Debut Album by Chris Stack

“You’ve been playing synthesizers since the 70s; playing piano since 2nd grade lessons in a Catholic school convent; did printed circuit design for Bob Moog in the Big Briar days; have been playing oud and other stringed and woodwind instruments in the (surprisingly large) Asheville, NC middle-eastern music scene for over a decade; were marketing manager at Moog Music and Vo Inventions; and make a ton of music in your gear demo videos on experimentalsynth.com… what do you mean you don’t have an album out?”

“If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked this question, or a subset of it,” said Chris Stack, “I could buy a really nice modular synth.”

Goaded in part by this nagging question, Stack’s debut album, Xenography, is the result of a lifetime of active listening combined with an assortment of unique musical and technical experiences. Influences ranging from Laurie Anderson, Jon Hassell, Bjork and Fever Ray, to Joni Mitchell, Keith Jarrett and David Sylvian have shaped his music, which is also filtered through a love of ethnomusicology and the musical experimentation for which his ExperimentalSynth YouTube channel and website is known. A background in electrical engineering and early access to instruments like the Moog Guitar, Dave Smith Instruments Pro 2, and the Vo-96 Acoustic Synthesizer, ensured that even the earliest Joni Mitchell influences would be expressed with an innovative color palette.

“It can’t all be about experimentation though.” said Stack. “Every once in a while you should leave the lab and put it into practice. It just took me a while to make a whole album of it.” Traces of the synth lab show up all over Xenography. His work with vocal processing, documented in a number of ExperimentalSynth videos, made possible songs like “Lamentation 1&2” and “Acai Moon.”

Step-sequenced filter modulation via control voltages fueled the rhythmic cohesion between the Moog Voyager and two DSI Pro 2s in “Reaching Aleppo” and multiple experiments in guitar processing lent color to the intertwining nylon-string and Moog guitars in “Swamp and Circumstance.”

Such wide-ranging music calls out to expand into other media. The Asheville ensemble, Lindsey Kelley Dance recently used the song “Acai Moon” in a modern dance performance choreographed by Janice Lancaster Larsen, and a pair of ambient music videos have been created for the songs “Hokkaido :: Last Wolf Mix” and “Dancing Toward Aphelion.”

With a few exceptions Stack played all the instruments on the album, including synthesizers, guitars, piano, voice, computer, iPad and shakuhachi. “Acai Moon” features guest vocals by Alina Quu, and the album’s two bonus tracks were created with a pair of fellow Asheville musicians. “Reaching Aleppo,” (with Sally Sparks) is an extended synth-laden soundscape of middle-eastern scales and timbres ranging from raw to sublime. “Twilight Greeting” (with Sally Sparks and Greg Waltzer) creates a relaxing environment of synthesizers, Moog Guitar and Haken Continuum that builds to a fiery crescendo with an inspired flute solo from Waltzer, and gorgeous piano work from Sparks.

When not working on ExperimentalSynth or his solo recordings, Stack can be found playing (primarily acoustic instruments) in various configurations in Asheville’s Middle-Eastern music scene, or more electronic gear in Waveformation (with synth gurus Geary Yelton and Greg Waltzer) and in the duo Yonder (with keys and Continuum wiz Sally Sparks).

Xenography is available for streaming and download at: chrisstack.bandcamp.com
Additional musical information at: chrisstack.com