Le catalogue Potlatch de Jacques Oger poursuit son chemin tranquille dans les contrées minimales.
Avec douceur et certitude, et le sens de l'évolution. La microtonalité ici explorée par l'argentin Sergio Merce nous oblige à reconnaître que le saxophone peut se permettre toujours et encore d'inouïes avancées techniques et musicales. L'instrument est ici savamment préparé, les clés et mécanismes ayant été remplacés par des embouts et bouchons destinés à d'autres fluides (comme de l'eau, du gaz ou de l'air comprimé) permettant toutes les variations et modulations souhaitées par l'interprète disposant simplement d'un pédale sustain afin de prolonger l'action. Si le résultat peut évoquer certaines musiques électroniques (drones), on perçoit bien la vibration acoustique et le débat (ce qui implique un choix) de type analogique... Quels magnifiques battements émergent de cette expérience, autant d'appels à même de faire se lever la brume intérieure... Par ces suggestions oniriques à chaque tour de disque, cet activateur de pensées nous embarque. Vers les sirènes du Rhin ou sur Cythère, peu importe. Bel aller-simple.
Dino l Revue & Corrigée l Juin 2014

Comme Lucio Capece – compatriote avec lequel il enregistra Casa et qui trouva refuge avant lui sur Potlatch (Zero Plus Zero) –, le saxophoniste Sergio Merce a le goût du détournement instrumental et celui des hautes sphères, tous intérêts servis par Microtonal Saxophone. L'instrument promis est un alto mis à plat, accessoirisé (embouts et tubes) et rempli (eau, gaz, air comprimé), que Merce fait chanter (souffle continu et pédale de sustain) depuis plus de trois années.
Le saxophone d’exception pourrait être alto de cristal : la microtonalité qu’il laisse filtrer joue de voix stratifiées, d’oscillations longues ou de faibles tremblements, de perturbations qui mettent à mal toute tentation monochrome, de lignes endurantes que la crainte de l’uniformité éloigne peu à peu les unes des autres. A force, ce sont-là des reliefs dessinés dans l’air, qui, seconde après seconde, composent à l’horizon un mirage : irrésistible, insaisissable.
Guillaume Belhomme l Le son du grisli l Avril 2014

Sergio Merce est un musicien argentin que j'entends pour la première fois. Auparavant, il a seulement sorti un duo avec Lucio Capece, ainsi qu'un disque aux côtés de Gunter Müller, deux CD sur lesquels il jouait principalement avec un enregistreur 4 pistes sans bande, et un peu de saxophone avec Capece. Et parallèlement à cette activité, Sergio Merce a consacré de nombreuses heures à préparer son saxophone alto pour échapper à l'accordage de son instrument. En luthier expérimental, ce dernier a démonté le plateau de son alto et remplacé chaque clé par des petits robinets d'eau, de gaz et d'air comprimé. Une préparation/fabrication qui permet ainsi à Sergio Merce de jouer des pièces microtonales de manière optimale, large, et surtout beaucoup plus précise qu'avec les doigtés spéciaux.
Un saxophone préparé, et une pédale de sustain, voilà le bagage instrumental utilisé pour ce disque. Les quatre variations microtonales présentées sur ce CD ont la même forme : un drone doux, dans le registre médium, qui joue sur les battements et les frottements de fréquences proches. D'une certaine façon c'est dissonant, même clairement, mais ce ne sont pas ces dissonances qui agressent, qui vrillent. Sergio Merce joue une note, la maintient avec sa pédale, et en insère une autre au bout de quelques secondes, et ainsi de suite. La succession des notes est douce, les vibrations font penser aux vibrations du cristal, il s'agit d'harmoniques calculées en fonction de leur interaction les unes avec les autres. Merce joue sur la polyphonie et la microtonalité dans une esthétique proche du drone pour la continuité, et proche de l'ambient pour la douceur et l'apaisement que dégagent ces pièces. C'est raffiné, subtil, très délicat, apaisant, et cristallin comme une sorte de berceuse (une berceuse à la Phill Niblock...).
En soi, la musique est plutôt simple, belle, et surtout très envoutante. Mais c'est en pensant que c'est un solo de saxophone qu'on prend la mesure de la richesse de ce qu'on entend surtout. Merce utilise son instrument comme une sorte de quatuor microtonal : ce n'est pas massif, mais il y a tellement d'éléments tonaux et d'interaction entre ces éléments qu'on a l'impression de réentendre le quatuor de saxophones Propagations (sur le label potlatch également) par exemple. Merce joue énormément sur le vibration et le battement qu'entraîne le frottement de deux notes, de deux fréquences proches, et la plus grande partie de sa musique se base sur cette vie harmonique et organique qui a quelque chose de magique. Après deux soli de saxophones vraiment très marquant sur potlatch (Fibres  de Stéphane Rives et Anatomie des clefs  de Michel Doneda), sans oublier également Ténor de Denzler, Microtonal Saxophone est encore un disque qui risque de marquer l'histoire des enregistrements de saxophone solo.
Julien Héraud l Improv Sphere l Mars 2014

