Tetuzi Akiyama
Manifestation of Perceptual Variables Latent in the Environment
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* On March 17, 2021, Tetuzi Akiyama, Ayako Kataoka and Kiyomitsu Odai gave a concert at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This CD is a complete recording of the two sets they performed that day (25 and 34 minutes respectively). Akiyama played electric guitar; Kataoka used turntable, electronics and voice; and Odai performed on computer. Internationally renowned improviser/guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama lives in Tokyo and performs frequently both in Japan and overseas.…
Odd Jobs Are the High Road of Work
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* This is one in a trilogy of live recordings made at Ftarri, Tokyo, documenting some of guitarist/improviser Tetuzi Akiyama's outstanding performances of 2021. The CD releases feature covers drawn by artist Shigeo Mizuta. The two tracks here (31 and 39 minutes respectively) were recorded at Akiyama's duo concert with percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka at Ftarri on February 8, 2021. Born in 1995, percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka lives in Tokyo. In this concert he…
Metaphor of Metamorphosis
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* This is one in a trilogy of live recordings made at Ftarri, Tokyo, documenting some of guitarist/improviser Tetuzi Akiyama's outstanding performances of 2021. The CD releases feature covers drawn by artist Shigeo Mizuta. The two tracks on this CD, each around 25 minutes in length, were recorded at Akiyama's duo concert with electronics player Leo Okagawa at Ftarri on June 21, 2021. Okagawa is known for releases on overseas labels of many collage works usi…
Allelopathy
*2023 stock* Ayami Suzuki, a musician based in the Tokyo area, performs a unique kind of ambient drone using electronics and voice. Since 2020 she has been performing at Ftarri in Tokyo, both as a soloist and with other musicians. Acclaimed guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama is active on the international improvised music scene. In 2021 Akiyama gave many outstanding performances at Ftarri; recordings of a number of these concerts were subsequently released as CDs. "Allelopathy" is one of these recordings.…
Pre-Existence
*2023 stock* Limted 2022 restock, last copies. Originally released in 2006. Tetuzi Akiyama has been a major player on the free music/improv scene in Tokyo for over 20 years. Pre-Existence first came out on CD as a part of the great Wooden Guitar series from Locust. Akiyama's playing here is one of a minimalist approach, discovering and investigating the empty spaces between each note. He does not follow the Takoma guitar school style of finger-picking, but instead invokes a far more warped primi…
Don’t Forget To Boogie!
20th anniversary Edition, made in japan, super deluxe. "If you know guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, it's probably as one of the forefront players in modern Japanese improvisation. Along with Taku Sugimoto, Toshimaru Nakamura and Otomo Yoshihide, Akiyama has helped shaped the sound of Onkyo with his guitar-- in a scene largely heralded for its use of electronics, these musicians' use of a much more traditionally "rock" instrument shouldn't go unnoticed. Furthermore, along with Nakamura, Akiyama organiz…
Gift (7")
* 200 copies. 7" vinyl record with poly, two-sided jacket and dust sleeve * Tetuzi Akiyama plays and explores the guitar with both a primitive-instinctual and technically advanced playing style. Ranging from acoustic minimalist reductionism to maximal full throttled amplication, he seeks to energize, electrify, and connect his own body into his playing and performance. His solo albums cover the realms of Americana-fingerpicking, acoustic slide guitar atonalism, noise, drone, and hi-amp’d infi…
Interpersonal Subjectivities
The trio of guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, saxophonist Gregor Vidic, and drummer Nicolas Field introduces Akiyama to Vidic and Field’s standing duo. The result is a magnificent set of exploratory improvisation. Vidic and Field’s playing has a rich, textural quality, developed through their use of timbre and dynamics. In this way, Akiyama’s multiphonic approach to guitar, and his innovative use of effects, offset’s Vidic brilliantly. Over the course of 45 minutes, Akiyama, Vidic, and Field generate a …
Thaumaturgy
*Last copies. Reduced price* The intimacy of Tetuzi Akiyama’s Thaumaturgy is immense. In nine short through-composed pieces written over a ten-year period, Akiyama captures something melodic, simple, and utterly transfixing. In his first instrumental solo acoustic guitar record in more than a decade, Akiyama, widely known for his improvisatory collaborations as well as his hypnotizing boogie-drone guitar pieces, here works without effects and maintains a strict harmonic palette throughout. Every…
Misrepresenting Memory
** 200 copies** A solo album by guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, who carries out an energetic performance schedule in and out of Japan. Amazingly, this is his first solo album since the 2008 release of "The Ancient Balance to Control Death" on the U.S. label Western Vinyl. That album included both acoustic guitar and singing, so "Misrepresenting Memory" is actually Akiyama's first instrumental solo album with guitar in 13 years, since the release of the CD-R "Terrifying Street Trees" in January 2006 on…
Broken Blues
**Edition of 192 hand-stamped numbered copies ** Reissue of an ultra-limited cdr that popped out quietly on absurd in 2007, this record finds Tetuzi Akiyama and Michel Henritzi joining strengths for a singular set of guitar music recorded at the Alchemy Music Store in Osaka.Captured during the heyday of stylised and pensive improvisation, the music here breaks protocol by avoiding some of the more polite mannerisms of the genre. What starts as a coarse yet beautiful duet of sparse melodic fragme…
Whose Words ?
Guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama is an influential improviser who performs inside and outside Japan and has numerous CD releases on Japanese and overseas labels. The five tracks on this CD are improvisational performances by the trio of Akiyama and Swedish musicians Magnus Granberg and Henrik Olsson, studio-recorded when Akiyama visited Stockholm in November 2013. Magnus Granberg is active as a composer through projects such as his own ensemble, Skogen, and as an improviser using mainly the clari…
Tomorrow Outside Tomorrow
Alan Licht: guitar, electronics. Tetuzi Akiyama: guitar. Oren Ambarchi: guitar on 'Blues Deceiver'. Rob Mazurek: cornet on 'Tomorrow Outside Tomorrow'.Recorded by Makoto Oshiro, Tokyo, Nov 4, 2014. Mixed by Ted Young & Alan Licht at Outer Space, Brooklyn, July 15, 2015. Over the years Alan Licht (USA) and Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan) have individually explored the lines that divide improvisation, composition, folk, blues and experimental music. It was inevitable their careers and styles would cross pa…
Between Two
Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar) and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) of Japan and Switzerland-based American drummer Jason Kahn are all leading musicians on the contemporary improvised music scene who perform internationally and have many album releases. The 4 pieces on this CD were performed live by Akiyama, Nakamura and Kahn at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo, during Kahn's stay in Japan in May 2014. Akiyama's softly resonating guitar makes subtle inroads into the pulsating electronic sounds cre…
The darkened mirror
Tetuzi Akiyama, guitars. Tom Carter, guitars. Christian Kiefer, guitars, banjo and Chip Conrad, percussion, Scott Leftridge, bass & bowed bass. 'The darkened mirror' is a unique vision of American music. Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments. Best known for his work with acclaimed iconoclasts Charalambides, which he co-founded with Christina Ca…
Brombron 12: six strings
Korm Plastics is proud to present the eleventh release in the Brombron series. Originally a co-production between Staalplaat and Extrapool, it is now hosted by co-curator Frans de Waard. In the year 2000 Frans de Waard and Extrapool started the Brombron project. Two or more musicians become artists in residence in Extrapool, an arts initiative in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, with a fully equipped sound recording studio. These artists can work in a certain amount of time on a collaborative project;…
The Ancient Balance to Control Death
Tetuzi Akiyama's contribution to the portrait series, The Ancient Balance to Control Death is a departure in a career of departures. In addition to Akiyama's trademark improvised, blues-infused, guitar work, the ep features intense multi-layered vocals. The end result is a collection of unique Japanese blues that could only have come from one of Japan's most distinct and creative improvisers.
Luwa
“Analog” improv trio date led by Tetuzi Akiyama (here on “tape delayed” electric guitar) with Jason Kahn on modular synth/cymbal and Utah Kawasaki on “dismantled roland synthesizer”.
Futuro
In early 2003, AKIYAMA (guitar) and BARNES (percussion(s) began a tour that took them from Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo in Japan, to New York, North Hampton, and Boston. Along the way, they picked up many friends (Ami Yoshida, Matt Valentine, Sean Meehan, Toshimaru Nakamura) to perform with them as trios. One night in particular, a below freezing evening in Osaka, AKIYAMA and BARNES were joined by one of the most exciting trumpet players to emerge from Japan in the last 20 years -- Masafumi EZAKI. Pro…