Akio Suzuki
Stone
AUSTRALIA ROOM 40 RM4151 C.D. (2024)
North Korean ex-pat and long-term Japanese resident Akio Suzuki is a highly renowned sound artist, shaman and inventor of the intriguingly named ‘Analapos Echo Instrument’. Of a 2007 vintage, its voice originating from a spiral cord stretched between two metal cylinders – very Harry Partch. His sound installation research has featured at, amongst others, upper echelon art exhibitions staged at the British Museum and the Bonn Art Museum along with numerous music festivals spread over a fruitful four decade period. His is a sound far removed from the busy urban sprawl and is more redolent of age-old rituals and shuttered-room introspection. Providing of course, that the shuttered room in question has generous acoustic properties and is of a substantial size. These being essential conditions for the “Throwing and Following” technique in which Akio’s tones from the Iwabue (an ancient stone flute) and sounds culled from certain found objects are cast into vast room spaces in which the resultant echoes/reverberations take on an equal importance. The metallic chatter of “Seseragi” and the haunting “Tsumugi” are as good examples of the craft as any, but it’s a difficult task to describe things without resorting to bouts of onomatopoeia. I’d place this example of micro-minimalism alongside Z’ev (on a tight budget) and perhaps, Anthony Moore’s Reed, Whistle and Stems album.
After recorded collaborations with Fluxus member Takehisa Kosigi, Akio’s Stone was initially released on the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD imprint back in 1994 and Lawrence English, curator of the Room 40 label needs to be warmly applauded for his rescue mission here. Its reactivation being well deserving of a considerably wider audience.