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 — having worked as a photographer, music journalist and record producer in Japan — that he figured out what to do with them.
"My career started after moving to New York," he says.