Deuxième disque de Seijiro Murayama publié en 2011 par Potlatch, Axiom For The Duration est à nouveau un duo mais cette fois-ci en compagnie du saxophoniste Stéphane Rives (il joue uniquement du soprano). De nature très différente du Window Dressing enregistré avec Jean-Luc Guionnet, Axiom For The Duration est un disque à la fois plus éprouvant mais plus accessible. Par « accessible » on veut dire que Axiom For The Duration revêt, même très lointainement, quelques aspects à la mode ces temps-ci chez les amateurs à la pointe des musiques expérimentales, à savoir la répétition, la durée rallongée des motifs, l’utilisation de nappes, etc. Puisqu’on met trop facilement le terme de drone à toutes les sauces, on peut effectivement voir aussi dans les notes tenues en souffle continu par Stéphane Rives et les grincements circulaires des percussions de Seijiro Murayama quelque chose qui pourrait s’apparenter à du drone car on perçoit plus d’une fois ici quelques échos de la musique de La Monte Young et de Tony Conrad (notamment sur la deuxième partie du disque).
Mais cela ne rend pas Axiom For The Duration moins intéressant et moins passionnant. Car si on entend du drone, celui-ci est avant tout un moyen et jamais une fin en soi. C’est pour cela que ce disque ne s’éternise jamais, s’il use de répétitions et de superpositions de nappes sonores c’est uniquement pour souligner un travail bien plus profond, difficile et passionnant, un travail sur les grincements. C’est ainsi que l’on appellera toute cette palette sonore réunissant autant stridences que crissements, vibrations que sifflements. Les sons sont tenus (et non pas ténus) et parfois douloureux – d’où le terme de disque « éprouvant » employé un peu plus haut. Tout en gardant un côté très gestuel/physique puisque toujours interprétée par deux hommes avec uniquement leurs instruments, la musique du duo fonctionne par cercle, par ondes magnétiques qui se propagent et s’étalent comme une force électrique.
Le résultat est indéniablement très beau. Il fait la jonction entre une certaine pratique improvisée de la musique et un côté beaucoup plus contemporain et plus conceptuel. L’équilibre cinétique qui en découle, le continuum des fréquences resserrées entre elles comme dans un prisme afin de les rendre plus aiguisées, tranchantes et nettes, est retenu en suspens entre le geste/l’instant/la pratique et cette manne électrique issu du geste lui-même. Axiom For The Duration n’est donc pas un disque théorique comme son titre pourrait le suggérer, mais une expérience réussie.
Hazam Modoff l Heavy Mental l Mars 2012


C'est toujours un vrai plaisir de recevoir des nouvelles de Seijiro Murayama. D'abord, le garçon est aussi adorable que l'artiste est original. Ensuite, lesdites nouvelles sont le plus souvent musicales et grosses de promesses à tenir. Enfin, il est plutôt rassurant de constater qu'un type aussi radical dans sa démarche créatrice trouve encore, de nos jours, le moyen de publier deux albums aussi différents sur un seul et même label, en l'occurrence Potlatch.
Le second cd, dans le même ordre arbitraire d'écoute, réunit Sejiro Murayama et Stéphane Rives, un autre souffleur, sopraniste de son état, qui partage avec Jean-Luc Guionnet les variations spectrales du Quatuor de Saxophones créé en compagnie de Bertrand Denzler au ténor et de Marc Baron à l'alto. L'esthétique d'Axiom For The Duration semble d'ailleurs obéir à cette même notion de continuum aux mutations infimes développée par le Quatuor en référence à Giacinto Scelsi et La Monte Young. Le titre adopté par les deux musiciens prépare déjà notre perception à une telle forme d'expression. "Axiom For The Duration" pourrait, en effet, se traduire par "le postulat pour la durée" ou, autrement dit, "la proposition admise à la base (pour) qu'un espace-temps s'écoule entre deux limites observées, durant lequel un son ou un silence pourraient être entendus"*. Ainsi, du début à la fin de l'album, Rives et Murayama nous donnent à écouter un segment temporel précis où l'évolution harmonique d'un drone bien vivant s'alimente à la connivence immédiate des deux improvisateurs.
Et cela fonctionne admirablement, une fois admises l'absence de rythme et la progression minimale de cette composition instantanée, confiée à la réactivité de chacun. Seijiro joue essentiellement des cymbales qu'il traite à l'archet selon certains procédés mis au point dans son éternelle quête des sons continus et des évènements microscopiques. Les diverses couches énoncées par le métal se superposent et s'interpénètrent avec l'obstination répétitive d'ondes successives. Comme la vague recouvre incessamment le même rivage, le mouvement circulaire du cuivre sur le cuivre insiste sur la permanence d'une matière sonore infiniment renouvelée dont la perméabilité offre néanmoins de possibles et minuscules métamorphoses. Le souffle, notamment, parvient à se glisser à travers les fibres mouvantes de ce tissu acoustique et, chauffé à blanc, transperce la résonance des cymbales par la détermination aiguisée de son cri. Dès les premiers sons émis, Stéphane Rives impose sa maîtrise des plus hauts degrés de la tessiture. Le saxophoniste n'a pas choisi le soprano pour sa légèreté ni son aptitude à se glisser entre deux valises dans une soute à bagages. Il aime avant tout les sons les plus aigus à la limite, parfois, du supportable et s'est attaché depuis ses débuts à en maîtriser toute la subtilité. Ainsi, telle stridence deviendra-t-elle une ultime et indispensable expression de joie, tel cri perçant la manifestation extrême d'une douleur intense. Surtout, hors cette traduction un peu réductrice des émotions immédiates, Stéphane Rives est parvenu à intégrer le registre le plus élevé à l'élaboration de structures aussi abstraites que cet Axiom For The Duration au cours duquel il mêle avec une apparente aisance les lignes les plus acérées de son cuivre aux masses compactes engendrées par son partenaire. L'osmose est telle, d'ailleurs, qu'il faut un bon moment avant de pouvoir affirmer avec certitude que le souffle est bien responsable de ce surlignage suraigu et la percussion de ces ondes qui s'enflent et se resserrent à la manière d'un poumon de métal…
Qu'importe, au demeurant ? Dans ce long développement d'une seule et même vibration composite qu'un léger fracas de ferraille interrompt à peine à deux reprises éloignées, la pérennité du son et sa maîtrise, par ces deux magiciens de l'énergie, en tant que partie de l'espace et du temps nous auront permis, entre les deux limites définissant arbitrairement la durée de l'album, de toucher à 56 minutes et 18 secondes d'éternité.
* cf : Le Petit Robert
Joël Pagier l Improjazz l Janvier 2012

