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Forma by Lucy Railton, is a work that burrows deep inside. It disorientates and teases, without malice. Its beauty lies in gentle projections, which, though subtle, leave deep impressions, like the wings of a nocturnal moth reflecting dark light. Its path, too, is unpredictable, but such disorientation is not a reflection of chaos. Instead, a mysterious intention appears through an imperious unfolding - its logic escapes us, but nevertheless captivates us. It is the story of a becoming of forms, as well as of their fading away and their appearance as a disappearance . Metabolist Meter (Foster, Cottin, Caetani and a Fly), by Max Eilbacher is a teeming piece, a matrix where textures and structures merge together, where the polyrhythmic instances become timbre, where the formal abstraction of the harmonic volutes coagulates around a vibrating form that is actualized in the dramatic reality of a dying fly. And this formal mastery is not disembodied in Max Eilbacher’s work and the kaleidoscopic forms of the sound spectra that he has deployed know how to resonate in the sensations and experiences of each one. These works, each with their own agenda, evolve with grace and inspiration in their exploration of vast sound worlds, and it is with great pride that we present them in the new collection. Released in association with Editions Mego. Coordination GRM: François Bonnet, Jules Négrier Executive Production: Peter Rehberg
Since debuting his Khotin project in 2014, Edmonton’s Dylan Khotin-Foote has fine-tuned an impressionistic, dream-like style of music that straddles multiple sonic worlds. His output often sways from gentle synthesized atmospherics to hypnotic, dance-minded frameworks. His self-released 2018 LP, Beautiful You, offered a study on melody and memory; the album’s nostalgia-nudging use of passing environments, voices, and abstractions captivated a cult following, a rare 4.5 review in Resident Advisor and the attention of Ghostly International, who pressed the cassette on vinyl for wider circulation in 2019. Now, Khotin reveals his first collection of new material since the signing. The album is a fluid continuation of his blissful and melancholic songcraft, extended humbly and warmly, Finds You Well.
As tongue-in-cheek as the title may appear, the phrase has haunted the producer for some time. Most often seen at the start of correspondence, the words “I hope this email finds you well” can land with varying levels of sincerity, depending on context and mood. Khotin-Foote started to read the line more ominously during the onset of the pandemic. So, this set of music winks at both possibilities, mixing a platitude’s opaque optimism with lurking uncertainty.
Finds You Well can be heard in near-symmetrical halves: its 10 tracks represent the selections from a bounty of demos that, with less modesty, could have filled two records, one active and the other ambient. The resulting set isn’t an even split but it’s close. The A-side centers on the album’s steadiest sequence of beat-centric material. “Ivory Tower” is inextricably tied to benchmarks set by late ‘90s downtempo forerunners, spilling lucious and narcotic synth modulations across a sprinkler’s spray of breakbeats. Khotin’s sprightly melodic noodling brings that touchstone sound into vogue, bubbling up in free-form spurts. The sequence continues through the propulsive “Heavyball,” into “Groove 32,” which begins with a funky bit-clipped drum and bongo boogie. A tight bass-line plugs into place, building a grid for square-wave pads, shimmering melodic textures, and stuttering vocal samples to percolate in.
Khotin’s tone stabilizes on the B-side, balancing decidedly bucolic terrain with suspiciously eerie melancholy. Voices wander in the sprawling frequency sweeps. Organic textures sizzle and sputter in the clouds. “WEM Lagoon Jump” references local West Edmonton folklore, the time a kid jumped from a shopping mall's second-floor balcony into the main pavilion’s fountain. After the splash, we land in the record’s most satisfying stasis, “Your Favorite Building.” A brittle clave and muffled kick hover in a wobbly mist of organ chords; the building is gorgeous, but seen at night, and empty, and from this angle, those shadows seem to crop up more of those subdued tremors, those nostalgic creeps, those droll musings. From behind a wall of melody, a kid peeks their head and softly sings, “you must love the world because it’s wonderful,” the vocal snippet comes courtesy of Khotin-Foote’s sister, Amaris.
