For a composer like Carl Stone, who has been exploring the relationships between sound and tactility since the early 80s, historical antecedents are vital to understanding his creative process and continual evolution. It is therefore most gratifying to finally see arrive on digitally mastered CD Woo Lae Oak, his first recording, originally issued on colleague Joan LaBarbara's Wizard Records in 1983.

Time has not diminished this recording one iota; in fact, considering that the album is now 25 years old, it's intriguing to think of the general audience reaction to it in the early 80s; probably one of blank indifference. Their loss, actually � staunchly minimal, but curiously outside the minimalist tenor of the times (think Reich and/or Glass's work of that era), Stone manages to stretch a paucity of sounds to their very dynamic limits. Utilizing simply a rubbed string and a small bottle over which the performer merely blows over the top, Stone creates a 56-minute piece of powerfully monolithic proportions. While the tremolo effect of the strings pulses in the air (one moment like the sound of hornets amassing over their nest, the next like the summery distortion of an August heat-haze), the whistling effects of the homemade "flute" ripple outward in an infinite series of cycling eddies that achieve something of a fluid "melody." Placid, and seemingly static, the piece is anything but � rather, the listener can nestle comfortably inside the sound and allow it to consume the surrounding environment.

Stone has made mention that the recording has numerous uses: like the best ambient music, it can be simultaneously ignored and listened to intently; one can leave the room it is playing in and come back to experience hitherto unheard nuances. Amazingly, both approaches broach the ear with equally mesmerizing results; the net gain is that Woo Lae Oak imagines both misty Asian fauxscapes as well as filling up one's own personal space in the deepest sense.