Il y a des fantasmes qui deviennent réalité : se retrouver au lit avec plus de cinq filles nues, prendre ses billets pour partir en vacances en orbite, voir le capitalisme s'effondrer ; et puis il y a la rencontre entre Murayama et Rives. Parce qu'on ne se l'était jamais totalement avoué - on n'y avait pas pensé, en fait ; mais devant l'évidence, il faut accepter de courber l'échine : ces deux là étaient fait (du verbe faire, c'est à dire donner l'être ou la forme) pour se rencontrer. Parce que leurs deux approches du son et de l'instrument naissent de la même graine : celle de l'aventure, des chemins de traverses, à travers champs oui, des marges, des contours, des bords, du contre-jour. Un amour sans fin pour l'écart, la vibration, le continu. Tout dans le souffle : celui sans fin de Rives, au delà de la note, le sifflement perçant ; celui de Murayama, ses crissements, ses arrêts, ses respirations. De longs drones sensibles, oscillatoires à haute fréquence, organiques, des vagues d'eau douce perturbées par les micro-dépressions de l'atmosphère, où le jeu de l'un se confond avec celui de l'autre, et on ne sait plus qui joue quoi ; les deux plongés dans la même méditation. Où ils rejoignent également ce nouveau courant qui copule avec l'électroacoustique et l'architecture minimaliste du son des electroniciens à la Menche ; et dont ils s'échappent dans leur plus beaux moments, je parle bien de ces moments d'expression vivantes, quand ils traversent la ligne blanche et se retrouvent au milieu de la route, à jouer une note, inlassablement, vitesse de croisière, à perte de vue, horizon lointain, ou ces brèves granulations finales si chère à Rives (voir Fibres), incartade décisive avant de revenir à son point de départ. Comme le montre la pochette, une géométrie qui doit son sens à la circularité et à la fascination des angles.
Saïmone l Guts of Darkness l Novembre 2011