For much of Find You Well’s second half, Khotin dabbles in a dusty and slightly detuned piano sound, revealing an artist unafraid to change shapes but maintain course. This set of chimeric visions sidesteps the subdued bombast that fills the A-side; instead, it suggests a counterpoint emphasizing the uncanny overlap between well wishes and empty promises.
it was recorded live at my first concert in new york city in the summer of 2022, right before i recorded iiyo iiyo iiyo and right after i recorded the doober with sam gendel and then Nothing with Louis Cole.
i think it is my most grooving record.
Avian Hydraulics was originally released by the German label Frei zum Abriss Kollektiv as a limited edition of 50 copies, pressed on a liquid-filled lathe-cut 10-inch. A liquid-filled record is a curious object: colored liquid or oil is sealed between two layers of transparent resin, so that when the record is moved, the fluid drifts and blooms into ever-shifting patterns. The concept first surfaced in 1978, when a prototype was developed for a Disney film — but the sealing technology of the era could not keep the liquid from leaking or evaporating, and the idea was abandoned before it ever reached the market. Since 2015, however, development has advanced toward resins that resist leakage and evaporation, bringing the format to where it stands today — though even now it remains an imperfect thing. The imperfections lie chiefly in the sound. By its very structure, room must be reserved inside the disc to hold the liquid, which means the grooves cannot be cut deeply, driving the playback volume to an extreme faintness — for the liquid itself absorbs the vibration of the stylus. In the case of lathe cutting, the grooves are even shallower because the cutting is performed directly onto a rigid resin—such as polycarbonate—rather than vinyl. The result is a double diminishment: the sound vibrations transmit poorly, and both the sonic pressure and the volume fall away. As an art object, the liquid-filled record is a singular and beautiful thing. But to hear the music as it was truly meant to be heard — at full volume, at full pressure, down to the finest detail — the digital version is the honest answer. Since Frei zum Abriss Kollektiv holds to a policy of no digital distribution, we have chosen to release it here, on Bandcamp. This work began, first of all, with the idea of the liquid-filled record itself. From that single image, the artwork and the titles of the songs were gradually drawn out and refined. Masami Akita
etting aside the dread-soaked UK atmosphere of his Karkossyn moniker, Tavis Hitchcock introduces Grandma Love. In stark contrast to his previous work, Grandma Love welcomes listeners home for a warm, hearty stew just before the streetlights come on. Drawing from childhood nostalgia, Cornish summers, and family day trips, Hitchcock pulls the plug on a reservoir of mood and atmosphere that sits somewhere between post-club sofa lounging and early morning coffee mug steam. Following his appearance on Northfield Records' Gilbert Road EP with the track "A2," this self-titled debut album dawns the opening chapter in the Grandma Love story. Filled with field recordings, delicate percussion, washed-out pads, and fragments of home-video VHS recordings, the album opens a time capsule of lost memories, coastal daydreams, and a longing for a time washed far away with the tide.
Originally released in 2016 on Constellation Tatsu, Body Trip introduced Japanese ambient composer H. Takahashi’s quietly immersive approach to minimal electronic composition. Built from delicate synth tones, meditative repetition, and understated melodic movement, the album has become a lasting favorite within contemporary ambient circles. Over the past decade, Takahashi has developed an internationally respected body of work spanning releases such as Raum, Low Power, Escapism, Elegy, and Paleozoic. Beyond his solo output, he has collaborated through projects including UNKNOWN ME, ATORIS, and H TO O, contributed music for installations and exhibitions, and performed throughout Japan’s experimental and ambient music communities. Body Trip (Remixed & Remastered) revisits the original 2016 album with a newly remastered edition alongside reinterpretations from a cross-generational group of contemporary electronic artists. The collection connects H. Takahashi’s meditative ambient language with artists working across contemporary experimental electronics, dub-informed minimalism, ambient techno, and modern new age composition, extending the album’s original aesthetic into a broader contemporary context. Fans and listeners have frequently described Takahashi’s music as calming, minimal, comforting, and deeply transportive, with recent online discussions continuing to highlight Body Trip and Escapism as standout works in modern Japanese ambient music.
