Carl Stone: Electronic Music from 1972–2022

[Editor's note: Selected reviews are posted on the Web at http://www.computermusicjournal.org (click on the Reviews tab). In some cases, they are either unpublished in the Journal itself or published in an abbreviated form in the Journal.]This triple-LP collection contains 50 years of Carl Stone's electronic music, featuring eleven compositions, mostly arranged chronologically, ranging in length between 3 and 23 minutes. The composer is well known for his experimental forays into sampling technologies. He has produced electroacoustic music since the early 1970s, studying his craft at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney. From the mid 1980s on, he pioneered live computer music performances at a time when the norm was to produce fixed-media works.The liner notes for this collection place it into context. This recording featuring Electronic Music from 1972–2022 seeks to frame fifty years of Carl Stone's compositional activity, starting with Stone's earliest professionally presented compositions from 1972 (‘Three Confusongs’ and ‘Ryound Thygyzunz’ [stet], featuring the voice and poetry of Stefan Weiser – later known as Z'EV) up to the present. This collection is not meant as a definitive history but rather as a supplement to be used alongside the previous two archival releases. It is simultaneously an archival release marking Carl Stone's evergreen 70th birthday and a document of archival art. In the spirit of disorienting repetition and layering, call it an archive of archiving.Stone's compositional practice began to take shape when he was a graduate student at CalArts. In a paid position, his job was to preserve thousands of albums by transferring them to tape formats. By recording multiple discs at the same time, he discovered various chance coincidences produced as by-products of the recording process. Since then “he's explored various ways to compose this process, creating temporal envelopes in which found sounds—existing tracks or field recordings—can take form.” The recording technologies have changed over the years, but Stone's use of pre-existing audio fragments has remained firm. The liner notes poetically describe “Stone's impish collage-like constructions of times cut from time suggest that archival records are neither wholly in documents preserved from change nor in living memories and use, but in their interaction.” I would characterize this as a process of living provocation, requiring the technologies that are used in the process of production.The first two works from this collection testify to the value of revisiting older works in a composer's retrospective release. It is especially “ear-opening” to consider that these two works come from a pre-digital era in which electroacoustic composers explored inventive techniques that were, more often than not, based upon pushing the then-contemporary technologies beyond what they may have been designed for, or upon creating sounds from by-products of machines in operation.“Three Confusongs” from 1972 utilizes low-frequency oscillators in combination with vocal samples. The composer uses an imitative counterpoint similar to Steve Reich's “Come Out,” but with even more focus on the resultant musical textures and musical anomalies. The issue of anomalies and by-products brings to mind the work of a very different composer—Alvin Lucier—but also points to Stone's influence on much younger composers such as Aaron Dilloway. As I listened to the very long fade at the end of this piece, I heard an anomaly that had been eradicated with the advent of noise reduction and digital technologies, namely, tape hiss. This formerly unwanted by-product seemed like a welcomed attribute in Stone's work.The second work, “Ryouund Thygizunz,” also from 1972, was about twice as long as the first work. The title onomatopoeically spells out the first vocal sound heard in the piece. Stone uses a variety of processing techniques familiar to composers of musique concrete, including common filtering techniques as well as tape speed manipulations. The work is shaped by the presence—or, more often, the absence—of recognizable sounds. The varied palette of electronic sound textures heard is rarely monotonous, thanks to Stone's abilities to select initially intriguing sounds as his source material. Similar to Brian Eno's ambient recordings, this piece sounds out an imaginary, virtual space, even as it refuses to reveal the identities of its source materials. This piece is also characterized by a series of long swaths of materials that slowly morph or change identity, in a continually changing vortex that makes for some interesting listening. Like much of Stone's work, the identity of the source material is concealed or partially revealed, depending on the composition, in true acousmatic form.“Vim” (1987), the third work, was quite surprising to hear after two pieces that were atmospheric or amorphically rhythmic, i.e., they lacked stress patterns commonly found in much traditional music. “Vim,” on the other hand, begins with samples that present clearly rhythmic ostinato patterns for which he used a computer-controlled sampler. This work seems to partake in the offerings of mid-1980s digital technologies, including the digital version of FM synthesis, within a convincing take on pop music. Not unlike contemporaneous work by Laurie Anderson, Stone created a composition that straddles the boundaries between “serious” concert music and more “popular” forms.Initially, we hear harmonized vocals on offbeats singing “Vim,” another harmonized vocal occurring less often singing “I love you,” a percussive timbre similar to a timpani sound on downbeats; background strings; and a digital piano playing a series of primary chords, beginning with the tonic and ending with a dominant triad.The artificial-sounding vocal samples are one of the characteristic qualities of this piece. Stone slices and dices them, altering them in ways as to disguise their identities. One example, perhaps as a nod to the composer's California roots, contains samples that were lifted from the Beach Boys’ song “Fun, Fun, Fun.” The original context was radically changed with the samples being so well integrated into “Vim” that they became bona fide identity markers for Stone's piece. This approach to sampling also played significant roles in the genre known as plunderphonics, first introduced by Canadian composer John Oswald in the mid 1980s.Another characteristic quality of this work is the timpani, or stretched-head drum sound, which sounded like it was produced via the well-known Karplus-Strong physical modeling synthesis method. The first works that utilized this technique were released in the early 1980s, including “May All Your Children Be Acrobats,” written in 1981 by David Jaffe. Stone first uses this sound to provide support for the beat structure. Later on in the piece he humorously develops its role in a soloistic passage.The next work, “Noor Mahal,” composed in 1987, begins as a virtual percussion piece that uses familiar cross rhythms. After two and a half minutes the rhythms change, initiating a section that adds string or hurdy-gurdy samples