Je m’arrête rarement sur les titres donnés aux disques de musique improvisée car cela me semble souvent un peu trop téléphoné. Et puis parfois, une jolie trouvaille peut sortir du lot – comme ce Placés dans l’air chroniqué ici récemment. Arrêtons-nous donc sur ce que ce titre peut signifier et ouvrons le Petit Robert (en partant du postulat qu’une traduction littérale de l’anglais suffise).
Axiome : 1. Vérité indémontrable mais évidente pour quiconque en comprend le sens (principe premier), et considérée comme universelle. 2. Proposition admise par tout-le-monde sans discussion (incluant le postulat). 3. Proposition admise à la base d’une théorie (mathématique, logique), relation entre les notions premières de la théorie, choisie arbitrairement.
Durée : 1. Espace de temps qui s’écoule par rapport à un phénomène, entre deux limites observées (début et fin). 2. Temps vécu; caractère des états psychiques qui se succèdent en se fondant les uns dans les autres (opposé au temps objectif, réel, mesurable). 3. Temps pendant lequel un son ou un silence doit être entendu.
Que peut-on en déduire ? Quel lien avec la musique gravée sur ce disque ? Nous allons essayer d’y venir.
Le temps musical est ici étiré, étendu, continu malgré des évolutions de texture qui apparaissent subrepticement. L’impression dominante est que cette musique, même si le matériau de base est probablement improvisé, a été construite, pensée, par deux architectes sonores qui se relaient et parfois se complètent dans la sculpture de cet espace temporel limité qu’est le CD. Car si axiome il y a, il est avant tout dans l’arbitraire du début et de la fin.
En effet, si nous devons rapprocher cet enregistrement d’une école esthétique, c’est probablement dans la lignée de La Monte Young et du drone qu’il faudrait aller regarder – et peut-être aussi du côté d’AMM, ce qui n’est sans doute pas innocent dans le rapport au temps… Nous avons bien ici une réduction (et un montage) d’espaces sonores bien plus étendus que la durée du disque, dont la seule limite a sans doute été celle physique et mentale des musiciens qui ont été ses créateurs. Le résultat, dans sa continuité, en est saisissant de beauté dès les premières secondes et ce jusqu’à la coupure finale.
Pour ce qui est du contenu sonore du disque, il suffira de dire que Seijiro Murayama travaille principalement la cymbale à l’archet (abolition du temps rythmique ?) alors que Stéphane Rives continue son exploration des registres aigus du saxophone soprano, dans la continuité de ses deux enregistrements solos (Fibres sur Potlatch / Much Remains To Be Heard sur Al Maslakh). On ne peut être que frappé par la complémentarité des deux approches de l’instrument qui viennent se fondre et se relayer sans créer aucune discontinuité évidente pour l’oreille.
La cymbale et le saxophone comme deux éléments d’une évidente continuité. Qu’y a-t-il à démontrer ? Pas grand chose…
Freesilence's blog l septembre 2011

C'est toujours une joie énorme d'apprendre la première réunion de deux musiciens adulés sur un enregistrement! Réunir Murayama (percussions) et Rives (saxophone soprano), c'est presque un projet dont je rêvais. Comment ne pas imaginer les longs développements continus d'un son vivant et linéaire mais pas statique? Puis imaginer l'interaction entre deux sons d'une précision et d'un organicisme à chaque fois époustouflant. Axiom For the Duration correspond bien à mes attentes. Un timbre linéaire est progressivement déployé à l'intérieur d'un temps très lisse, d'un temps principalement strié par l'archet de Murayama, cet archet qui explore toute l'étendue harmonique des cymbales, mais également strié par les frottements et les vibrations des incroyables multiphoniques de Stéphane Rives. Bien sûr, la musique paraît statique toujours, une cymbale frottée mécaniquement, un souffle continu qui propulse des harmoniques à partir d'un doigté inamovible. Cependant, la pression change, la pression des lèvres et de l'archet, le son s'enrichit, s'appauvrit, l'un des deux fait une pause pour laisser mieux émerger la profondeur sonique de son partenaire: lentement, toute une musique prend corps et se déploie progressivement, l'interaction est pleinement explorée sur un mode linéaire et organique, progressif et vivant.
Il y a comme une division du travail et des taches ici, à chacun sa fonction exploratrice. Opposition constante entre les pôles harmoniques, si un des deux s'attache à explorer les abysses du spectre harmonique, son prochain flottera sur les hauteurs. Mais ce n'est qu'une base, un fondement, loin d'être systématique; le son est mouvant et se déplace généralement sur tout le spectre, du coup il arrive parfois que les deux formes se rencontrent pour former des mouvements synergiques, d'une puissance extrêmement intense. Mais plus que les rencontres, ce sont les pauses qui donnent de l'intensité et de la vie à cette pièce. Tour à tour, un des deux musiciens freine le son qu'il a déployé, et c'est durant ces moments qu'un sentiment d'urgence voit le jour, comme si la peur du vide, car l'espace est effectivement toujours plein, voire saturé, comme si cette peur donc obligeait l'instrumentiste restant à approfondir et enrichir la vie sonique qu'il déployait. Puis le retour du partenaire, toujours en profonde symbiose avec l'organisme sonique, prend une dimension émotive surprenante, comme s'il n'avait jamais été absent, car sa présence était toujours ressentie durant sa pause, et le retour rend l'absence, la présence dans l'absence plutôt, encore plus évidente. Présence entière, du son comme du silence, ce silence sous-jacent mais jamais pleinement effectif, l'évidence de la présence se ressent surtout dans la synergie et l'interaction, où chacun paraît s'offrir à la musique d'une part, mais également à l'autre et à l'auditeur.
Une écoute symbiotique et une puissante attention à l'auditeur font de cette pièce une œuvre intense et communicative, très riche et émotive. Mais aussi et surtout une œuvre intelligente qui interroge la relation entre le temps et la musique. Car Axiom for the Duration, en déployant ces longues nappes lisses et lentes, modifie radicalement la perception du temps. Si une pulsation en filigrane n'était pas constamment présente - encore cette présence remarquable dans l'absence - on pourrait facilement croire à une tentative d'abolition de la perception temporelle. Cependant, cette pièce se déroule au sein d'une durée précise, découpée en plusieurs phases principalement marquées par l'interruption d'un des deux musiciens, et au lieu d'abolir cette durée, nous la percevons d'autant plus. Une expérience perceptive extrême où le temps, aussi étiré soit-il, est perçu dans toute sa plénitude, dans toute sa matérialité sonore et musicale. Une pièce hallucinante où la richesse sonore déploie un temporalité singulière et envoutante.
Un développement lent mais riche et précis qui aboutit à la création d'une autre temporalité, et cette temporalité singulière et unique bouleverse nos sens et notre perception, comme si une autre dimension s'ouvrait à nous. Évidemment, l'originalité des modes de jeux virtuoses et personnels adoptés par chacun n'y est pas pour rien dans ce phénomène. Une pièce extrêmement riche, intense, envoutante et bouleversante qui déploie des émotions musicales puissantes.
Si j'avais un disque à recommander pour le moment, ce serait sans aucun doute celui-ci, Axiom for the Duration est un vrai chef d'œuvre à écouter absolument.
Julien Héraud l Improv Sphere l Septembre 2011