Twenty years ago, Jan Jelinek’s debut album Personal Rock was released by Source Records. Under the pseudonym Gramm, it brings together eight tracks that have not been available on vinyl since their original release. Faitiche is very glad to announce the re-release of the album: Personal Rock will appear as a double LP featuring the original cover artwork. What people wrote about Personal Rock two decades ago: “Situated somewhere between Jelinek’s much loved Loop-Finding Jazz Records, Farben, Move D’s Conjoint project and Atom Heart’s most immersive work for Rather Interesting, it’s a late night album full of subtle production tricks and melodic House structures that belong to the pre-millennial IDM heyday, but which transcend its overly-masculine templates.” (Boomkat) “Though many producers have pushed forward the clicks-and-cuts style of experimental ambience developed by German experimentalists Oval (among others), few have been able to match their knack for making abstract cuts into pieces of undeniable beauty. Jan Jelinek’s first LP as Gramm is one of the precious few, and it’s obvious from the opener.” (AllMusic) “Organized in organic structures and minimal movements, the tracks get into utopian states and super-desirable moods, offering superior contentedness and dependable taste of the kind seldom sustained for a whole album. (...) Subway-Escalator-Soul.” (Spex)
The story of each re-release begins with the original. In the late 90s, Uwe Zahn (Arovane), along with Robert Henke (Monolake) and Stefan Betke (Pole), began releasing music on Torsten Pröfrock’s (Dynamo) newly launched DIN label. This was a very inconspicuous undertaking, but fans of the flourishing IDM, glitch, and constantly evolving abstract techno genres quickly picked up on the quality of sound coming out of Germany. After a few successful EPs, Zahn began working on his debut full-length, Atol Scrap. The release was a success, at least in the underground circles, where followers of the melodic harmonies, stuttering off-beat rhythms, and, most importantly, advanced sound design feverishly consumed the imprint’s output. There was only one thing missing – the album was never pressed on vinyl, and for decades remained in the digital domain. The fans, of course, inquired. There were multiple offers on the table, but Zahn retained control until he was assured that it was properly attained. “I thought of taking everything into my own hands and releasing the record myself,” says Zahn, “but at the end of last year, Matthias from Keplar asked me to re-release Atol Scrap on vinyl.” The label and its owner revolve in the Morr Music universe, and so it made sense for Zahn to trust the platform to treat the record right.
