Stochastic music, as an actual term and method, really has its origins in Yannis Xenakis's seminal work from the 1960s, entitled Formalized Music (Musiques Formelles).
Essentially, random processes not only produce musical events in stochastic compositions, but they can be directed and/or constrained such that they can even create musical pieces of a certain style or genre. Creating a systematic mathematical treatise on this topic was an utterly groundbreaking move.
Of course, in 2021, we have the luxury of looking back at decades of genuine computer music - i.e. musical works that were created not just on, but by computers. With the advent of personal computers, one could create such works at home, tinkering with stochastic processes or elaborate mathematical algorithms (for example, in the case of fractal music).
Computer compositions reliant on random elements were no longer confined to the laboratories with huge and terrifying looking computer monsters. Once upon a time, the stunningly human and mesmerising Illiac Suite could only be created on such a monstrosity, the ILLIAC computer at the University of Illinois.
Many have ventured into the realm of computer music, after all, even the ambient music luminary Brian Eno has built bridges between ambient and generative music.
We are almost at the end of 2021 now, and the ambient/psybient duo Carbon Based Lifeforms surprised fans by the release of an album called Stochastic.
The album returns to the sonic world of their earlier ambiental albums like VLA and Twentythree.
The way in which this album was created is eminently different, though. Well, you may have guessed it, stochastic processes were applied in order to generate the sound sequences and textures.
As the authors describe it, the tracks were born from exploiting the random features of some of their synths, and they were left alone to do their things... creating evolving textures, layers, and motifs.
The track titles are firmly rooted in the world of maths and algorithms, apart from some poetic ones like Hello From The Children Of Planet Earth. Titles like Eigenvector, Finite State Space, Sphere Eversion are straight out of the world of vector algebra, control theory, and topology.
One key aspect to highlight here is that the album does not contain what some may fear: these are not academic unlistenable experimentation, alien and alienating random sounds, or products of some purely theoretical adventure in areas of mathematics that nobody may understand.
The album does sound remarkably identifiable as a CBL album. It has dreamy textures, floating layers of sonic bliss, and memorable evolving motifs.
What is often forgotten when some discuss computer-generated music is that ultimately, it is still the human producing the end result.
That human input may be merely a selection process of picking out pieces or entire tracks from the randomly generated output. It may be human involvement in the constraints imposed on the pseudo-random processes. It may be human control of numerous parameters, algorithms, stochastic processes. It may be human choices in the processing of the resulting sounds, e.g. via choices of effects.
Where the machine ends and where the human begins in computer-generated music is often a futile debate.
We, as listeners are hearing the end result of a 'collaboration' between man and machine, where the machine was given more freedom than in normally composed and performed electronic music.
When listening to Stochastic, at least this reviewer would recommend something perhaps scandalous to the listener: let's forget analysing where that delimitation line between the human crew of CBL and the synths may be. Let's not treat it as a highly technological record...
It is ethereal, pleasant, non-intrusive music but by no means for passive listening. There are endless details and myriad changes of subtle or tidal nature, there are tiny evolutions of sounds and there are vast swells of sounds. There are passages that are genuinely uplifting, expansive, and infused with what seems to be human emotions.
It comes across as a wholly enjoyable, varied, and quite human album.
As Bill Laswell once wrote, Computers and electronic music are not the opposite of the warm human music. It's exactly the same...
