AQi Fzono
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AQi Fzono (芙苑 晶 Fuzono Aki?, born November 20, 1969 in Kyoto, Japan) is a Japanese composer, synthesizer musician and Electronic music artist. The translunary and hybrid sound of his Synthesizer/Electronic music that fuses Techno, Ambient, Progressive Rock and Classical music, and his spacey and vast-scaled instrumental Electronic music album series that project a visual atmosphere has an international following. He is also known as an innovator of groundbreaking musical methodologies “Symphobient”, “Symphonic Techno”, and “Sci-fi music”.
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[edit] Career
[edit] Formative years
Fzono was born in the late 1960’s in Kyoto, Japan to parents who were “Futen” (a Japanese slang similar to “freak”, also means “madman”), one of the young Japanese hippie groups. His father was a Psychedelic art painter (reported missing and later turned out to have died at the age of 30), and his mother was a former underground hippie Rock singer. His family was poor when he was growing up, and he lived in Shinjuku in Tokyo, Yokohama and Kyoto drifting from area to area. He didn’t go to school in protest against the strait-laced Japanese educational system, and he educated himself.
He started leaning piano at the age of 4 and composing his own music at 6. Then his talent was discovered and recommended by a Japanese modern classical composer Toshiro Mayuzumi, Fzono later studied Western Classical music (harmony, counterpoint, orchestration) and Eastern traditional music. His mother was a Christian and she often took him to a church in Yokohama where there was a real pipe organ, and he had repeated opportunities to play it. This experience made a big impact on his subsequent musical style. He was an aspiring Classical music composer and wrote several fine piano sonatas, organ toccatas and string quartets in his teen years, but he stopped studying Classical music in his high school years. Around the same time, he started playing in a Psychedelic Rock band Midara Gokoro (means ”Lecherous-minded” in old Japanese) and Psychedelic Spider and Book of The Dead. In parallel to his band activities, he became interested in Synthesizers and started creating Electronic Music and Musique Concrete works in or around 1981, and released the first unofficial Electronic music suite album “Theosophy”, a musique concrete work using tape recorders, in 1986 (50 copy limited release. Out of print).
[edit] Early works and band activities
In 1987, he went to Europe and joined a Neo-hippie group, spending several months with a group of young people who believed in not working. Then he traveled in Europe and Asia alone, living a wandering life and researching ancient time music and ethnic music. He later moved to the United States and started living in New York. With a percussionist Asyrah, he formed an Electronic music band Aurora Heads, and held a series of live performances titled “Multimedia Visionquest” that featured electronica and ethnic music, video drug, dancers, open fire etc. in New York. After releasing the two albums “Mars Botanical Garden” (1988) and “Unexplored Region” (1994) the band didn’t have any visible activities, but since 2005 the project has been resumed.
In the Summer of 1988, he and the members of Midara Gokoro went to London and encountered an Acid House movement called Second Summer of Love, and changed the band name to Far East Acid House Quartet, making a fresh start. They played mainly in the underground scenes and were regarded as one of the first Rave bands in Asia. AQi Fzono played synthesizers, keyboards, Theremin etc. He was the leader of the band at the beginning, and became known as a rare pioneer of Acid House and Rave in Japan. In 1997, the band broke up due to the unfortunate deaths of the members.
[edit] Solo career – Symphobient Trilogy
In parallel with those band activities and the series of sound experimentations, he began creating his solo works. In 1988, he recorded his first solo album Phosphorescence (under the name of Siamese Twin, out of print) while he was staying in Ibiza island, and released it from Nerve Nets Records in New York. In 1990, his second album Echoes was released. This album with an underlying theme of expressing mystic aura of the woods as if peering through a microscope has translunary and visual sound created with analog synthesizers and vintage keyboards over classical orchestration. This sound was named “Symphobient” (short for Symphonic Ambient. One theory holds that it is a short for Psychic and psychedelic Symphonic-poem Ambient). Also, this is the first album to carry a subtitle “Synthesizer Symphony”. The term Synthesizer Symphony was created by AQi Fzono, and was used as a subtitle for his solo album series. In Ruins released in 1993, a day of one nameless young hippie was portrayed with day suite-style dreaming music. In Cathedral released in 1995, the transcendental hallucinatory images were portrayed musically by cross-fertilizing the elements of Classical music (mainly Church music and Gregorian chants) and Techno/Psychedelic Trance (Goa Trance) with a touch of Eastern ancient-time music feel. Echoes, Ruins and Cathedral are called the Symphobient Trilogy. The signature sound of Symphobient is generated by fusing many different types of music including Dark Ambient, House, Space Rock, Psychedelic Trance, Trip Hop, Atmospheric New Age, Musique Concrete, Western Classical music, and Eastern ancient-time music, creating the psychedelic visual sensations. The term Symphobient is more than just an amalgamation of “symphonic” and “ambient”.
