STONE WALKING

 In the current issue of The Wire magazine the very wonderful Carl Stone is interviewed by 

the very wonderful Emily Bick.  This is one of the pictures accompanying the article.

 

Carl Stone

I can’t describe Carl Stone’s work any better than Emily Bick does: ‘snatches of sound sampled and looped, layered and time-shifted, decontextualized and transformed … The results are as mind-melting as you’d expect if you fed tape loops through a psychedelic Cuisinart, followed by a hacker-modified replicator from Star Trek.’

 

I also happen to know, because I follow him on Instagram that Stone something of walker and he takes photographs as he goes, and since he divides his time between Tokyo and Los Angeles this produces some very interesting results.

 

In Tokyo this kind of thing:

In Los Angeles this kind of thing:

 

Since both these places are his home I don’t suppose this counts as ‘traveling’ but I found this interesting remark of his from a 2016 interview with the magazine LA Record from 2016

‘When I travel, unlike tourists who might have a camera strapped on, I walk around with a portable recorder looking for interesting sounds. I don’t necessarily have a goal in mind. Sometimes there are certain places that I know should have interesting sounds. I’m very attracted to marketplaces and things like that. And I especially like urban soundscapes, so when I go to a city, I will always have my recorder handy. I think I mentioned earlier that I lived in Tokyo for six months back in the late 80s, and at that time, I had a portable digital recorder. It’s what’s called a DAT recorder and a stereo microphone and a pair of headphones, just walking around soaking up the sounds.’

 

There are two photographs accompanying The Wire article, the one at the top of this post and also this one:

 

It does not strike me as the most flattering picture of Mr. Stone, and then I saw that the photographer was Michael Schmelling who is a top photographer, but I too have been photographed by him, and flattery is really not what he does.  We can live with that.  We have to.