Spending some time this year with Carl Stone and seeing him play live was the perfect reason to fully explore his discography. Unseen Worlds’ two collections of his work perfectly frame his incredible sample mangling aural zips.
But 2007’s Al-Noor gives the listener a far more exposed sampledelic treatment to his source material. Working like a sonic spotlight, applying his approach and techniques to a seemingly wider grouping of starting points. It’s also the album that famously screws-up Aqua’s Barbie Girl with spectacularly bulbous results in Flints.
But it’s the final 25-minute expansion of L ‘Os à Moelle which creates a sonic mandala of a looping grooving meditation of the Byrd’s track – Stranger In A Strange Land.
Stone’s work consistently opens up strobing wormholes in the listener’s mind. This track in particular sits perfectly poised at the ungainly seam between psychedelic rock and computer software. The results however, open the very soul of the original. The looping slowly reveals an undercurrent of an even more insistent groove, a reflection inside a reflection. A blistering rock and roll raga draped in strange sonic accumulation. The whole late sixties trip towards the kaleidoscope in one track.
Dizzyingly and hugely addictive, if proof was needed – Stone’s work is a treasure.
Al-Noor is available via iTunes
Read our interview with Carl Stone here and here
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