Cultural origins Late 1990s Japan | ||
Stylistic origins Japanoise
Free improvisation
Electronic
Lowercase
EAI | ||
The Onkyo music movement or Onkyokei (音響系, Onkyōkei) (translation: "reverberation of sound") is a form of free improvisation, emerging from Japan in the late 1990s. Onkyō (translation: "sound, noise, echo") places much more emphasis on sound texture than on musical structure, distilling elements of techno, noise, and electronic music into a unique hybrid.
The Off Site, a venue in Tokyo, is home to the Onkyo music movement, which is characterized by improvisation, minimalism, and "quiet noise". Onkyo improvisation, "explores the fine-grained textural details of acoustic and electronic sound".
It is typified by small and often quiet musical gestures, and liberal use of both electronics and silence. Prominent musicians working in this area include Toshimaru Nakamura, Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Taku Sugimoto.
It influenced the development of electroacoustic improvisation, or EAI, a genre with which it is strongly intertwined. The transnational circulation of onkyo also influenced its representation as a form of "Japanese new music," despite claims by its authors that onkyo had little to do with Japanese cultural identity.