: foundry indices : reviews : sounds : : : news : pictures : words : : : the foundry : hypnos REVIEWS Vast was chosen as Echoes CD-of-the-Month for April 2006 http://www.echoes.org/picks.html Saul Stokes Vast written by John Diliberto, Host of Echoes Electronic instrument builder finds the melody Rarely has an experimentalist sounded so haunting and soulful. A willful explorer, Stokes makes his own electronic instruments which often create unpredictable sounds, even for the inventor. And he likes that. But on Vast, Stokes reins in his sonic experiments, welding them together with controllers and computers, building structure out of chaos, and resolving it all in an album that shares a Mobyesque sense of joy and melancholy. Even when sounds are poinging and boinging like a spaceship factory, you can hear that many of his themes come from playing the piano and even humming around his house. Every track on Vast is a kinetic excursion. Sometimes they're mysterious and foreboding like "Lighthaus" and sometimes exuberant in their celebration of sound like "Bursts & Blooms." While Stokes' earlier CDs, Fields and Zo Pilots were often constructed live, with Vast he's taken his music into the computer zone and the results are structured journeys that sometimes follow dream logic, and sometimes seem as carefully conceived as a roller coaster ride. The first piece, "Chrome Garden," is an electro-symphony of startling shifts and turns, landscapes moving on the inner eyelids as doors open, floors drop out and windows pop up on new vistas. Resolutely electronic, Stokes uses none of the cliches to which we've become accustomed in electronica. His rhythms seem drawn from life more than pre-programmed machines and his sonic palette exults in distortion, odd filtering and resonances. It all comes together in a CD that is charming and imposing at the same time. It was the obvious choice for our April CD of the Month. © 2006 John Diliberto