Le label Potlatch continue son oeuvre salutaire de défrichage des potentiels sonores exprimés. Cette fois, il nous présente Sergio Merce, un musicien argentin, proche de Lucio Capece, qui est saxophoniste de formation.
Le saxophone microtonal de Sergio Merce est préparé : les clés et autres mécanismes d’origine ont été démontés et remplacés par un dispositif à base d’eau ou de gaz comprimé. Complété d’une pédale de "Sustain" permettant la prolongation artificielle des sons générés, ce saxophone lui permet d’aller explorer le monde merveilleux des micro-tonalités.
Ce CD, relativement court, est divisé en quatre plages où Sergio Merce explore le potentiel de son dispositif. La superposition des strates sonores, même si elle n’atteint pas la puissance de la musique de Phill Niblock, crée rapidement un espace sonore envahissant et entêtant, ponctué par les sons résiduels du mécanisme qui, sans totalement dévoiler les arcanes de cette création, permet à l’auditeur d’en effleurer l’essence. Car au-delà, du magnifique rendu sonore qu’offre ce disque, c’est bien l’expérimentation d’un processus novateur de génération sonore à partir d’un instrument classique qui est documentée ici.
Les mauvaises langues diront que c’est un disque de musique minimaliste de plus. C’est ignorer la richesse des univers sonores que les approches non orthodoxes peuvent créer et pour peu que l’on fasse l’effort de s’imerger dans cet univers, c’est aussi un plaisir renouvelé pour les oreilles. A ne pas bouder, donc!
Freesilence's blog l Mars 2014

Some folks just can’t leave well enough alone. Sergio Merce is one of them. To realize the music on this functionally titled CD,the Buenos Aires-based musician substantially modified his alto by removing the keys and replacing them with water, gas and compressed air taps. His instrument looks like it has been repurposed to display plumbing parts, and it sounds more like a synthesizer than a reed instrument. But not just any synth — the glassy timbre, elongated duration, and inner ear-massaging tonal range of his horn sounds strikingly like the old Arp that Eliane Radigue played between the ’70s and early 2000s (in recent years she has retired from her instrument and taken up composing for acoustic musician like Carol Robinson and Charles Curtis), which only sounded the way it sounded because Radigue was playing it.
Like Radigue, Merce works with sounds that are pleasantly mild on the surface, but pack a potent psycho-acoustic punch. Radigue achieved this by spending months or years working on a piece, making infinitesimal adjustments until she got things just right. Merce has done so by treating his adventure in instrument modification as though he were composing, so that the changes dictate not just what the sax will sound like but what kind of music can be played on it. The horn is the score. Despite the presence of a few familiarly saxophone-like notes squirreled away in II (all four tracks are numbered), Merce’s horn would probably be useless for playing an Ellington chart or a Coltrane transcription. But it is well suited to both sustaining and controlling notes. They last far longer than any individual breath would permit, and he can both sound and manipulate several of them at a time. This allows Merce to shift one note’s relationship to another with sufficient precision that he can move them in and out of the proximities that cause beating tones. The result is music that is tactile and three-dimensional, rather like a suspended and constantly changing neon mobile that is cool enough to touch.
Some might wonder about Merce’s choice to spend several years first modifying and then mastering this new instrument since its capabilities are so specific. That’s a chunk of time, true, but sometimes that’s what it takes to make a lasting piece of art. Microtonal Saxophone lasts; not only does each track take its sweet time (total playing time is a bit over 40 minutes, and the shortest piece runs six), but every one of the two dozen-odd times I’ve played the CD so far, it sounds different. In an age of productivity metrics and rollbacks of protected personal time and space, it’s a potent statement about true value for someone to spend the very thing that economic systems want to take from you in order to be successfully creative.
Bill Meyer l dusted in exile l July 2014

