It's been quite the year for Japanese sound artist, curator, historian and activist Otomo Yoshihide. He published "Chronicle Fukushima" a collection of lectures and first person accounts on the nuclear disaster, appeared in last year's documentary on the Tokyo Onkyo, or 'pure sound' scene "We Don't Care About Music Anyway" and completed a yearlong residency at Art Tower Mito amidst all the activity of touring and playing throughout Japan and New York. This month we find Otomo the closest he's been to Seattle in nearly a decade! We get two Northwest performances, in Vancouver as part of New Music (just a week after New Forms Festival) as well as the Time Based Art festival in Portland as extended tour branching off the Voices & Echoes series curated by field recording artist and improv-collagist Aki Onda during his residency at Issue Project Room, New York. Anyone who caught Otomo in either 2003's New Forms festival in Vancouver or the following week at Polestar Gallery as part of Earshot Jazz that year no doubt has lasting impressions of his physical, sonic, virtuosity. 'Voices & Echoes' brings together Yoshihide with Sound Art pioneer Akio Suzuki experimental poet/filmmaker Gozo Yoshimasu (which those lucky dogs in New York also get a retrospective of at Anthology Film Archives) along with contributions from from a spectrum of other artists including Fushitsusha's Tamio Shiraishi. From Issue Project Room: "Voices and Echoes brings together pioneering Japanese artists Akio Suzuki, Gozo Yoshimasu, and Otomo Yoshihide. Sound artist Akio Suzuki will perform on a range of unique instruments including an Iwabue, the ancient stone flute passed down through his family for many generations and the Analapos, an instrument he invented in the 1970s that creates echoes through the acoustic transmissions of a spiral cord stretched between two metal cylinders. Experimental poet Gozo Yoshimasu will perform works utilizing his unique vocalization style of recitation, which relies upon a highly rhythmic delivery and intense vocal modulations. Yoshimasu will perform in collaboration with Otomo Yoshihide, an experimental guitarist/turntablist and leading international figure in the fields of contemporary noise and improv."
