“I think of Akio Suzuki as a kind of magician” —David Toop
“Hearing this music, I remember many things, including playing in a puddle as a tiny kid” —Yamatsuka Eye: Boredoms
How does a Japanese musical aesthetic unite a boundary-breaking instrument builder and a psych-drone specialist?
Traditionally, the Japanese aesthetic is meditative. Rightly or wrongly, it is perceived in North America as slow moving and deliberate. As in other Japanese artistic disciplines, spiritual self-mastery is important. This unity of purpose can be exported to non-Japanese musicians and musical processes. Akio Suzuki represents a profound expression of Japanese sensibilities while relating to the terrifically modern at the same time. Suzuki’s work is utterly captivating and crucial; it deserves a much bigger audience. Akio has been performing, teaching and building instruments for nearly 40 years. His music is simple and pure, exploring how natural atmospheres and sounds can be harnessed and then set free. To experience his art is to lose oneself in the sound that surrounds us. Suzuki will perform on a range of unique instruments including an ancient stone flute (Iwabue) passed down through his family for many generations and Analapos – an instrument he invented in the 1970s that creates echoes through the acoustic transmissions of a spiral cord stretched between two metal cylinders. He’s matched by the beautiful, partly cloudy minimalism of Kyle Bobby Dunn, whose music gently absorbs influences from ambient, drone, and post-classical compostion. The rural Ontario-based composer has amassed a sizable discography since 2008.
“Dunn creates audio landscapes wherein time slows, where movement in a piece stretches over minutes, as the spreading sustain of multiple tones slowly come together to create stunning waves of sound that are monumental in their all-encompassing nature” —Thefanzine.com