L’axiome promis par Seijiro Murayama et Stéphane Rives devra naître d’un principe commun et austère. L’échange est endurant qui décide de la rencontre du cercle au contour appuyé (insistance du frotteur) et de lignes qui se tiennent à distance (fugues du sopraniste).
« Butcherisé », Rives décide ainsi de notes longues et finies : ici, une alarme ; là, un sifflement ; ailleurs encore, un léger débordement. Le polissage de Murayama arrange, lui, le mouvement des lignes et ainsi le rythme du tableau : en milieu de parcours, ses effets élèvent même quelques reliefs : légers, qui ne peuvent obstruer l’horizon au bord duquel le soprano passera en transformateurs et sur lequel sauront se fondre la subtilité du percussionniste et la patience du saxophoniste. C’est aussi là que le duo trouvera l’équilibre qui lui convient ; là qu’il décidera donc de conclure.
Guillaume Belhomme l Le son du Grisli l Septembre 2011

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Percussionist Seijiro Murayama has traveled a diverse musical path, from sonic onslaughts with Keiji Haino and K.K. Null to his recent spare sonic explorations with Michel Doneda and Lionel Marchetti. His two recent duo releases with like-minded reed-players provide a salient viewof the areas he is now exploring.
Muryama's duo with Stéphane Rives is more narrowly focused, as Rives' stream of skirling overtones quavers against the buzzing drone of bowed percussion. Rives is simply astonishing in his ability to create uninterrupted torrents of resonance and crashing harmonics, weaving breath into eddies of undulating sound. Muryama's bowed percussion is completely interwoven into Rives' playing and it’s often impossible to separate the two. While there are elements of drone here, the listener's attention is constantly drawn to the glints off of the duo's surging breakers. Halfway through, when a pure tone emerges from Rives' horn, the effect is mesmerizing, as it rises, extends into an almost mechanical cycling with Muryama's cymbal scrapes, and then transforms into piercing tintinnabulations broken by metallic creaks and crashes. The final section unfolds with long streamers of percussion overtones, shot through with swelling currents of soprano that mount and shudder toward a dazzling resolution.
Michael Rosenstein l Signal To Noise l October 2012

This came out in 2011, but I have managed to accurately listen to it only in the last four days or so. A small perpetuity of about 56 minutes, divided on the disc in three temporal slices “for the listener’s convenience”. Let me start the analysis by telling you that a listener who decides to break this awakening experience into fractional scraps will be designed as an incompetent here, especially in view of what Murayama (percussion) and Rives (soprano sax) imply starting from the very title. Axiom For The Duration is in fact a veritable test of perseverance and restraint, as well as a decontaminating act of sorts. As such, it should be undertaken in an unflustered state of mind, without redundant presences interrupting the flux of its power and/or throwing useless casual comments, and – by any means – remaining stuck to a seat in front of the speakers.
Ear-splitting frequencies proliferate throughout, the surrounding space irremediably altered by those stabbing infinitudes; the way in which Murayama and Rives control the process of constant transmutation is positively disconcerting. The former (who bows metals like breathing) provides the coarse grazing textures and the cyclical throbbing; the latter produces “impossible-yet-true” everlasting pitches that, seemingly frozen on a first hearing, instead keep modifying their genetic organization to engender membrane-trespassing resonances. The master’s touch is represented by the fusion of a modus operandi with the other into a single sensational morphon: in those moments, a distinct wholeness going beyond the mere subdivision in “timbre” and “pitch” is exteriorized, forcing us to give attention with the eyes closed. The body starts sucking in the disciplining effect of those deceivingly harsh combinations; the chemistry happening in the spot between the monitors and the self is complex, nonetheless definable with a pair of words: cerebral nirvana.
Massimo Ricci l Touching Extremes l August 2012

