Third year student Aki Purser has been selected to participate in this year’s Red Bull Music Academy to be taking place in Berlin. RBMA is an internationally acclaimed event where an eclectic group of emerging artists are given the chance to collaborate, create and learn from a series of sessions led by world-known music producers and industry specialists. The competition is often high and it not unusual to see participants from the Academy becoming professionals soon after their graduation. Aki’s unique approach to sound, image and dance made here stand out and in their own words

‘From the refined piano of Chilly Gonzales to the elegance of modern dance icon Pina Bausch and the precisely engineered music of producer Alva Noto, there is a certain delicacy connecting the influences of Brighton-based artist Akiko Haruna. Trained as a pianist, violinist, flautist and dancer, she is fluent in the rules of music and composition, which she now breaks with her experimental noise output. Akiko’s current project comes after two years as a professional dancer, during which she appeared in music videos for artists including AlunaGeorge and John Newman. Now a full-time music student, Akiko flexes her myriad abilities in her own work, including the 2017 video for “i, omega,” a surreal black-and-white pastiche in which she dances, stretches and smiles eerily at the camera over the glitches and fuzz of her far-out soundscape.’

Well done Aki!