In 1988, Aki Onda was about to embark on a trip to Morocco when his camera broke. Not having enough cash for a new one, he bought a Sony Walkman cassette recorder at a flea market in London and used that to document the trip instead.
What started as a whim soon became a habit, and he gradually amassed a substantial archive of lo-fi field recordings: audio snapshots of his life and travels. Yet it was only after relocating to the United States in 2000 ¡ª having worked as a photographer, music journalist and record producer in Japan ¡ª that he figured out what to do with them.
¡°My career started after moving to New York,¡± he says.
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