Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments.
Akiyama became an enthusiastic hard rock fan when he was eleven years old, and started playing electric guitar at the age of thirteen. Later, he also came to be very interested in free improvisation. He formed the improvised music band Madhar in 1987. He also started playing viola, and formed the Hikyo String Quintet in 1994. The band, which played avant-garde improvised modern classical music, consisted of a viola, two cello, and two violin players, and included Taku Sugimoto on cello. Sugimoto soon left the band, which thus became a quartet. Later that year, Akiyama and Sugimoto launched their guitar duo, Akiyama-Sugimoto. They played in New York in 1995, and in the Midwest (including Chicago, Ann Arbor and Detroit) in ’96.
From 1998-2003, together with Sugimoto and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-imput mixing board), he organized an inspiring monthly concert series, The Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama (renamed The Experimental Meeting in ’99, and Meeting at Off Site in 2000).
Akiyama released his first solo album Relator [slub music] in 2001. Mixing feelings of country and blues with free improvisation, Akiyama began to perform solo with greater frequency playing both acoustic and electric guitars, turntables without records and other effects. Using a prepared resonator guitar with a Samurai sword, Akiyama recorded his second solo album Resophonie (a bruit secret, 2002) which can be described as sonic sculpture with guitar. In 2003, his third solo album Don’t Forget to Boogie!was released. Performed in a minimal one chord Boogie/Rock/Blues style with vintage electric guitars, Akiyama sees this LP as a tribute to the guitar. In the same year, made a collaboration work with a Japanese young painter, Yoko Naito, contributing tape-delayed electric guitar music for her wood block paintings. A live album from 2005, Route 13 to the Gates of Hell: Live in Tokyo (headz) was selected in the 50 albums of the year by The Wire magazine. Pre-Existence, an album of acoustic guitar solos, was released on Locust Music in the winter of 2005. Recently Akiyama started releasing an “official bootleg series” with the labels Esquilo (Portugal) and Utech Records (Milwaukee). His latest band is Satanic Abandoned Rock’n’Roll Society with Utah Kawasaki, Atsuhiro Ito and Naoaki Miyamoto.
Akiyama is a frequent guest at international music festivals and in recent years has performed at What is Music? (Australia, 2002), Alt Music (New Zealand, 2002 & 2004), Amplify (Tokyo, 2002 & New York, 2003), Musique Action (France, 2003 & 2005),Musiques Innovatrices (France, 2003), Uchiage (Berlin & Vienna, 2004) and Instal (Glasgow, 2005).
