Carl Stone - Woo Lae Oak - Wizard Records 224 NM/NM 1st Edition 1983

$

43

Thank you for your consideration of my auction offering!!                             (Note: I am single owner of this LP)

Label/Catalog Number:   Wizard Records   224

CONDITION:
Media:   NM  On S2, large area of light wispy surface scuffing that could have been a pressing issue or paper scuffing, I don't remember
               when I bought the record. (see pic# 5) Fortunately, no audio impact. Perfect labels. (see photos) 
Sleeve:  NM There is no cover wear, seam splits, or stains.Upper and lower right corners each have a small bend.  (see photos)
Runout Matrix:  S1: 41921-A  (parallel squiggly lines)  and  S2:  41921-B (parallel squiggly lines)

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Tracklist
A     Woo Lae Oak, Part One     31:28
B     Woo Lae Oak, Part Two     22:55

Companies, etc.
    Phonographic Copyright (p) – Electro-Acoustic Music, Inc.
    Copyright (c) – Electro-Acoustic Music, Inc.
    Recorded At – California Institute Of The Arts
    Mastered At – Wakefield Manufacturing – 41921
    Pressed By – Wakefield Manufacturing – 41921
Credits
    Design – Tim Shea (6)
    Lacquer Cut By – Roger Seibel

Notes
Woo Lae Oak (from The Korean Series, 1981-1983) was commissioned by the Contemporary Music Festival 1981, produced by the California Institute of the Arts and the Music Department of the University of California San Diego, and was realized in the Studios of the California Institute of the Arts.

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Album Review
Woo Lae Oak, commissioned in 1981 by CalArts as a piece for radio broadcast or live performance, is a drone built on two sounds: an unspecified string, continuously rubbed for a tremolo effect, and air passing through a chamber-- a flute, or the sound of someone blowing across the mouth of a bottle. The sounds are recorded onto tape, layered, sped up, and slowed down. In the album's original liner notes, Alan Rich called it a "musical ground zero." But more than a ground zero, Woo Lae Oak is an amnesiac for itself, an ever-renewing blank slate. The problem with assessing records like this is that they rely on the listener's tolerance and imagination, which, comfortingly for all parties involved, nobody has any control over. Some might hear it as a gorgeous expanse, as therapeutic and undemanding as warm tea; others might hear it as foofy, inert bullshit peddled by charlatans to suckers who would stoop to intellectualize a rock.

But for the converted and reluctant alike, some qualities of Woo Lae Oak stick. When Stone layers his sounds, the overall picture doesn't expand, it blurs. No logic surfaces, no figure takes shape. As a result, it burdens its audience with freedom-- an impossibly unmemorable experience that feels different on every listen. And unlike many drones, Woo Lae Oak has no earthy, imperial frequencies, no rumble. Stone even named the piece after the Chinese restaurant of his choice, a self-effacing gesture that acknowledges peace as marketable chintz-- where other composers might aspire to recreate ancient prayer scrolls, Stone takes refuge in fortune cookies. Even when I can't fully immerse myself in it, I leave with the important lesson that there's no inherent grandeur to size, no necessary seriousness to serenity.

And though this work was released in an era of great, like-minded composers-- Robert Ashley (especially Perfect Lives and Atalanta), Meredith Monk, "Blue" Gene Tyranny (whose Out of the Blue was Unseen Worlds' first release) -- it's essential as points on a map being drawn 20 years after the territory was first discovered. As a phrase, "accessible avant-garde" might stretch the reality, but it clings to the ambition.

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