Listening to Atol Scrap over twenty years later it is inane not to admit how well it has held up. Where other genres clearly aged, becoming stale, bland, and dull, the music on eleven tasty tracks still keeps the neurons tickled with each note. More than an echo of the past, the bottled sound truly has matured. Many of the newly evolving techniques are recognizable on the album. “I created the digital artifacts with a digital multi-track recorder, the Fostex D80,” recalls Zahn. “The thing had a scrub wheel with which I could achieve wonderful glitch effects by winding through the audio data. I have sampled and further processed these artifacts.” And this approach is still embedded in Zahn’s sound design. “I still use my 24-track analog desk from Tascam to mix my audio. I love to use hardware synths and samplers. I’ve definitely built upon my studio experience in the 90s.” From this debut to the most recent output, Arovane’s sound has evolved to become more intricate, detailed, and pronounced. “My music has become much quieter and much slower. But that’s probably also due to the noise in the world.” And just as Atol Scrap reminds Zahn of the past, retaining charm preserved in a container traveling through time, it also jitters memories of long ago, when we were twenty years younger, less experienced, and bold. For me, among the many records of the time, this album held a special place in life, my heart, and many CD boxes moved across the world. And now I’m only happy to restock the vinyl space, where Atol Scrap belongs among the beloved records. Welcome home. - Mike Lazarev
Otto A. Totland and Erik Skodvin turn the contrast down even further on their fourth album, journeying through nuanced shades with electroacoustic atmospheres that dilate time. RIYL Angelo Badalamenti, Laurel Halo, Biosphere, Richard Skelton. With each subsequent album, Deaf Center have chipped away at some of their signature sound's decorative elements, getting closer to the emotional and stylistic core each time. Since the beginning, they've been inspired by low-lit, noir-esque atmospheres, but where their earliest material hinged around distinct, memorable themes, usually played by Totland on piano, they've evolved to emphasise the mood itself. Indeed, Totland's playing is more languid and measured than ever here, creating a tidal ebb that laps against Skodvin's measured strings and subtle synth tones rather than a fulcrum for each track to pivot around. The two part title track is maybe the best example of their arc; the first part is remarkably gauzy, with each instrument used as ambiance. Pianos shimmer into darkness and oscillators whirr and feed back in the distance as if they're being pulled away by a malfunctioning tape echo. By the long second part, though, we've been transported back to the 'Pale Ravine' era - the moody electroacoustic textures are all but gone and Skodvin has traded his synths for cello, playing in short, sharp strokes against Totland's assertive notes. But even this is fleeting, before the track has finished, its instrumentation is drowned by dissonance and distortion that prepares the palate for 'I Myst', a glitchy, cinematic highlight that'll appeal to fans of Ryuichi Sakamoto's collaborations with Alva Noto. Stick around and you'll hear the duo's first track with a guest musician, too. On 'Further', they invite Berlin-based British composer and producer Simon Goff, who's worked with Hildur Guðnadóttir and Jóhann Jóhansson, among others, to play violin and viola over their frozen soundscapes.
Found Keys is the debut album by American artist Ruth Maine. Although Ruth has been playing and composing music for over two decades, this is the first time she decided to record some of her varied compositions and share them with the public. But in times when it is the norm to clamour for attention, she prefers to go the opposite way. Ruth likes to let her music speak for itself and stay in the shadows.
The 16 short piano pieces heard on this album, each about two to three minutes long, were recorded remotely and purely surrounded by nature. Once a composition was found and Ruth considered it mature, she only recorded it once, embracing the beauty of doing something for the first time with all its little imperfections. Found Keys sounds anything but imperfect though. These compositions feel timeless, intimate and comforting, as if they have been around for a long time, like an old friend. Gently played keys slowly evolve into minimal pieces through repetitive melodies. There’s stillness as much as there’s brightness, sadness as much as joy; welcome to a beautiful journey through Ruth’s world of wonder.
In many ways, Found Keys is a deeply personal record that takes Sonic Pieces back to its roots. And it leaves a feeling of nostalgia while reviving memories of the past.