It is easy to jump right to the back-story of this CD. Argentinian musician Sergio Merce is a conservatory-trained musician, where he played in a saxophone quartet dedicated to playing early and baroque polyphonic music while also delving into the music of John Coltrane. While working with fellow reed-player Lucio Capece, Merce created an electro-acoustic set-up based on a portastudio (a portable four-track audio-cassette recorder), directly manipulating the tape heads and manipulating sonic output with the built in EQ of the machine. Merce continued to play tenor saxophone and his explorations with multiphonics lead him to the idea of manipulating the mechanics of the instrument itself to allow for a more nuanced control. Working with an architect friend, he re-imagined the way that keys on a saxophone work replacing them with various water, gas, and compressed air valves which could be tweaked and adjusted to tune the harmonics and overtones of the instrument. This re-invention robs the ability to rapidly shift from one note to another, replacing that with the capacity to fine-tune the microtones and multiphonics of the instrument with astonishing flexibility.
All of this would be little more than an intriguing experiment if the music were not so compelling. Utilizing the newly invented instrument along with a sustain pedal, Merce builds pieces of palpable presence and whorled detail. The four untitled tracks build with a lush layering with elements of drone that are tuned and adjusted through meticulous control of breath. There are elements of the sound that bring to mind electronic oscillations or reedy organ pipes, but throughout, one hears the act of physical control as an integral element to the sound. Layers of quavering tones beat against each other, creating shadow harmonics and vibrating pulses. By reengineering the instrument, Merce erases the possibility of the muscularity of attack and the brawny bluster inherent in the horn, instead, shining the focus wholly on the complex workings of the excitement of reed-activated air traveling through a conical bore. These four pieces come across as sonic explorations more so than fully-formed structures, each delivered with such a strong sense of invention where different approaches to layering and pacing are examined with a balance of inquisitive investigation and prevailing focus.
Michael Rosenstein l Point of Departure l June 2014

Microtonal Saxophone is the latest in an impressive lineage of innovative and experimental saxophone recordings released by Potlatch. It follows in the footsteps of such groundbreaking albums as Bertrand Denzler's Tenor (2010), the free sax quartet Propagations (2007) and Stéphane Rives's Fibres (2003), among others. Unlike such players, who redefined what could be played on a saxophone or the ways the instrument could be played, Argentine saxophonist Sergio Merce has gone a stage further by radically altering the instrument itself.
His microtonal saxophone is an alto sax from which the original mechanisms and keys have been removed and replaced with an assortment of water, gas and compressed air taps which allow Merce to move the tuning of any note, play microtones and multiphonics. In addition, the combination of circular breathing and a sustain pedal mean he can maintain sounds and overlay several sonic layers. The close-up photographs of the instrument on the album sleeve are fascinating as they reveal its Heath Robinson, steam punk construction and the consequent impossibility of playing it as rapidly as a normal sax.
Merce has been using his microtonal saxophone in concert for some years (see YouTube, below, for an example) but this album is the first recording of it, thus making it a piece of history. Recorded in Buenos Aires in summer 2013, the music consists of four pieces, which range in length from six minutes to over fourteen. Merce has insisted that the instrument is a composition in its own right—he created it as a composer rather than as an instrument-maker. The music supports that contention, as it is often unrecognisable as having been played on a saxophone.
The form of the instrument determined how it is played and, hence, the shape of the music. Central to that are notes which are sustained for long periods—by breathing or electronic means—and subtly altered to create sufficient detail and variation to establish that a human being is responsible rather than a machine. There are just enough similarities with Merce's work on conventional saxophone—such as on Casa (Organised Music from Thessaloniki, 2008)—to confirm that he is the human being in question.
Occasional suggestions of reediness in the sound betray the instrument's origins as a saxophone but those clues are countered by the sound's unsaxlike shimmering quality. On an album that is mesmerising from start to finish, the passages that are most engaging and impressive are those in which Merce overlaid various laminas to give the music greater depth and create the illusion of several players interacting. For one person to have planned and executed that in real time on this instrument seems akin to playing 3-D chess while solving a Rubik cube one-handed.
Merce's instrument and its album are two extraordinary achievements. It is going to be fun to see and hear how he develops the instrument and its music in coming years.
John Eyles l All About Jazz l March 2014