Practically unknown except in his adopted country of France – and likely in his native Japan – Seijiro Murayama is a remarkable drummer whose percussion prestidigitation is usually conjured using brushes, sticks, contact microphones, a single snare drum and one cymbal. As these exceptional discs demonstrate, in spite of operating on a microtonal playing field with equal absorption in the qualities of silence and intonation, the results are mesmerizing. More specifically neither CD sounds remotely like the other, although a saxophonist is his partner on each.
Concerned with interdisciplinary links among sound, dance, painting, literature and other arts, Nagasaki-born Murayama initially played in noise-rock bands such as Fushitsusha and A.N.P. Today however his improvisations are often in the company of guitarist Taku Unami, synthesizer player Uta Kawasaki or trombonist Thierry Madiot. Beirut-based French national Stéphane Rives has made solo CDs and has recorded with international improvisers such as harpist Rhodri Davies and synthesizer player Wade Matthews.
Murayama’s and Rives’ raison d’être may be improvisational solipsism, but neither brings a cynosure approach to Axiom for the Duration. Evolving mostly in linear yet parallel statements, the two adjust to prolonged silences while each outputting timbres that range from strident fortissimo cries to hushed, dissolving textures. Quivering and pressurized flat-line squeals often issue from Rives’ horn as Murayama responds with the friction created by raucously rubbing a cymbal across the drum top for maximum timbral displacement. During the first track, when at one point the polyphonic textures reach a crescendo of staccato scrubbing, an overriding drone pushes other sounds into silence. Mercurial resonance, shrill whistling and unaffiliated, tones take up so much of the sonic surfaces as sound-motions from one instrument blur into the other. Should the ring-modulator-like gonging distilled onto the tracks, for instance, be ascribed to one or the other? Climatic resolution arrives with the third untitled track as febrile rubs and altissimo shrills become more intense and diffuse. Rives’ bagpipe-chanter-like vibrations operate in tandem with Murayama subtle motions which could as easily be produces by a string set or a vibraphone. As time sense is stretched, individual percussion grinds and drum top rubs on one hand and circular breathing and raucous animal-like cries separate participants during their broken-octave duet.
Unjustly unknown internationally – like too many French improvisers – these CDs should introduce a wider audience to Murayama’s inventive percussion power. Both Axiom for the Duration and Window Dressing are worthy of aural exploration, although Guionnet does have an edge over Rives when it comes to perceptive duetting with the drummer.
Ken Waxman l JazzWord l March 2012

If Window Dressing is marked by its stubborn refusal to commit, Axiom for Duration bleeds itself out with a stinging acuteness, as bright and acid as Kenya AA. Rives plays his soprano with a marked precision, committing unending breath to something close to the purity of a bat squeal -- appealing in its lack of distraction. It’s not that his playing is single-minded as much as it’s not prone to the kind of digression found in an Evan Parker or John Butcher. Rives lingers as long as an idea demands, riding a tone until it fully reveals itself. Murayama proves his diversity of approaches here, and couples with these elongated tones, piercing straight through this afternoon haze in a thin astringent line.
I would love to see them play this live, if only to witness the seemingly herculean concentrated effort, the weaponizing of their tones into something so much greater than the sum of their parts. Just as uncompromising as Window Dressing, this album is far more brutal; the pitch density at times is intense, writhing under a surgical light. I love it to death even it scares the hell out of me those times I forget it’s in the player, and I wake up to insectoid death rattles. Why does grind-core send me to sleep, but this slaps me awake and casts me into a Dr. Who-level existential dread? I’m very goddamned pleased that improvised music can still make me this uneasy. It reminds me of first hearing the early Collective Calls, if not for direct aural similarity as it is for Rives and Murayama’s fondness for a kind of intellectual perversity. Lest I give the appearance that this all just a provocation, one can’t forget just how accomplished the end results are, and how much is said with so little.
When it all seems that improvised sax/drums duos amount to little more than a mass of notes played at the highest velocity with as many pyrotechnic techniques as possible, it’s refreshing to sit for a while in one so intent on process, on the expansion of a single area. I’m refreshed by Axiom for Duration as I am disoriented. What more can you ask for?
Tanner Servoss l Tokafi l February 2012

