With the exception of "Sumiya", all tracks on this album were recorded in the first week of November 2021 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Hospital, where Carl Stone was confined due to complications from a gallstone attack – hence the album title. Carl is not the first to discover that the tedium of a hospital stay can be greatly relieved by concentrated musical activity (c.f. J. Dilla, Brian Eno and others). Surreptitious delivery of his laptop (outside goods were banned because of COVID-19 restrictions) and the enabling of internet access allowed work to begin. The tracks were created with the MAX programming language and composed using headphones, which are recommended for listening.
"Sumiya" was recorded at in the studios of Radio Free Nakano, February 2021, under normal health conditions.
Press
Blow Up (Translated from Italian), November 2022
"The American master (but partly adopted by Japan) of sampling demonstrates a remarkable sense of humor given the circumstances in which this mini-album was made: hospitalized in Tokyo for gallstones (gallstones) he (Carl Stone) entitles "Gall Tones" the record made during hospitalization with laptop and headphone. The result has a playful, witty and pleasantly pop-schizoid flavor, demonstrating that the long career and the infirmities of age have not eroded the ability to play with sound material with flair and unpredictability." dusted magazine
“Aside from the out-of-the-ordinary circumstances surrounding this release, the music itself defies expectations, with the idea of a gall stone hospital stay perhaps suggesting music of a more tortured, moribund nature. Instead, Stone brings us five tracks that would burn a hole through any dance floor. The sheer volcanic exuberance of these pieces couldn’t be further removed from the notion of hospital confinement.”
WIRE 465 - November 2022
“Gall Tones now serves up for our delectation that tangy selection of craftily sliced and spliced dancefloor mutations. The ingredients were chosen with Stone’s customary mix of humour and cunning, using finely honed techniques to ensure that each track bears his signature, along with its own distinctive flavour.” - Julian CowleyTrack List
DIGITAL TRACK LIST
- Sumiya (3:50)
- Mouram (3:10)
- Tokiwarai (3:44)
- Vatanim (3:52)
- Tou Tou (5:38)
Credits
About Carl Stone
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Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music. He studied composition at CalArts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. When New Music was exiting the loft scene of the 1970s and entering the more commercial realm of the 1980s, Stone guided his art through that transition period by fusing his compositional ambitions with systems of live performance that were simultaneously pop savvy, commercially suicidal, and technologically forward-thinking. He moved away from pure electronic sound and was among the vanguard of artists incorporating turntables, early digital samplers, and personal computers into live electronic music composition. An adopter of the Max programming language while it was still in its earliest development at the IRCAM research center, Stone continues to use it as his primary instrument, both solo and in collaboration with other improvisers. In addition to his work as a composer, Stone served as Music Director of KPFK-FM in Los Angeles from 1978-1981, director of Meet the Composer California from 1981-1997, and President of the American Music Center from 1992-1995. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Japan, where he retired as a faculty member of the Department of Media Engineering at Chukyo University.