Éric La Casa / Seijiro Murayama
Paris Public Spaces 2
FRANCE SWARMING COLLECTION PARIS 017 CD (2025)
Another excellent work of site-specific field recordings from Éric La Casa, one of the more imaginative and philosophical investigators in this genre. This time he’s working with Seijiro Murayama, the Japanese improviser currently living in Paris. We have heard Murayama several times before in duo and small group improvisation contexts, and indeed some of them have been recorded by La Casa, such as Installations from 2020.
Today’s record shades more into a performance art piece of sorts, involving the two creators walking around in public spaces in Paris making “short interventions”. Judging by the colour photos in the booklet, and the sounds we hear on the record, these interventions are not especially intrusive – it might not be much more than just standing or sitting in a particular resonant space, and observing. Every so often Murayama might make a vocal utterance, in line with his skills – mainly a percussionist, he does also use his voice in improvisations. They did it in parks, squares, alleyways, bridges, tunnels, and other environs. This is the second such project they’ve undertaken – the first was Paris Public Spaces released by Ftarri in Japan in 2014, although the difference there was they split up and made recordings independent of each other, just made in the same place at different times of day. On today’s releases they worked as a team, going out “a deux” to make their interventions.
I suppose this may sound banal and “obvious” on the surface, but as usual with La Casa I find we learn a lot about our modern surroundings from his work, partly because of the unusual sounds which end up on the record – even when we think they ought to be more familiar, the sounds of the urban setting acquire a strange vibration. There’s also the unusual angle presented by this view of the world, the choice of locations, and the fragments of audio information framed by this artistic device. Undoubtedly Seijiro Murayama is also bringing a lot to this project too, which is reflected in the short paragraph of introductory text he provides – indicating that, for him, there are no foregone conclusions and each trip into the city is full of unknown quantities, surprises, and adventures. He is genuinely curious about “discovering a place I didn’t know”, and responds to it with all his senses, marvelling at the ways sound around us can change just by moving the body. He’s full of questions about the process; each intervention is a small voyage of discovery. There’s a real sensitivity and compassion at work here; he’s almost turned himself into a human antenna, picking up signals that most of us ignore. Somehow, he and La Casa have managed to capture it all in these fascinating, vivid recordings. (13/01/2026)