The most arduous piece of Yoga isn't the motor skills or strength training learned to execute thorny poses: it's the first moments of meditation where you sit still and flush away job and daily life concerns in preparation of the practice; unlike a warm bath, or a sedative, or anything that requires no effort to fall into, this may be the first time in days when you headlock your mind into submission, coercing yourself to stop, physically and emotionally.
If we reduce the hour-long (divided into three movements) Axiom For The Duration to "drone music" — and extended passages of circular breathing, rationed materials, bowed cymbal / cymbal rattled over a snare drum qualify that label — when compared to Eliane Radigue or La Monte Young, we face a similar situation. While the music of the latter two is often a feeling of peace, the construction and sonic choices of percussionist Seijiro Murayama and (soprano) saxophonist Stéphane Rives are aurally turbulent, resembling the insect colony and not-so-obvious activity of the root system beneath a forest. Or you could say these two are the chugging boiler room where the placid babbling brooks end, are digested then repurposed.
For the first thirty minutes, Murayama sticks with bowing, each stroke propelling the work with a pulse-like foundation. During this time, Rives pauses less than a handful of instances; when in motion, his register stays high, and the emotional harmony of listener and player fuse where the former finds himself holding his breath at slight dips in pitch extending from Rives' pumping lungs. With staggering patience, the duo grapple with theses gestures, Murayama eventually reducing to a metallic whisper before another fifteen-minute build that finds both players simultaneously engaged in the hypnotic, warbling high note of the work. During the last six minutes, they gracefully flake apart with Rives digging into a guttural squall and Murayama coaxing thunderous drum head vibrations. When the percussionist has had enough, he shifts into a comparative flurry of harmonics and nervous wriggles, like a spinning top that refuses to take it's last tumble.
Call it Macro Minimalist / Micro Maximalist, this is not immediate music — which, as with most things you have to work with before embracing, makes it a memorable standout in the history of the genre.
Dave Madden l The Squid's Ear l December 2011

Sax Pax for the Duration
Stéphane Rives is the French sax player who I associate with the production of a severe and hard-to-digest sound. On one of the rare occasions when I played a DJ set for a wedding, I spun one of his solo CDs and was soon asked by the distraught organiser to turn it off and go back to playing that nice chill-out music from Oval instead. Rives used to do the quiet-minimal breath-exploration technique along with a number of other European players like Axel Dörner and Robin Hayward, but I think that particular gimmick is old hat now.
On Axiom For The Duration, he teams up with the percussionist Seijiro Murayama, and the pair of them have come up with a total bruiser of solid minimalism. Just put this on as loud as the market will bear, and you’ll find yourself being gradually crowded out of your own living room by its sheer physical presence. Murayama could be the driving force behind this merciless method, since he’s been exploring for about ten years the idea that he can control the acoustic space of any given performing area through his sound alone. Depriving himself of food and sleep, he pays attention to every eyelid flicker and throat-clearing action of the audience at every gig he plays, and devises methods to weave these micro-events into his playing, thus “revitalizing the environment”. What he did in this Paris room in May 2010 is certainly a feat to remember, and it’s much to Naxos Bobine’s credit that he recorded it so faithfully. Rives honks in on the action too, by sustaining incredibly long tones (infinitely long) played in the upper registers that defy all rational thought. With one mighty gulp, he can take in as much air as is consumed by the motorbikes of Hong Kong in a single day; he unleashes these currents from his capacious lungs with the rigid control of a pressure valve such as you might find in an industrial-sized refrigeration unit, while his talons maintain a rigid clutch around the neck of his soprano sax. For a full 56 minutes, these two torture-meisters don’t rest for a single second as they issue their monstrous wall of humming and piercing with the slow deliberation of art gallery assistants executing a Sol Lewitt pencil drawing on the walls. And while we’re on the subject, dig the nifty geometry artwork for this release by Octobre. Just great!
Ed Pinsent l The Sound Projector l December 2011