The fourth solo sax album on the exceptional french Potlatch label sees the potential to extend the instrument away from its origins pushed even harder. Argentinian Sergio Merce has built a completely new instrument, an alto sax with its original mechanisms and keys removed and replaced with a multitude of water, gas and compressed air taps. The construction of this remarkablae looking instrument is a composition in itself, and Merce created four studies that make up this first recorded appearance of the instrument.
Smooth yet thick microtonal lines cross as he adds a sustain pedal to extend notes into elongated drones that interfere with one another, so sending beating patterns flying all over the place. This a stunningly poised, elegant set of work, the precise construction of tones employed by Merce managing to simultaneously maintain a claustrophobic presence and a continually evident fragility.
Richard Pinnell l The Wire l April 2014

I think it's fair to say that, among labels catering to the portion of the musical spectrum with which we're largely concerned here, Jacque Oger's Potlatch has devoted more time than most to the saxophone, that often shunned instrument, looked at askance (by some) due to the amount of seemingly unremovable baggage retained from its jazz and free jazz incarnations. Perhaps the fact that Oger was a saxophonist himself in his youth (with the fine ensemble, Axolotl in the early 80s) accounts for this. In any case, a listener coming unaware to this recording, without benefit of specific knowledge or seeing the packaging, would be hard pressed to identify the sounds as saxophonic in origin--barely a shred remains, as the Argentinian Sergio Merce has entirely re-imagined the instrument, essentially producing a brand new one.
As can be seen more clearly above, Merce has taken an alto saxophone, removed all the keys and replaced them with various household plumbing fixtures. The videos I've been able to locate (like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjECQo1XvkE) are dimly lit, but I assume he simply uses his fingers as keypads, covering the open apertures. I also take it that by virtue of the devices being screwed in, he's able to adjust the resultant pitches to an extremely precise degree, resulting in the micro-tunings. Plus, I have to say, the object simply looks fantastic. What does it sound like? Well, first off, as explored by Merce on this disc, it's all soft, long-held, gently fluctuating tones; he doesn't (thankfully) take a Brotzmann approach to it--I've no idea how that would work. While it's possible to detect a reedy sensation hovering in the air, the overriding feeling one gets is of electronics. Merce uses a sustain pedal to enable multiple, co-existing lines as well as creating his own multiphonics, enabling a music that approximates some Lucier compositions wherein sine waves and an acoustic instrument are integrated. There's a marvelous shimmering effect in action almost all the time, transparent scrims of tone wafting about, interacting--really a wonderful sound.
The pieces strike me more as explorations than compositions as such, as though Merce is still negotiating his way through the intricacies and mysteries of his creation, which is entirely appropriate. The connections are ephemeral and even ghostly, perhaps with echoes of Radigue (that's likely to be more me than Merce, but I could easily imagine the microtonal sax being put to use by Radigue). He takes his time, allowing the lines to weave their own patterns, very calm, very beautiful. Four tracks, not appreciably different, just subtle variations in pathways, slight shifts in tint, all containing some level of grit that prevents things from sliding off into pastels. Very much worth hearing on its own and I look forward to hearing Merce wield his axe in context with other musicians int he future.
Brian Olewnick l Just Outside l March 2014