Aki Onda is a self-taught electronic musician, composer, producer, and photographer.
Onda was born in Nara, Japan, on August 27, 1967. He was brought up in an unusual and eccentric environment that stimulated him artistically. His mother was a painter and his father was a university professor and former Olympic hockey player. He studied painting, textiles and photography from an early age, although he dropped out of formal education. Onda started his career as a photographer when he was 16 years old. His first assignment was to take photographs of musicians for magazines in Osaka and Kyoto. Through numerous photo shoots he became acquainted with many well-known musicians and decided to become a musician himself. He started making music with sampler and computer, and formed Audio Sports with Eye Yamatsuka and Nobukazu Takemura in Osaka in 1990. After releasing the group's first album, Onda moved to Tokyo and established himself as a producer. He soon became a sought-after studio technician, because of his in-depth knowledge of music production. As a result, he was involved in nearly 100 projects in Japan while still in his twenties. From '96 to '97, Onda lived in London and recorded his solo albums Beautiful Contradiction and Un Petit Tour, which reflected his visual and poetic sensibility. Soon he released two more albums: Precious Moment, in 2001, and Don't Say Anything, in 2002. All four albums are personal soundscapes that he calls "radio dramas." Each contains a different story, with or without text.
For the past several years, Onda has performed with multiple cassette Walkmans and electronics, using field-recording sounds that he has recorded himself as a diary for more than a decade. He released the first album of the series, "Cassette Memories" in 2003, under the title Ancient & Modern, followed by the second album, Bon Voyage!
Onda has performed at The Kitchen, Roulette, Sculpture Center (New York), Images Festival (Toronto), Send + Receive (Winnipeg), Transitio_mx (Mexico City), Tokyo Performing Arts Market 2005 (Tokyo), Atlantic Waves, LMC Festival (London), Argos Festival (Brussels), STEIM (Amsterdam), Impakt Festival (Utrecht), Fylkingen (Stockholm), and many other festivals and venues on four continents.
Between 2000 and 2003, Onda was a visiting composer at the Electro-Acoustic Music Studio at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, of which composer Jon Appleton serves as director.
Along with his activities on the music scene, Onda has been exploring expression through photography. In 2001 and 2002, he had two photo exhibitions at Anthology Film Archives in New York City, which is run by filmmaker Jonas Mekas.
In the year 2005, Onda started the audio-visual project Cinemage, "image for cinema," or "homage for cinema." It's composed of slide projections of still photo images and improvised music.
Onda's critical thought and unique sensibility in understanding music are manifest in numerous articles and reviews he has written for Japanese magazines such as Musee and Studio Voice. Many underground musicians and composers in Japan have become aquainted with each other through Onda's writings.
He has collaborated with such artists as Alan Licht, Loren Conners, Michael Snow, Shelley Hirsch, Butch Morris, Ikue Mori, Haco, Noël Akchote, Jac Berrocal, Dan Warburton, Jean-François Pauvros, Jean-Jacques Birgé Bernard Vitet, Blixa Bargeld, SFT, Steve Beresford, Linda Sharrock, Oren Ambarchi, Akio Suzuki, Otomo Yoshihide, Jyoji Sawada, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Tujiko Noriko.
