Carl Stone: Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties
Unseen Worlds

Carl Stone's previous Unseen Worlds collection, 2016's Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties, was such an artistic and critical success, it's only natural that a follow-up would materialize. Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties is no pale shadow of its predecessor; if anything, the new set is as compelling as the first and, more importantly, adds significantly to the impression established by it in showing how Stone's methods evolved as the ‘80s moved into the ‘90s. That being said, Tim Rutherford-Johnson (who, along with Robin Rimbaud and Stone himself, contributed liner notes to the release) is astute in noting that while technical advances did influence Stone's production methods during those decades, his aesthetic wasn't affected in corresponding manner, it remaining consistent regardless of the production means in play. Better technology simply allowed him to create material more efficiently and less onerously, and the days of cutting and re-stitching micro-loops became a distant memory once computer resources enabled him to do so digitally. Being a double-LP set featuring four pieces (one of them, “Mae Yao,” previously unreleased), the new set also is less exhaustive than the earlier one, a three-LP release that featured eight pieces by the American electro-acoustic visionary.

A few other details are critical to note about Stone's material. Like much contemporary computer-generated music, his is innovative and explorative, but there's a strong emotional dimension, too. Rather than wholly concealing his source materials, he also isn't afraid to let a sample stand naked, so to speak, and allowing it to appear in its originating form also provides a reference point that allows one to hear how radically altered it is after being subjected to Stone's manipulations. Moments are present on Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties when Stone's music shares certain qualities with the glitchy experiments of Oval and the loop-based repetition of the early Steve Reich works Come Out and It's Gonna Rain. Similar to those latter pieces, a Stone production advances incrementally over time, though in his case the material is fixated to a lesser degree on extreme reduction. The rapid advances in music technology that occurred during the ‘80s and ‘90s are mirrored in the production methods used to create the four pieces. When he composed “Woo Lae Oak” in 1981, for example, desktop computing was in its infancy, yet by 1990 when he composed “Banteay Srey,” processing units and MIDI were commonly available and the laptop era was just around the corner.

A sample of a Burundi child's song is the foundation Stone used to produce “Banteay Srey,” one of the set's more soothing compositions. By stretching the sample and wrapping it within a delicate synthetic-styled blanket, he amplifies the dream-like effect produced by their combination, resulting in a warm electronic lullaby marked by gentle undulations and Eno-like synth atmospheres. Stone's music typically mutates rather than stays in one place, and “Banteay Srey” is no exception: gradually the sample recedes, leaving the keyboard textures to perpetuate the serene mood alone until opera-derived vocal fragments arise to give the material an entirely new identity.

When electric piano patterns rapidly tinkle during its opening minutes, “Sonali” invokes Reich also, though this time it's the mutating patterns interlocking in Music for 18 Musicians that's the reference point. Soon enough, however, Stone exchanges Reich for Oval as loops stutter and patterns grow glitchier, the pitter-pattering music taking on the quality of a wind-up toy as its parts incessantly flutter. Eventually severely chopped Mozart opera samples elbow their way into the arrangement, but no matter how playful and rambunctious the material gets, musicality remains firmly in place due to Stone's controlling hand.

Stone's no minimalist, formally speaking, but the tape piece “Woo Lae Oak” definitely sees him leaning in that direction. Using little more than a tremolo string and a bottle being blown across the top as samples, he manipulates the sound sources to generate an insistent thrum of wooden flute-like tones and shuddering strings that feels like it could extend for hours longer than the twenty-three minutes included here (the piece first appeared on Joan La Barbara's Wizard Records in 1983 and was subsequently issued on CD in complete form by Unseen Worlds in 2008).

Though the metallic clanks of an Indonesian gamelan ensemble introduce “Mae Yao,” it's not long before their playing's shredded into dizzying hiccups. Madly gyrating like some out-of-control music box, the material whirrs and flickers until it morphs into waves looping so intensively seasickness could result. In what's certainly one of the release's most startling (and moving) moments, “Mae Yao” completes its twenty-three-minute journey by revealing the supplications of a female vocalist as the original source for the track's material.

Any Stone devotee who acquired the earlier Unseen Worlds set should and likely will regard the new one as indispensable; certainly the two together provide a comprehensive account of the composer's output from the ‘70s to the ‘90s, even if the work he's produced during two most recent decades obviously isn't accounted for, though perhaps that's still to come.

July 2018