Tetuzi Akiyama

Guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama serves up a patient, contemplative album on his entry into the catalog of L.A.’s Besom Presse. While I’d normally associate Akiyama with raw sounds and the tattered remnants of boogie scattered around the sound field, here he’s jettisoned both the tube-fried effects and electric instrumentation altogether. The record, pieced together over a decade, lets the air still around the listener. Each note is purposeful and hangs – sanguine or sour — in the air for a moment before disputing into vaporous space. Its odd to hear an artist so based in the rhythmic thrum letting the whims of the wind push a song. There’s a real feeling that these compositions were tuned out of the ether, caught in mind and captured to tape so that they might not escape further contemplation.

There’s no ramble, no rollick. Like Loren Connors the songs paint a stark image, but one that digs its nails deep into the soul. Akiyama’s catalog runs deep, and it’s a dense run to get through, but here he proves that there’s still plenty of intrigue to be hand in following the tangents he winds down. Repeated listens pose this as an album of still water resolve, an anchor point in the chaos that surrounds us. The songs here are not pushy, not showy, but they let the mind wander in all directions. The wind in the trees, water on the wind, Akiyama in the headphones. This is the way of the fall.

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