Sahara Gray

Press Release: Tetuzi Akiyama + Alan Licht: Avant-Garde Blues

Salon Mijangos (1906 S. Flores, San Anotnio, Tex.), in collaboration with heavy Denim, presents an evening of avant-garde blues guitar featuring Tetuzi Akiyama (Tokyo) and Alan Licht (New York City) on June 6, 2006 at 9:00 pm. A $5 donation is suggested.

Tetuzi Akiyama, whose musical influences range from Henry Flynt to the Pink Fairies, from Canned Heat to La Monte Young, defies straight-forward classification. Although he had been playing American folk- and blues-inspired guitar for years, Akiyama began to make a name for himself after eschewing American traditions in favor of ground-breaking minimalist guitar experiments conducted in Tokyo’s Off-Site gallery space. While Japanese musicians such as Merzbow and the Boredoms were earning international esteem with their blasts of noise, Akiyama and his collaborators (Taku Sugimoto and Toshimaru Nakamura) were challenging audiences with delicate improvisations which were striking for their use of silence. Soon, however, Akiyama found his way back to American tradition with a new concept: loud, driving, gritty Delta blues, played solo on electric guitar. On his first official release in this style, Don’t Forget to Boogie! (IDEA Records, 2003), he writes: “This is an idealistic album. It is an album created by the electric guitar, for the electric guitar, the greatest invention of the twentieth century.... the true savage sound and the rough-hewn beats made from this instrument can no longer be found. Though the times are a-changin’, the spirit of the wild shall never fade away.” Lee Henderson, writing for PopMatters, echoed this sentiment when he wrote that on the album “the rhythm and blues sound so fresh, so alive, that it feels as if he’s brought our attention to something we forgot existed in rock music.” Salon Mijangos is proud to present Akiyama’s first American performance of what he calls “boogie live,” a show in which “a heavenly choir of distorted overtones is revealed, a boogie of the spheres sung by boogie cherubim.” (Clive Bell, The Wire).

Alan Licht first gained recognition for his work with indie rock band Lovechild (which the All Music Guide calls “one of the most criminally overlooked bands of the early ‘90s”). After the demise of Lovechild, Licht formed Run On (Matador Records), which toured with Yo La Tengo, Tortoise, and other indie rock luminaries in the mid-90s. Licht has since developed a deeply captivating guitar style drawn from elements of free jazz and minimalism, but employing a rich vocabulary as distinctive and seamless as Derek Bailey or Sonic Youth. As Michael Sandlin wrote for Pitchfork Media, Licht is “taking guitar music into new stratospheres, and freeing the instrument from the shackles of ho- hum Western tonality.” He has performed and recorded improvisations with a wide range of important musicians such as Rashied Ali, Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore, Christian Marclay, John Zorn, Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Fennesz, and many others. Licht has also designed sound installations for three galleries in New York City: Diapason, Studio Five Beekman, and Pierogi 2000. In addition to being a strikingly original musician, Licht is a respected music critic who writes frequently for the Wire and Halana Magazine. His book, An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn, was published by Drag City Records in 2002.

With this performance, Salon Mijangos continues a string of innovative musical happenings, including a free-folk freakout by Matt Valentine & Erika Elder, experimental ambient turntable improvisations by James Eck Rippie, peircing slide guitar meanderings by Sandy Ewen, energetic microtonal excursions by Jane Henry, creeped-out driving psychedelic jams by the Black Lodge, and delicious synth ditties by Hyperbubble.