to the rhythmic backdrop. Comparisons might be made with Steve Reich's work for percussion, but Stone seems to be focused more on transitions that rely upon studio techniques, as in Reich's early work. “Noor Mahal” also resembles some compositions by Terry Riley, but here Stone is unafraid to let his material groove along for long stretches of subtly altered time. There is a sense of immediacy that doesn't require a college degree to understand.When I first heard “Flint's” (1999), I was taken with the rhythmic unevenness of Stone's sampled materials. We hear cyclical rhythms that sound as if they were prematurely cut short, similar to how some present-day rap or hip-hop musicians create the sense of lagging behind or jumping ahead in their percussion tracks. Stone's material in this piece sounds like it was taken from late 1990s pop, dance music. About two minutes into the composition Stone adds additional rhythmic layers that create a palpable rhythmic dissonance. Overall, the listener is confronted with music that results from sampling and DJ techniques used to emphasize radical changes, rather than the gradual changes that traditional DJs use to keep folks on the dance floor.“Morangak,” the sixth work from this collection, was composed in 2005. I would describe it as video game music stalled in a locked groove. We also hear heavy doses of flange, fast panning techniques, and short, repeated samples that seem to produce aftereffects or aural illusions as the listener's brain attempts to make sense of it all. These aural byproducts are equivalent to strobe effects in the visual domain, and equally disturbing for those of us adversely affected by such things. The smooth transitions between sections sound like they could only have been produced with computer technology. After several minutes of listening to this piece it suddenly dawned on me where the sample had come from: “Bicycle Race” by Queen. The fact that I did not instantly identify this well-known song from the beginning is a testament to Stone's subtle use of standard developmental techniques one might find in any composer's toolbox. Also, more generally, Stone has clearly spent a lot of time carefully selecting and manipulating his sampled materials. In this instance, the overall result was mesmerizing.The next piece breaks with the chronological presentation, as it was composed two years before “Morangak.” “Ngoc Suong” is similar to the opening of “Morangak” but with a slower pace of development. There is also a noticeable use of artifacts from the digital sampling process, including digital distortion and audible clicks at the beginnings and endings of each reiterated sample. The sampled material includes sharply attacked percussive sounds (like gunshots), a variety of voice-like timbres, a low-frequency bass sound that serves to anchor everything else, and an acoustic piano. The casual listener might experience a bit of tedium when listening to this rather lengthy 22 and a half minute piece. But for others, there are enough compositional and processing changes that take place to hold one's attention. In fact, I would describe this work as a tour de force of Stone's, which celebrates sampling technology and a composer who excels at its artistic utilization.“L'Os à Moelle” is another lengthy work, clocking in at 23:17. This piece begins with a familiar, sampled, three-chord, rock band groove. Its generic qualities make it almost instantly recognizable, but paradoxically, those same qualities make its exact origin difficult to pinpoint or identify. The vocals are disguised by a filtering technique that makes them sound like another guitar part. The opening ostinato groove continues largely unabated for the duration of the composition, while other layers, some in obviously different keys, are added and transformed. The layers seem to battle one another, creating a slowly evolving audible friction. By the two-thirds mark I was rooting for the material from the beginning to be vanquished from the mix. But this was not to be. This work contains some challenging listening. The title apparently refers to the name of a restaurant, which includes the notion of marrow inside a bone. This latter sense applies quite well to the sampled material itself, as per the paradox mentioned above.The last three compositions were composed most recently, in 2022, utilizing software the composer wrote within the Max programming environment. I was curious to hear how the composer's techniques had evolved to the present day. Would his source material be more varied? Would the transformational changes be even subtler? How was he now working with issues of identification, and which acoustic approaches had he retained?In “Walt's” we first hear a contemporary fusion of jazz and African rhythms. Then Stone introduces vocal samples that sound like they came from India, West Africa, or somewhere in the Middle East. Without the vocals, the music resembles American pop music but imported into another culture or aesthetic context. This piece raises some questions about cultural appropriation but also demonstrates commonalities between very different countries and contexts.As in “L'Os à Moelle,” the vocal samples in “Kustaa” are heavily disguised, using a vocoder-sounding device that renders source recognition difficult. It seemed to have some kind of strummed instrument, but I was unable to determine where and when this music came from. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was a sped-up version of a chanson from the late medieval or early Renaissance period.In the last piece, “Merkato,” I heard string instruments, perhaps from Asia, combined with contemporary rock and rhythmic materials perhaps from South America or Africa. Stone also uses some dropouts that punctuate the texture in ways not heard in the other pieces. In short, the last three works sounded like experimental departures that used sampled music to produce a cultural fusion with a variety of musical elements from around the world.In the liner notes for this triple LP, from the Unseen Worlds webpage, Jace Clayton writes: Carl's output dissolves many of the binaries by which aesthetic experience is classified: it's ornate and streamlined, placid and overwhelming, austere and ridiculous, atomized and collective, recognizable and alien, riotously original and notably thefty. This work celebrates the power of and. There is always more, more and more, metabolized in ways that suggest further openings. Carl Stone shatters songs in order to upend our expectations of what a song can be, and he achieves this by joining audio slivers together, or by stretching a few seconds of sound into a quarter-hour moment.His life's work has focused on “reordering, extending, or otherwise wilding out on small pieces of sound/time.” Stone refers to this process as “anagramming.” This concept “gets at the heart of what sound is by breaking down a sound's language into its core parts.” This collection of works celebrates an important composer's exploratory probing of a variety of compositional techniques with contemporaneous technologies that he has made his own.

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