Music for movies by Václav Kadrnka "Absence of the loved one is a theme running through both films, but during the creative process we never discuss with the Havels the themes, symptoms or attributes of the characters. We do not specify any meanings. Our collaboration is intuitive, based on interconnectedness. We neither explain things to each other nor analyse. From the outset we have a common goal: to quieten the viewers’ perception, to attune them to certain vibrations by visual, musical and acoustic repetitions, thus enabling them to focus on every tiny detail, every subtle aesthetic quality, so that by the end of the film they have a sense of reconciliation. In fact it is a state similar to meditation or prayer. The aim is being shown Mercy. Each time, the linking of the filmed images with Irena and Vojtech’s music has uncovered a new quality that we have named: a commentary on eternity. Characters cease to be determined by their senses, psychological motivations, or the times they live in. They find liberation in the stream of eternal time." /Václav Kadrnka "We would like to thank all our friends, sound engineers and musicians. The main thanks goes to director Václav Kadrnka, his family and all his collaborators for the precious opportunity to assist them in creating both films. We have worked on our music for the film Saving One Who Was Dead for three years. We met with Václav, discussed the screenplay while it was being born and many other things. We have gradually prepared several working versions that included compositions for piano, Indonesian gamelan, gongs, Tibetan bowls, bells and mini-bells. Yet, step by step, we made it simpler and simpler and eventually only kept violas da gamba, organ and chanting. Everything else was redundant. We made most of the recordings of the compositions for viola da gamba in a church in Prague. The composition for organ was recorded in Milan where we performed a concert shortly before the pandemic arrived in December 2019. We tried to record it in various churches in Bohemia but it was not until the church in Milan that we found the best sounding organ. As for Little Crusader, we recorded the music for the film after it was completed. We had several versions and used the piano version for this album. Together with Václav, we searched for instruments that would work the best for this Medieval story. Eventually, we opted for harmonium with simple chanting which accompanies the character little boy Jenik. Violas da gamba intertwine, move close and then apart from each other the same way as paths of little boy Jenik and his father who is searching for him. Simple chanting and Tibetan bowl accompany scenes with little boy Jenik’s mother who awaits them at home. Trombone and saxophone are like metal swords and the knights’ armor. Violoncello and viola da gamba walk in the rhythm of horse’s hooves, in the rhythm of heartbeat of both the horse and his rider – a father searching for his lost son." / Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi
src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2063437934/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless=""><a href="https://havlovi.bandcamp.com/album/saving-one-who-was-dead-little-crusader">Saving One Who Was Dead / Little Crusader The Havels / Irena & Vojtech Havlovi</a>
Last heard on Black Truffle as one quarter of the joyously anarchic Bergisch-Brandenburgisches Quartett, Hans Reichel (1949-2011) is one of the great figures of experimental guitar music. Though perhaps lesser known than peers like Derek Bailey, Fred Frith and Keith Rowe, Reichel’s rethinking of the instrument was in some ways the most radical of all. Early on, he dispensed with existing guitars to build a series of his own that explored the use of additional strings and fretboards, moveable pickups, extra bridges, special capos, and other innovations documented in the extensive booklet accompanying this release.
What strikes the listener right from the opening selection on Dalbergia Retusa—‘Return of the Knödler show’, from 1987’s The Dawn of Dachsman—is the extraordinary beauty of Reichel’s music, at once alien in the shimmering sonorities and unconventional pitch relationships made possible by his invented instruments, and deeply lyrical, even romantic in its harmonic content. Growing up in West Germany in the 1960s, Reichel’s formative influences were mainly British and American rock bands, a background that shines through in many of the pieces included here: ‘An old friend passes by’ is haunted by the ghost of Hendrix’s rhythm guitar, and the wild closer ‘Heimkehr der Holzböcke’, taken from a rare 1975 7” and the only piece to use overdubbing, layers errant hammer-on and slide tones over a Canned Heat boogie chug.
Reichel was an important source for the development of Oren Ambarchi’s own extended approach to the electric guitar. Appropriately enough, his selection opens with the very first piece by Reichel he ever heard, on a flexidisc included with a 1989 issue of Guitar Player magazine. Though Reichel collaborated with others extensively in many settings and also performed on violin and his other major contribution to instrument invention, the daxophone, his music for solo guitar remains at the core of his oeuvre.
