Eric La Casa
Eric La Casa works with microphones the way other people work with a camera: he puts them where something is already happening and lets the place do the composing. Born in France in 1968, he has spent three decades recording building sites, stairwells, fields, ventilation shafts and the public spaces of Paris, often returning to the same spot for months. Much of his work is made in duo, above all with the percussionist Seijiro Murayama, where field recording and played sound are treated as the same material. His records come out on his own Swarming, on Erstwhile and on Herbal International.
Magnetic Traces : A Survey Of French And Australian Sound Art
2009 release ** A broad survey of 14 recent pieces curated by Eric la Casa and Philip Samartzis for Project Space in Melbourne. High definition, highly processed sounds, mostly of environmental origin but made highly abstract and hyperreal. A useful snapshot. Featuring: Thomas Tilly, Tarab, Marc Baron , Anthea Caddy & Thembi Soddell, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Lizzie Pogson, Cédric Peyronnet, Philip Samartzis, Loïc Blairon, Camilla Hannan, Eric La Casa, Geoff Robinson.
Supersédure 2
Second Edition of Supersédure 2. Eric La Casa and Seijiro Murayama use percussion and field recording like scalpels on everyday life, shaving tiny ruptures into routine until small, repeated gestures cross an invisible line and start to sound like events.
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Induction / Mutation
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* At the end of 2024, Eric's purchase of an electric cooker with induction hobs was the catalyst. Between auscultations and improvisations, Eric offered Francisco his recordings of the object in his kitchen. In return, Francisco completely reinterpreted these recordings. From this dual level of listening, the elements created resonated in each artist's sound world.
Pieces created from shared original raw sound source materials.
Paris Public Spaces 2
On Paris Public Spaces 2, Éric La Casa and Seijiro Murayama stage brief, focused vocal interventions across Parisian sites, letting microphone placement and urban acoustics turn spoken sound into a moving portrait of how voice and city continuously re‑shape one another.
A Grammar for Listening
2008. Paris and Glasgow. Eric La Casa recording sounds for Luke Fowler's 16mm triptych. Not compositions but investigations into the infra-ordinary - that space-time at low intensity where background noise meets the inaudible. How to create a meaningful dialogue between looking and listening? This question drove Fowler's film cycle. La Casa's answer: find a listening point in relation to everything taking place. The microphones amplify all living substances in motion - from the interior of the b…
Chantier 4
Tip! *2025 stock. 300 copies limited edition* "When I was in Paris 2013 - 2015, the second apartment in which I stayed was on Rue Adolphe Mille, which more or less ran along the western border of the Parc de la Villette in the 19th Arrondissement. On the opposite side of the park, the new Philharmonie de Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel, was nearing its long-delayed completion. Eric La Casa, a master of in situ field recording/performance, lived just up the street as well and, in 2013, ventured in…
Off Tracks
Within the expanding territories of electroacoustic investigation and field recording archaeology, Éric La Casa and Jérôme Noetinger present Off Tracks, a profound meditation on absence, decay, and the spectral traces left behind in emptied architectural spaces via Erstwhile Records. This collaboration between two masters of contemporary sound art unfolds as "an exploration of buildings emptied of their activities, a crossing of spaces abandoned by their occupants, a drift through the ghostly tr…
Contrefaçons
In September 2023, at the Hiventy laboratories in Joinville-le-pont - formerly Pathé - we recorded the film restoration (image and sound) and development processes. Following the mechanical and digital processes, we listened to and interviewed the technicians to understand what goes into restoring a film. How do you restore a film to its original state? To do this, we need to get close to what viewers of the film could perceive in the cinema. The way we look at and listen to a film has evolved s…
Polymères 3
*50 copies limited edition* I selected short parts of "Polymères" (never published in print) because they reminded me of the inner world of David Lynch, to whom this soundtrack is dedicated.. From Polymères excerpts, originally composed between December 2011 and March 2012 for theater - with organ recordings (played by Jean-Luc Gulonnet), field recordings, and electronics Remixed in January 2025
Paris: Public Spaces
*2025 stock* Seijiro Murayama is a drummer/percussionist/voice performer currently working in Japan again after living for a number of years in France. Éric La Casa is a French sound artist well known for site-specific field recordings with a strong improvisational element. The two have been working together on numerous projects for nearly a decade. For six months starting in January 2012, La Casa and Murayama took portable tape recorders out to parks, subway stations, streets and other public s…
Zones Portuaires 2
Between 2017 and 2023, while assisting Tarek Atoui with his Waters’ Witness project, I accumulated a series of recordings in maritime ports, which I have used to create this thematic suite. Rooted in documentary reflection, it presents the unembellished sounds of commercial ports and their coastlines.
