Carl Stone - Wat Dong Moon Lek [Unseen Worlds 042]

The Unseen Worlds label once again is back with a new album outing by 1953-born American composer and sound manipulator Carl Stone which - speaking in terms of release dates only - is one of the crassest examples of the dire and fragile state of the music industry we've seen up until this day with the CD album released on May 20th, 2k22 and the vinyl version roughly announced for January 2k23 which makes us wonder how long customers and fans might be willing to cope with such a gap and, despite the vinyl production delays are not to blame on the label in any way, if a policy of releasing both formats that far apart might actually hurt vinyl sales in the long run. This said, "Wat Dong Moon Lek" sees Carl Stone exploring the world of Max/MSP driven composition over the course of seven pieces and a total runtime of roughly 37 minutes, starting from a point of densely layered, extremely Cut-Up driven superchromatic HyperPop with the albums opener "Rikido", drifting further into a sphere of slightly washed out and diffuse SinoSkweee with "Longo" before "Korzo" presents a highly fragmented take on somewhat cheesy Jazz and choir infused Pop which evokes memories of rapidly decaying CD-r copies dug up from the archives after 20+ years of improper storage. With "Mozell's" Carl Stone presents a more romantic and accessible, yet still rather abstract variation of what could be 50s-leaning AvantgardeJazz whilst the title cut that is "Wat Dong Moon Lek" offers a trip even further down the timeline with its harmonic vintage voice layers whereas "Apsara" weighs in eerily unnerving, quivering frequency workouts alongside indifferent pseudo-percussive shifts and otherwise messy loop (not loop) business for the higly headstrong and the concluding "Jangara" comes at us with more of a Punk / Hardcore-leaning intensity despite seemingly being rooted in fully deconstructed samples of some kind of SouthEast Asian traditional music. Recommended for a reason. Go check.

Album artwork on Instagram!