In the 1980s, Seijiro Murayama drummed with Fushitsusha and Absolut Null Punkt. If heaviness was his goal, he started out on the top floor. In the 2000s, he’s chosen a new path, appearing mostly with European improvisers and sound artists like Lionel Marchetti and Eric Cordier. When he toured the US last year with just a snare drum and a few hand-held instruments, Murayama’s objective was to raise the hairs on the back of your neck using the sparest of gestures.
Despite the apparent similarity of their instrumental line-ups, that economy of means and seriousness of purpose are all that unite Window Dressing and Axiom for the Duration. Each is a duet with a French saxophonist, but they sound completely different... Time is also a key dimension in Axiom for the Duration, but its musical content couldn’t be more different. Rives’s approach to his instrument and its history could fairly be described as antagonistic. The long tones he plays defy the limits of breath, and he doesn’t even leave us the breadcrumb trail afforded by the in-and-out gasping usually associated with circular breathing to mark the way. The main changes he affords himself are between pure and abraded tone. Murayama matches his approach with continuous sonic waves most likely obtained by dragging a mallet across the surface of a cymbal. These twin streams of sound flow side by side, sometimes in harmony, sometimes disturbing each other with unsympathetic vibrations that make the music shudder with peristaltic motion. It’s as severe as the most fundamental minimalist composition, but the fact that it is made by two men matching (or mismatching) sounds in the moment gives it a gripping immediacy.
Bill Meyer l Dusted Magazine l November 2011

... The recording with Rives is a rather different animal. Rives, on soprano, uses what I presume to be a circular breathing technique but manages to do so with nary a trace of the inhale/exhale one normally hears, producing, in that sense, a very pure drone, although internally braided in a complex manner. Murayama bows low-pitched metal in a sawing fashion, supplying that missing pulse. It's piercing, not a little grating and extremely focused, not dissimilar from prior Rives work as far as that goes. The tones set one's inner ear abuzz, drive the dog nuts and generally upset the neighbors. It's wonderful. The second section, some 20 minutes in, tones things down a hair, Rives' sounds threading through the continued (though softer) bowing of Murayama, creating a music that hints at raga, particularly the alap portions. Interestingly, though perhaps only because I've recently played it myself, I was also reminded of the quavering strings heard in Ornette's "Silence" from the 1962 Town Hall recording. Rives soon migrates to purer tones as well, even as the metal becomes more diffuse, a lovely effect. This, in turn, transforms into ultra-high ringing--I'm not sure if Rives is in there or not, actually, but I'm guessing he is--splattered with the odd crash of metal. The final track (it's one piece, just subdivided into cuts) subtly combines these approaches, retaining the soprano drone but splintering it a bit, still keeping the disc's overall consistency, something I appreciate hugely. It densifies, entwines, shudders, grows steadily more complex, meatier. Ends.
A fantastic recording; listen.
Brian Olewnick l Just Outside l October 2011

Blimey. Tonight’s CD is something of a tough listen. In many ways Axiom for the Duration, the new release by Seijiro Murayama (percussion) and Stéphane Rives (soprano sax) is a quite remarkable recording. The degree of focus and concentration involved in creating this fifty six minute long recording must had been incredible. The music essentially consists of a single drone, put together in three parts recorded over a couple of days, but arranged here so as to be virtually continuous throughout the album. The music is constantly changing, thickening, thinning, everything consisting of textures and tones that continually shift in response to one another, but a single line can be followed through the work from start to finish. It is though, a compellingly difficult listen, simply because of the sound used here.
Stéphane Rives plays the saxophone like nobody else I know. He somehow achieves piercingly high notes and glassily smooth tones over extremely long periods of time, using circular breathing techniques. The most remarkable aspect of his playing is not the way he holds one sound for so long however, but the way he conjures up such richly sonorous sounds without effects. His sound is immediately recognisable, even though it changes frequently, as there is something about the clarity of his tone, the lack of any human wavering, that makes it very much his own. In this droning, linear mode however, Rives’ sound becomes extremely affecting, even oppressive through its constant, piercing nature. On Axiom for the Duration though, Rives has found the perfect companion for this kind of music. Seijiro Murayama is one of the most engrossing musicians I have watched live in recent years. No matter what he does, he holds a certain concentrated presence when he plays that is perfectly suited to this kind of long form intensity. Here, he finds sounds that are perfectly pitched against Rives’ sax- I suspect he is just using a snare drum and small pieces of metal percussion, as he tends to do, and he rubs them, bows then, scrapes them, everything but hit them it seems to create similarly textural extended lines of sound that he carefully picks out and places into Rives’ flow with remarkable precision and skill. The way the two work together is the real wonder of this album for me. I am not a big fan of drones as such, and in places the music here is actually quite painfully heavy, really drilling down into your head as you listen, but although its not always an easy experience, listening closely, picking apart the two musicians’ contributions is areal experience. When you think you are hearing one, it's actually the other, or when you think one of the musicians has dropped out of the flow, you realise they are still there, and the two sets of sounds have just combined into the one.
This is a hard release to review then, at least for me. The first time I heard this disc was in the car, while I sat and talked to my passenger, and it had to be turned off because it was impossible to just allow it to play in the background without making its presence thoroughly felt. Playing it a few times at reasonable volume over the past few days has been difficult as well. Apart from really annoying anyone else passing through the house the music has a presence to it that won’t be put into the background. You are forced as a listener to pay attention, let the sound envelope you. It feels like you are being mugged by the recording. Turning the CD right down, so low that many other discs would be inaudible does strange things to the music as well, somehow picking out the most severe tones, most grating textures and presenting them alone, separated from everything else. It's hard for me to endorse this CD as a vital purchase, simply because I found listening to it so difficult, but I would also say that it is a quite remarkable show of focussed, skilled and actually quite individual and different music created through a very strong bond between the musicians. Somehow, music like this, which challenges me as a listener, gives me a few hours of difficulty rather than relaxation, seems more worthwhile. This is one that will stick in my mind for a while.
Richard Pinnell l The Watchful Ear l September 2011