Recordings 2017 - 2023Editings + Mixings June – December 2024
These ports were constructed across diverse biotopes and climates: in the Gulf of Oman in Abu Dhabi, the harbour of Singapore, the Medi…
Stray Shafts Of Sunlight
2013 release ** "Three pieces recorded live in 2007 but just released. Ultra-quiet approach of electroacoustic improvisation. Guionnet on sax and microphones, La Casa on microphones and laptop, Samartzis on laptop and electronics. All three also play (with) silence. Each sonic intervention is delicated set in relation with what is (and is not) around it. Three sound stories with a thin yet consistent abstract narrative."
O Comme Icare
1992 release ** "Eric La Casa and Sylvie Larouche's first album of lush, cinematic ambience and unsettling atmosphere from 1992. La Casa's sense of drama and timing might sound familiar to those who know his (entirely excellent) later work with field recordings."
Métro Pré Saint-Gervais
2025 stock ** "On July 10th 2001, Guionnet (alto sax), Warburton (violin) and La Casa (microphones) explored the acoustics of the Pré Saint Gervais Metro station in Paris, riding the elevators, taking the stairs, experimenting real-time music in daily life. A reference, between site-specific improvisation and sound art."
Waters' Witness #03 (Book)
An exploration of the soundscape of coastal cities by the French-Lebanese artist.
Parazoan Mapping #2 (Magazine + Digital Download)
Kindling #1: Parazoan Mapping #2 by Taku Unami and Eric La Casa is the first edition of an ongoing series of artist-run digital+paper sound-art releases, only available as a newspaper plus digital file. Through their individual practices, Taku Unami and Eric La Casa have contributed greatly to what we think about how we listen and practice sound and music, and often indirectly challenging where these two tightly linked categories might collide or overlap. Parazoan Mapping #2 continues their publ…
FO(A)RM N°4 (Magazine + CD)
FO(A)RM no. 4 (topography) treats the movement over, through or across a landscape and the act of documenting, utilizing or noticing an interaction with that landscape. It concerns a mapping of the points between self and space – traversing and/or transforming natural and urban environments. Within these pages, intelligent perspectives find fertile soil.Included within are essays by sound theorist Douglas Kahn (Noise Water Meat) on spherics and and cultural theorist Steven Connor (Dumbstruck) on…
Parking
*150 copies limited edition* Parking features two works recorded 14 years apart registering the behaviour and characteristics of environmental and instrumental sound resounding within multiple parking garages. The architectural form and function underpinning the parking garage demands a highly adaptive response to negotiate indeterminate conditions and hidden tensions generated by compressed space, reflective materiality, multipurpose infrastructure, and active thoroughfares. Rather than conside…
Barrières Mobiles
*100 copies limited edition* "Following the 2015 attacks, all entrances to public buildings – schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, museums, town halls, police stations, etc. – were reinforced by these metal barriers, without any prior consultation with local residents nor with their being given any indication of how long they would remain in place. The public space has been covered with these barriers, which, over the last decade, summer and winter, day and night, have become the symbols of l…
Waters' Witness (Book)
An exploration of the soundscape of coastal cities by the French-Lebanese artist.
Everyday Unknown 4 & 5
Two compositions conceived mainly from researches on the inaudible and the unspeakable, as part of a series devoted to the representation of infraliminary sound phenomenons of the reality, of everyday life.
"How does the present time, physically so unspecified, become so unique for us? " - Etienne Klein"During these past years, exploring my daily environment and also my archives, I have discovered a missing part of my listening : beyond the threshold of my hearing, or my measure. I was intereste…
Friche : Transition
*Limited edition of 300 copies*
During Spring 2015, Eamon Sprod and Eric La Casa spent one week to record on waste grounds, at the north east of Paris, and along the canal Ourcq. Spaces which are somehow both inside yet apart from the city; waiting spaces from which to listen to the threshold of the city.
Paris Quotidien (CD+booklet)
For two years, Eric La Casa has been recording the urban sonic environment of Paris from the windows of his own apartment. Between a temporary inventory and a musical documentary, Paris Quotidien is the result of this long experiment. Includes a 60-page documentation booklet with photographs.
Installations
** 2021 Stock. Book (24 pages 15x15cm) + CD. Limited edition of 250 copies. Texts Français / English. ** Stereophonic versions based on the recordings and mixes used for the 4 sound installations. Surface-témoin / Show surface (2005) by Jean-Luc Guionnet & Eric La Casa. De la dilation du paysage / Enlarging the landscape (2006) by Michaële-Andréa Schatt & Eric La Casa. Double exposition / Double exposure (2010) by Seijiro Murayama & Eric La Casa. Tentative d’épuisement (sonore) d’un lieu / Attem…
Interieurs
**200 copies** Éric La Casa probes his inner sound environment through the recording of his Parisian apartment, an artist's studio and the empty spaces of a museum.