Focusing exclusively on solo pieces recorded between 1973 and 1988, the 23 pieces on Dalbergia Retusa showcase the range and consistency of Reichel’s work, allowing the listener to see how his performances developed hand-in-hand with his instrumental inventions. On a piece from his very first LP, played on an 11-string instrument (partly strung with piano strings and using a schnapps glass a slide), we hear his intensive exploration of fret-hammering to create zither-like, chiming tone, which Reichel would hone further in later years with a double fretboard guitar specifically designed to be hammered rather than fretted and picked. On a piece from 1979’s Death of the Rare Bird Ymir, Reichel uses two steel-string acoustic guitars at once, with beautiful results: ‘some even say too beautiful’, he jokes in the interview included here. Many of the pieces from the 1980s make use of varieties of the ‘pick behind the bridge guitar’, instruments of uncanny harmonic richness primarily designed to be played on the ‘wrong’ side of the bridge. At times the unexpected behaviour of attacks, resonance, and decay can almost seem electronic, conjuring up the technology-assisted work of Henry Kaiser or even Fennesz, but realised solely through Reichel’s unorthodox techniques on his invented instruments.
The terms “nursery rhymes” and “children’s songs” may give rise to visions of idyllic innocence and the charms of childhood, but "Play Nursery Rhymes and Children's Songs" by Tokiyo Ooto & Orhythmo, their first release on EM Records, brings forth quite different aural imagery: this is an eerie and unsettling sonic picture book which hints at the darkness and mystery which form the hidden heart of many traditional songs and rhymes. The length of the songs provides a hint: each piece delves deeply into the latent uncanniness of the music, with superficial innocence gradually displaced as electric guitar, bass, field recordings and concrete sounds draw the listener into a chilly forest, while Tokiyo Ooto’s voice croons dark “lullabies for adults,” blending elements of folk, slowcore and dream pop. The Tokiyo Ooto & Orhythmo duo formed in 2023, releasing their first album in 2024. This release updates two pieces from the first album, and also includes a traditional Japanese children’s song from Shiga Prefecture and a masterpiece for children by composer Yasushi Akutagawa. Both musicians are Osaka-based: Otoo is a guitarist and singer-songwriter who also works in band and solo contexts; Orhythmo is a bassist with hardcore punk roots who focuses on improvisation, drone, noise and ambient sound. This release is available on CD, vinyl and DL; physical versions feature a printed insert with Japanese and English lyrics. The evocative cover is by Yoshitomo Ano.
Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. Since its original release in 1977, RAGNAR GRIPPE's seminal debut album entitled Sand has been adorned with immense praise and influenced a myriad of ambient musicians and minimalist composers. Grippe’s unique approach of bonding post-modern classical composition into the tape techniques of musique concrète allowed him to be one of the leading experimental electronic musicians of the late 20th century. Originally trained as a classical cellist, Grippe had relocated to Paris in the early 70’s to study at the famous Groupe de Recherches Musicales (more commonly known as GRM) founded by musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Jacques Poullin. Around the same time, Grippe had struck up a close friendship with French avant-garde minimalist Luc Ferrari. It was under Ferrari’s direction and guidance that the young Grippe started to build a shared experimental music studio, aptly named l’Atelier de la Libération Musicale (ALM), in which Ferrari shared his knowledge and instrumental supplies, thus forging Grippe’s implementation of harmonic tone within the confines of musique concrete. After a brief stint of electronic music study at McGill University in Montreal, Grippe returned to Paris in 1976 to compose with Ferrari at the now fully-realized ALM studio. One of the visiting artists passing through the creative epicenter of the Cité Internationale des Arts during this time was the painter Viswanadhan Velu. Velu’s recent works consisted of various Sand paintings which were to be exhibited at the Galerie Shandar, the avant-garde art gallery and home to the Shandar record label which was the home to minimalist composers Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Cecil Taylor and Charlemagne Palestine. Grippe was asked to compose a composition that was to be played during the Sand painting exhibition and was then to be released on the Shandar imprint in 1977. This release would be the first official album that would start Grippe’s career as a modern avant-garde composer and electronic musician. After a celebrated release, “Sand” has since been out-of-print on its original vinyl format for four decades and original copies fetch high prices amongst minimalist listeners and collectors.