Axiom for the Duration is the first recording by Murayama and soprano saxophonist Stéphane Rives, and consists of one continuous improvisation lasting over 56 minutes (indexed as three tracks, for convenience) recorded at Naxos Bobine in Paris in May 2010.
As on his 2003 solo album, Fibres (Potlatch), Rives employs circular breathing to play a series of sustained notes and multiphonics which create an evolving drone throbbing and undulating in pitch and volume. Murayama has less room here than he does with Guionnet, punctuating his scrapes with the occasional cymbal or snare strike as punctuation, almost as a reminder that he's still there. With the two players constantly interweaving, there is occasional scope for confusion about the source of a sound. Is that harsh metallic ringing high-pitched whine (used sparingly, thankfully) Rives or Murayama bowing a cymbal? This is a very compatible duo, and although Rives, like his fellow Propagations members, continues to push at the boundaries of his instrument, he never loses sight of the need for the overall result to make satisfying listening.
John Eyles l Paris Transatlantic l September 2011

(Translated from swedish)
The French saxophone player Stéphane Rives works and lives in Beirut. He has told me there was no room for him on the French stage, where people wanted more conventional music. For guys like Rives who are investigating his means there is no space. He is not an extrovert musician who chats with the audience. For me his music sounds more like a continuous inner monologue.
It must also be underlined that his albums, like Fibres, has had an enormous impact upon younger French and Lebanese musicians. He combines total skills with a mental presence, which is rare. On his album on al Maslakh he varied short improvised pieces of sound with silence of different length, that were irregular and sometimes painfully long. I had never heard anything like that.
If I describe his new album as a cooperation between a soprano saxophon that does not sound like metal and drums that are more concerned with long lasting sounds than rhythm I guess the reader would say he/she heard this before. True, the concept is quite common in the normal impro trying to change its means, giving way for virtuosity and technique. To those ones I´d like to say: this is it! Here you have the total artistic depth and formulation that should be the result of all the conquered new parameters.
The music is a flux of sounds that are strangled, widened, changed – but in a very slow way. When I listen to Rives´ circular breathing through the sax with sounds swelling and going back like a tide I know this is the pulse in an ongoing soundlandscape. Into this landscape or picture Murayama etches the shrillest tones into a sharp line as were it an engraving. Some unexpected normal hits and from his side makes me jump by surprise. The most vague sounds from the drums roll and form patterns that seem to have grown out of Rives´ playing. He is damn good at combining lines and tones into a very tight pattern, where the light someties comes through. It is a mighty experience to hear this. But it is not always easy. It takes its time and he is activly resisting all the bad things in our time – from stress to commercialism.
Rives is the kind of musician who reflects and combines the philosphy of stillness in his playing. That is why he is one of the most important and interesting voices in today´s impro. Impro is by the way today a word that is quite hollow, but Rives does not care, he fills it with meaning.
The very strict and beautiful cover reflects the forms of concrete geometric art playing on the surface, and there is also a hardly readable text saying:”The music is continuous. However, time codes have been inserted for the listener´s convenience.”
This is an album that will not let you go. It lingers in your mind. And in your memory the shrill and sharp beauty of Rives´music stays as a memory.
Rives is not the kind of musician who produces one cd after the other- like many other do. But when they come they are all masterpieces. And this is no exception.
Thomas Millroth l Soundofmusic l September 2011

Two new releases on Potlatch, a French shelter for improvisation, and both of them include Seijiro Murayama on percussion, twice in duet with a saxophone: the soprano of Stéphane Rives and alto of Jean-Luc Guionnet. That is about the only two things that are similar here on these two discs. The CD with Rives contains three long pieces of utter extreme music. I have no idea how it was made, no man can surely breath so long in a saxophone, but Rives plays long sustaining tones on his soprano: high end, almost like sine waves/feedback. Murayama plays also sustained tones, on his percussion, by rotating sounds on the surface of the skins and cymbals. This is - literally - very strong music, an endurance test, for the players no doubt, but also for the listener. Clocking at fifty-some minutes, this is CD can't be played without full attention.
Frans de Waard l Vital Weekly l August 2011

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