Armed with a laptop, an L.A. composer from Tokyo uses sound to create place

TOKYO — The Suidōbashi metro presumption was packed with Tokyo rockers connected the past Saturday successful October for an Oasis reunion performance astatine the Tokyo Dome, a landmark shot stadium crossed the street. I, however, wandered astir the artifact onto a nondescript residential thoroughfare seeking retired a gathering with a secreted Ftarri sign. That is simply a cramped basement show abstraction with country for 20 folding chairs and a tiny signifier connected which determination were 2 tables acceptable up for electronics.

Shelves on the walls were filled with hundreds of obscure CDs and DVDs for merchantability featuring improvisors and avant-gardists. This sold-out lawsuit featured young dependable creator Elico Suzuki, who goes by suzueri. She had that greeting made small transparent integrative cubes with physics circuitry inside. When she pushed them astir her table, they emitted whistles and wails, which a giggly suzueri accompanied by singing into a microphone, adding her ain charmingly oddball whistles and wails.

Next to her was a 72-year-old cult-legend laptop composer dressed successful achromatic and wearing his trademark fedora, conveying ageless cool. There was nary mode to fig retired what Carl Stone was up to. He sat and stared astatine his screen, positioned distant from the audience, arsenic inscrutable arsenic idiosyncratic astatine a cafe moving connected a laptop.

There were nary wheres oregon whys to what came retired of his iPad. Stone transforms and distorts sounds helium records of our sonic situation arsenic radically and arsenic astonishingly arsenic a sculptor does with stone.

In their hourlong improvisation, the laptop-ist appeared to avuncularly usher the giddy cube-ist, portion besides indulging her excited climactic outbursts. The improvisation petered retired aft much than an hr with nary consciousness of arrival, conscionable an agreeable sensation of being OK successful wherever ambient satellite you had conscionable landed.

Stone, who volition contiguous a caller enactment astatine the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center successful Little Tokyo connected Thursday night, doesn’t acceptable into ambient euphony (he’s acold excessively resourceful for that) oregon immoderate genre. He regularly tours the world, and helium often performs with a wide scope of instrumentalists and singers worlds apart. A week later, I heard Stone successful different improvisational evening astatine a somewhat larger and much established experimental Tokyo theatre wherever helium grounded a bizarrely incongruous trio that included a seasoned Japanese smooth-jazz, ambient-friendly saxophonist and a young, radical, frighteningly aggravated butoh dancer.

Despite each this — oregon due to the fact that of it — Stone happens to beryllium a quintessential Los Angeles composer. He’s from the San Fernando Valley, wherever helium grew up with an enthusiasm for classical euphony and opera, on with yearning for urbanity. That led to toying astir with progressive 1960s popular euphony and past attending CalArts, wherever helium studied with pioneering physics euphony composers.

But Stone — chatting implicit a brew and snacks successful an out-of-the-way Tokyo alley aft we had attended the refreshingly modernist Dairakudakan butoh company’s mentation of “Rite of Spring” — says helium recovered revelation arsenic overmuch from a pupil occupation successful the CalArts room arsenic astatine the synthesizer.

Carl Stone successful Tokyo, wherever he’s been surviving for 25 years.

(Mark Swed / Los Angeles Times)

His room task was to dub each LP successful the postulation onto cassettes. This included uncommon discs of satellite music, arcane implicit bid of aboriginal classical music, Ravi Shankar playing Indian ragas, Led Zeppelin and everything successful between.

“I heard each this unthinkable music,” Stone explains. “I loved it and inactive do. But what truly changed my beingness was that this was a Sisyphean task I could ne'er decorativeness due to the fact that determination was caller worldly coming faster than I could transcript it.

“So I projected that they acceptable up aggregate turntables and aggregate portion recorders, which I could usage successful parallel. I would past perceive to 3 antithetic albums astatine the aforesaid time, and I began to announcement each kinds of insane collisions erstwhile you would hap to person immoderate African euphony connected the beforehand table, thing wholly antithetic statesman to play connected turntable 2 and past Berg oregon Stockhausen connected turntable 3. And that has remained the way I’m connected to this day.”

That way led to him founding with different CalArts grads the Independent Composers Assn., which enactment connected concerts successful creation galleries and elsewhere astir L.A. successful the precocious 1970s and aboriginal ‘80s. Stone besides became a acquainted fig arsenic euphony manager of the Pacifica FM presumption KPFK. He served a caller euphony organizer and entrepreneur, which included moving L.A.‘s New Music America festival successful 1984.

All the while, Stone created L.A. soundscapes that helium named aft his favourite Asian restaurants. His restlessness, beryllium it musical, culinary oregon different cultural, took him to San Francisco and New York. In 1984, Japanese pianist Aki Takahashi commissioned a soft piece, and helium made his archetypal travel to Japan, instantly falling successful emotion with the country. After spending much and much clip successful Japan, helium moved to Tokyo successful 2001 erstwhile invited to thatch physics euphony astatine a assemblage adjacent Nagoya.

All along, Stone had been transforming municipality environments successful his electronics, ever adapting to the latest technology. In Japan, the dependable situation is astir arsenic rich, peculiarly successful municipality landscapes, arsenic tin beryllium imagined. Stone wandered around, with a recorder hidden successful his fedora, documenting and past disassembling each that, arsenic good arsenic what helium recorded successful his travels. He has besides kept an flat successful L.A., wherever helium regularly returns and performs successful caller euphony venues similar Arts + Archives downtown.

With his caller hourlong solo portion for JACCC, however, Stone has an accidental to enactment some worlds together. The inspiration for “Daimatsu” is the Goma Fire Ceremony, which is performed astatine the Koyasan Temple astir the country from JACCC the past Sunday of each period and, successful a long-standing Little Tokyo tradition, connected New Year’s Day.

Daimatsu means conifer tree, with each the implications a conifer tin person aesthetically, culturally and spiritually successful Japanese culture. Stone says he’s taken arsenic his earthy worldly not lone sounds from the Koyasan Temple but besides specified sounds of Japan arsenic the boiling h2o of a beverage ceremony. The mode helium past works, usually precocious astatine nighttime successful his tiny Tokyo apartment, is to strive for ma, the abstraction betwixt sounds and what Stone describes arsenic “the intangible country betwixt the unrecognizable and the unfathomable.”

Stone besides says that the much ma penetrates his work, the little engaged it becomes. That was evident successful however helium saved what could easy person go a insignificant catastrophe astatine Za Koenji, the venue wherever helium was joined by saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu and butoh dancer Taketeru Kudo for “Origin Theory.”

Taketeru applied his arresting physicality to 70 exhausting minutes portraying what appeared to beryllium a convulsive transitioning from 1 beingness to another. Not inaccurately did helium picture this arsenic “a regeneration done palpitations and humor circulation.” Shimizu is an exploratory jazz instrumentalist who has of precocious gained popularity for his tv scores and inoffensively ambient euphony that employs soporific electronics. They’re an odd, incompatible couple.

For Taketeru, dependable existed arsenic bodily stimulus. Shimizu responded by impressively channeling his earlier, much progressive style. At the aforesaid time, the saxophonist had brought his ain laptop that produced anodyne drones that intruded connected Stone. It took a Stone propulsion to find the ma.

Stone’s iPad, with its unfastened sonic complexity, created a consciousness of space, a roomy aural soundscape successful which jazz and butoh became elements not egos, not larger than life, conscionable much life, the merrier. Thanks to Stone, 3 quality turntables spinning astatine erstwhile went from competitively filling abstraction to, successful the tone of ma, making space.