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In May 1984 I appeared at a German festival called Pro
Musica Nova, organized by Radio Bremen. I then travelled to
Berlin by car with Rolf Langebertels, the owner of Galerie
Giannozzo who had driven to Bremen to hear me perform. I still
remember very vividly the experience of passing through the
checkpoint to enter West Berlin, a city that floated like an island
in the middle of the still socialist GDR. I had previously visited
Berlin in 1982 to perform at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien at an event
that Rolf had organized. This time too Rolf had organized a
concert for me at the Technische Universitat. Playing off the title
of the piece (“Study Time”) I had performed at Pro Musica
Nova, I titled the piece for this concert “Zeitstudie”.
I owe Rolf a great deal of gratitude, as it was him who
encouraged me by releasing my very first cassette tape,
“Zeitstudie von Akio Suzuki”. In recent years it has become
difficult for me to carry heavy instruments around with me, and
I have started to do simpler performances with objects
assembled on site. So it feels wonderful to have the sound of
the battery of instruments I used back then to be returned to the
light of day.
On “Zeitstudie von A.S.” I used an ANALAPOS, the echo
instrument I invented in 1970, and the Suzuki-type glass
harmonica that I created in 1975. The ANALAPOS resembles the
tin-can telephone that children used to play with: two metal
cans, open at one end and connected by a coil spring. You
play it by stretching out the spring horizonally and then
projecting your voice into the open end of one of the
cylinders. The second piece features a variation, where I
would suspend several ANALAPOS vertically and play them like
a percussion instrument.
The Suzuki-type glass harmonica is in a simpler form than the
pre-existing glass harmonica, and consists of five long glass
tubes of varying diameters suspended horizontally in a metal
frame. As well as rubbing the tubes with wet hands, I developed
my own style of playing it using sticks. Once when I was
practicing with it in the Netherlands, outside the window I was
surprised to hear a bird imitating my sounds. However, later I
discovered that the bird always sang that way, and as a token
of my regret for having ever doubted it, I borrowed the bird’s
Dutch name, De Koolmees, and I s till use it for my instrument.
Recently, as I listened back to the cassette of “Zeitstudie von
A.S.”, one of Hiromi Miyakita’s drawings was lying in front of me.
There was a sympathetic resonance between the sounds and the
drawing, so I decided to use it on the cover. This is a joyful music.
Over the past several years, the recorded output of Carl Stone has been turned on its head. In previous decades, Stone perennially toured new work but kept a harboring gulf of time between the live performances and their recorded release. This not only reflected the careful consideration of the pieces and technical innovations that went into the music but also the largely academic-minded audience that was themselves invested in the history and context of the work. The time span of Stone's recorded output in both sheer musical duration and year range was generously expansive. Following multiple historical overviews of Stone's work on Unseen Worlds and a re-connection with a wider audience, the time between Stone's new work in concert and on record has grown shorter and shorter until there is now almost no distance at all. Stone's work has often at its core explored new potential within popular cultural musics, simultaneously unspooling and satisfying a pop craving. On Stolen Car, the forms of Carl Stone's pieces have also become more compact, making for a progressive new stage in Stone's career where he is not only creating out of pop forms but challenging them.
Stolen Car is the gleeful, heart racing sound of hijack, hotwire, and escape. Stone carries the easy smirk and confidence of a car thief just out of the can, a magician in a new town setting up a game of balls and cups. With each track he reaches under the steering wheel and yanks a fistful of wires. Boom, the engine roars to life, the car speeds off into the sunset, the cups are tipped over, the balls, like the car, are gone.
"These tracks were all made in late 2019 and 2020, much of when I was in pandemic isolation about 5000 miles from my home base of Tokyo. All are made using my favorite programming language MAX. However distinct these two groupings might be they share some common and long-held musical concerns. I seek to explore the inner workings of the music we listen to using techniques of magnification, dissection, granulation,, anagramization, and others. I like to hijack the surface values of commercial music and re-purpose them offer a newer, different meaning, via irony and subversion." - Carl Stone, Los Angeles, September 2020
