The instrument builder and multi-instrumentalist Akira Uchida was a working saxophonist until 2007, when he came under the tutelage of Satoshi Yoshida and began turning both hands to the piano with a penchant for tuning which carried him across Japan and far overseas. From 2015 he learned to make clavichords under the guidance of Masahiro Adachi, and in 2021 he constructed one of the instruments out of the aged hinoki cypress which once comprised the Kiyomizu-dera templeās main stage. A popular stunt during the Edo period when the practice amounted to an aspiring leap of faith, the expression āto jump off the stage at Kiyomizuā still carries resonance in Japan as a euphemism for risk-taking, with Uchida debuting his own clavichord as part of a dedicatory performance in the famed Buddhist templeās main hall.
Collaborating with Kosaka Osho on the sutra drum and Tono Tamami who plays the seventeen slender bamboo pipes of the shÅ, Uchida brings all of his instrumental expertise to bear on a journey through the enchanted darkness for IIKKI, a project based out of Brittany which fosters dialogue between visual artists and musicians, with each release furnishing two physical imprints in the form of a fine art book plus LP or CD. For the two long sides ofĀ Kurayami, the bristling atmospherics and Buddhist chants proffered by Uchida draw inspiration from and engage in moonlit discourse with the photographs of Yamamoto Masao, who specialises in the medium of gelatin silver print and has exhibited from San Francisco and New York to Moscow and SĆ£o Paulo.