[edit] Creation of Symphonic Techno: Transcendence of Time and Space
In his last album of the 20th century Cosmology (1998), he tackled the monumental theme of “transcending time and space” by uniting Techno, Rock, Ambient, and Church music using the Classical music orchestration techniques. The incomparable arrangement of the music and the graphically appealing sound that can be called “Electronica Symphonic poem” has been named as Symphonic Techno, and was well-received by not only Techno/Dance music listeners but also Progressive Rock and Classical music listeners.
The term “Symphonic Techno” is said to have been created originally to indicate the one and only sound of this album. Also, later in the same year of the release of Cosmology, he defined his unique music style as “Sci-fi music”. “Cosmology” is a world’s first album that “Syntheremin” (Theremin with the functions of synthesizer – invented by AQi Fzono) was featured.
After a five year interval, he released an epic album Chronicle (2003). The theme of this majestic album was to express the eternal time of the world history from the Creation to the present day. This symphonic poem-like album featured the wide range of sound elements including orchestra, choir, soprano solo, traditional musical instruments of Japan and China. He has acquired the copyright of his past albums (most of them are currently out of print) originally released from Nerve Nets Records, and has begun making the digital remaster of those albums from the original multi-track tapes. The first of the remaster series Cosmology, one of his most popular solo albums, was released in 2006.
[edit] Inventions
AQi Fzono has devised and invented several new terms, concepts, genres, as well as original musical instruments in order to describe his one and only music style and his new compositional methodologies. Those include as follows:
- Sci-fi music
- Symphobient
- Symphonic Techno (or “Symphonic Acid”)
- Synthesizer Symphony (he originally called it “Electronic Acid Symphony”)
[edit] Instruments
Throughout his recording works AQi Fzono uses several unusual or custom instruments. Those include:
- Doepfer Schaltwerk: 8-Tracks MIDI Pattern Sequencer System from German Company Doepfer
- Customised Moog modular synthesizer System (used in most of his albums)
- Syntheremin: Custom made Theremin conceived and invented by AQi Fzono (used in Cosmology. A portable version was used in a former CAN member Damo Suzuki’s Japan tour in 2005)
- Left-handed Theremin (Moog Etherwave Theremin: AQi Fzono Model 2005): custom-built by Moog Music for AQi Fzono. Body color is metallic blue. Used in live performances of Aurora Heads etc.
[edit] Nicknames
Below is the nicknames used for AQi Fzono:
- ”The Minstrel of Diode” (especially in early years - “Symphobient” era)
- ”Symphonic Techno Pioneer”
- ”Godfather of Acid music”
- ”Godfather of Neo-hippie (or “Techno-hippie”) ” (especially in his native Japan)
- ”Techno Wagner”
[edit] Discography
[edit] Studio Albums
- Phosphorescence (1988)
- Echoes (1990)
- Ruins (1993)
- Cathedral (1995)
- Cosmology (1998)
- Chronicle (2003)
[edit] Club Remix Album
- A Guide To Cosmology (2000)
[edit] Bands and Units
- Aurora Heads （1987 - ）
- Far East Acid House Quartet （1988 -1997）
[edit] Related People and Collaborative Artists
- Asyrah（Composer and Percussionist, the co-founder of Aurora Heads）
- Eric Ross (Thereminist and Composer)
- Madame Juju (Guitarist)
- Space DJ Ryo (Ex-member of Far East Acid House Quartet)
- Damo Suzuki（Ex-CAN, Fzono joined Damo’s Japan tour in 2005）
[edit] Personal life
- In 1992, he married a French-Japanese “Rave” dancer Elisa Tajima (1966 - 1997, a former member of Far East Acid House Quartet ). They divorced in 1995.
[edit] See also
- Symphonic Techno
- Sci-fi music
- Syntheremin
- Aurora Heads
- Far East Acid House Quartet