For more than 20 years, while listening to the environment, Éric La Casa (born 1968, Tours, lives and works in Paris) has been questioning the perception of reality and has expanded the notion of what's musical today. Through his aesthetic of capturing sound, his work fits equally into the fields of sound art and music. As a result o…
Soundtracks
Three compositions made for films.
1 – 4 . A grammar for listening 2
From Luke Fowler's 16mm film “A grammar for listening part 2”, 2009.
All sounds recorded in Paris, and Glasgow.
5 . A Hemero Phaestos 2 From Christian Jaccard's video “A Hemero Phaestos”, 2013. All sounds recorded in the Foundery Susse, Ivry
6 – 8 . Polymères 2From Marie-Christine Navarro’s drama “Ce pays qui s'appelle Tane”, 2012.With organ recordings (composed and recorded by Jean-Luc Guionnet)Eric La Casa says about his p…
Parazoan Mapping
With fifteen untitled vignettes and varying source material, Parazoan Mapping often feels like an aural scrapbook. And when looking through any scrapbook, the different photos and pieces of ephemera always point to something bigger: a sort of unraveling of the people contained within. The pictures of your family’s vacation from several years ago may not explicitly show it but you very well understand how then compares to now that feeling of joy when you conquered your first wave after hours…
Home Handover
2025 stock ** "In 2010, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Éric La Casa were invited by Arika to the Uninstal festival in Glasgow (Scotland) to carry out a series of recordings with some inhabitants of this city, in their home spaces. Based on predefined rules, including the single-sequence shot as a recording method, these people became the actors in a story about their everyday life. Guionnet and La Casa considered this work as a composition under the form of a score with four phases."
Zones portuaires
Recordings in harbor area made in Le Havre (France) March 2010 and Liège (Belgium), September 2010. Each musician works with these site specific recordings. CD1 Eric La Casa (2011- revised in summer 2013). CD2 Cédric Peyronnet (2012-13).
Chantier 1
An extraordinary document of an experiment in which three improvisers - Pascal Battus (rotating surfaces and found objects), Bertrand Gauguet (saxophones) and Eric La Casa (microphones) - played at a working building site in Paris, adapting their playing to integrate the sounds and gestures of the workers at the site.
Zone Sensible 2 - Dundee 2
For the best part of a decade, Éric La Casa's attention to sonic phenomena has resulted in some of the finest contemporary Musique Concréte to come out of France. A listener of the highest order, La Casa's methodology for sound recording allows for a versatile examination of both urban and natural environments and it is these interests which are captured on this new edition for Room40. With an ability to find unique perspectives on his sound subjects La Casa's site specific works 'Zone Sensible'…
W2 (1998-2008)
"We think that we « make a journey » but soon enough it's the journey that makes – and unmakes - us." (Nicolas Bouvier, "l'usage du monde"). When I listen today to these pieces, I hear, of course, a geographic inventory of all the places I encountered. Above all, though, and as if by default, I hear the sonic journal of twelve years spent recording sound.My relation to the sites wasn't based on a desire to « document » but it is worth noting, however, that a « sound story », more trivial perhaps…
Supersedure
Field recordings 1995-2007 by Seijiro Murayama : snare drum + objects and Éric La Casa: microphones + field recordings (1995-2007). Drawing by Tomoya Izumi. 'What makes one a musician, a composer? It happens only when one succeeds in giving life to music, a certain presence. I don't hesitate, even though I am not a writer, a painter etc., to say the same thing about them. For this composition, 'Supersedure', I met Eric. It seems to me that we share an artistic, but maybe also a general attitud…
Air. ratio
*2025 stock* "My listening project (about controlled mechanical ventilation in new buildings) is multiple : it can function as a sound study, a sonic data bank, a CD of environments, and finally as a music. This CD isintended to be an object without distinctive function. This is precisely what interests me: the question of listening, at home. "
"As his installations have repeatedly demonstrated, Eric La Casa has a keen ear for those phenomena of regular (or less) occurrences whose musical chara…
Belvédère Dans L'étendue
in the memory of René Quinon thanks to Fred Galiay & "Samedi 14" We all are in a house: "Villa Adriana", (René Quinon's house - little village - low mountain - high valley - Ardèche). A bunch of all kind of microphones are deviced in the house and amojng the landscape around the place. Each of them is plugged into a mixing desk that Eric La Casa is using during the recordings. The duration of the mix is more or less pre-decided by the 4 of us. During this amount of time, the 3 instrumentalists a…