*Edition of 150* With Uchidome, Seijiro Murayama continues his uncompromising exploration of percussion as a medium of thought rather than spectacle. Recorded during a residency at Epicentre in La Souterraine, France, in January 2025, the album captures three improvisations that balance precision and stillness within an elusive formal logic. As Murayama’s fifth solo work on the Tokyo-based label Hitorri, Uchidome deepens a practice dedicated to the awareness of sound’s decay, the tactile boundary between noise and gesture, and the psychological dimension of silence.
The three tracks—Uchidome 1, Uchidome 2, and Uchidome 3—function as variations on restraint. Each evolves from discrete percussive actions, gradually revealing the spatiality of vibration as material. The first piece establishes a ritualistic pace, where every strike and pause feels attuned to the room’s resonance and the performer’s breathing. The second track edges toward fragility: faint brushes, muted rattles, and suspended overtones trace a line between physical control and self-erasure. In the closing section, Murayama’s sounds expand into an almost sculptural audibility, confronting the listener with the paradox of density born from minimal means.
Rather than pursuing rhythmic elaboration, Murayama invokes a heightened attentiveness to the conditions of listening itself. His playing resists virtuosity; it leans instead toward contemplation, framing silence as a living partner within performance. The French recording environment, with its austere acoustics, becomes integral to this sonic introspection—an invisible collaborator transforming percussion into architecture. This methodical intimacy links Uchidome to his earlier works such as To Listen To As Far As Possible and duos with Jean-Luc Guionnet, where Murayama’s philosophy emerges most clearly: sound is not an event to master, but an encounter to witness.
