EAI (Electroacoustic Improv)
EAI (Electroacoustic Improv) is free improvisation using acoustic instruments, live electronics, table-top guitar, laptop processing, feedback systems, no-input mixers, contact microphones, sine tones, amplified objects, and extended silence. Its sound often avoids jazz heat in favor of fragile circuitry, small clicks, grain, hiss, room tone, bowed texture, and sudden electronic bloom. The music is intensely responsive: players listen to electrical accidents and acoustic residues as equal partners.
History
EAI developed from AMM, live electronics, free improv, musique concrète, Japanese Onkyo, Wandelweiser quietness, and European experimental scenes in the 1990s. Keith Rowe’s table-top guitar, Toshimaru Nakamura’s no-input mixer, Sachiko M’s sine waves, Otomo Yoshihide’s turntables, Günter Müller’s percussion/electronics, Andrea Neumann’s inside-piano frame, Taku Sugimoto’s sparse guitar, and MIMEO-style large ensembles helped define a post-idiomatic electroacoustic language. It spread through labels and festivals such as Erstwhile, For 4 Ears, Potlatch, Mego-adjacent networks, and improvised-music series, influencing lowercase, sound art, noise, and laptop improvisation.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Erstwhile Records discographies
- Wire magazine EAI coverage
- AllMusic
- Discogs