanese improvisers advancing their cause under the collective banner of “Onkyo”, which can loosely be interpreted to mean “less is more”. They perform together regularly at home, as well as in Europe. They have also collaborated with artists as diverse as Taku Sugimoto, Otomo Yoshihide, Keith Rowe, Gunter Muller, and Jerome Noetinger. Tetuzi is best known as a guitarist, having released albums solo as well as in groups with Taku Sugimoto and others mentioned above. His style is loosely blues-based, but stripped back to a very minimal and deconstructed base of isolated sonic elements. “Toshi”, as he is universally known, while starting as a guitarist, has evolved a unique style of sound performance based on the use of a small sound desk with no signal inputs. Instead this “no-input mixing board” as he calls it, is set up to loop outputs to inputs, running in outboard effects to produce a delicately constructed web of feedback tones and other “accidental” sonic raw materials. Much of the running in international improvisation is being made by Japanese artists, witness 2001”s highly successful “Japanorama” CD ‘Meeting at Off-Site vol 1’, on Reset [2002].