Zach Wallace – Glass Armonica

Zach Wallace

Glass Armonica

Catalog
RS046
Format
CD
Edition
Edition of 300
Released
May 2009
Glass Armonica is the first solo CD by musician Zach Wallace. When not counting fauna in the Montana wilderness, Zach can be seen performing across the incense sticks from Greg Davis in their stoic long form drone duo Sun Circle. Zach's Armonica, based loosely on Benjamin Franklin's 1761 design, is built entirely from thrift store bought wine glasses and has been modified to handle multiple players. The performances captured here were recorded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the Spring of 2007. The results are not too far off from what you might imagine if you've ever coaxed sound waves from the rim of a wine glass with your finger. Now just imagine multiplying that sound a few times over until you arrive at a dense fog of resonant tones that hover in mid air while concurrently penetrating your pituitary gland. That's getting close. Edition of 500 in an offset white case with silver ink.

Tracklist

  1. 2 19:06
  2. 5 21:14
  3. 7 3:07

Press

It's no new concept to alter an instrument these days, and utilizing obsolete instrumentation has made its way into many a genre but no matter what you say, building a working replica of Benjamin Franklin' Armonica from thrift store glasses is a quite a feat if not an overwhelming labor of love. Zach Wallace (also of Sun Circle) collected an array of glasses and built them into a working armonica an instrument invented by Franklin and at the time banned because it was thought to drive players insane. The instrument works in much the same way as dragging your finger along the top of glasses filled with various amounts of liquid. In the armonica's case the glasses are just built in different sizes to affect the pitch instead of being filled with liquid. Wallace utilizes the ghostly natural drone of his homemade version of the classical instrument winding out long eerie pieces that while strangely beautiful, do tend to cause the unnerving quality that made this instrument frowned upon in the first place. However that's kind of the point as Wallace drives the instrument's function to its logical extreme, most players would use shorter notes but instead Wallace exploits the armonica's ability to sustain tone for great lengths of time, and as such the tones begin to waver and hypnotize the listening into an enveloped drone. Possibly not for everyone but Glass Armonica is a nonetheless interesting listen and a must for drone fans. - Raven Sings The Blues