Master guitarist and bastion of the radical Japanese underground, Tetuzi Akiyama has recorded and performed with an extensive legion of composers and artists both in Japan and abroad. He is the founder – alongside no-input mixer virtuoso, Toshimaru Nakamura – of the infamous Meeting at Offsite performance series in Tokyo, which has played host to some of experimental music’s most recognized icons.
Akiyama’s idiosyncratic and arresting vocabulary contains often volatile shifts between microtonal prepared guitar, folk pastoralism, country raga and weirdo boogie shred. His eclectic but consistently focused body of work – which also employs viola and electronics – has appeared on labels such as Locust Music (Espers, Henry Flynt, Matmos, Josephine Foster), Staubgold (To Rococo Rot, Vladislav Delay, Keith Rowe, Oren Ambarchi, Faust), Bottrop-Boy (DAT Politics, Nobukazu Takemura, Sunroof!), and Antiopic (Lee Ranaldo, Jim ORourke).
As Improvised Music from Japan writes, Akiyama ‘specializes in creating music with elements of both primitivism and realism by connecting his own aspirations, in a minimal and straightforward way, to the special instrumental qualities of the guitar. Sometimes delicately and sometimes boldly, he controls sound volumes ranging from micro to macro, in an attempt to convert the body into an electronic entity’.
Greg Malcolm is an experimental guitarist based in Christchurch. He has recorded collaboratively and solo for Korm Plastics (Psychic TV, Stilluppsteypa, The Hafler Trio), (K-RAA-K)³ (Pan American, Es, Ignatz) and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon (James Blackshaw, Rameses III, Kemialliset Ystävät).
