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His recently released solo debut, Glass Armonica (Root Strata), is a vibrant expression of this love for drone. The title comes from an instrument designed by Benjamin Franklin in 1761: Captivated by a glass performance he’d seen in England four years earlier, Franklin came up with an instrument that would provide greater and richer harmonies than the usual wine-glass orchestra, which uses glasses of different shapes and sizes filled with varying amounts of water and “played” by rubbing a moistened finger along the rim. He made central holes in glass bowls of different sizes and threaded them onto a horizontal rod that’s spun by a foot-pumped flywheel.
I imagine most folks have tried the wine-glass trick while a dinner party was winding down, so you can probably imagine the lovely tone of ringing glass. But Wallace’s device also delivers a stunning richness of overtones: within its steady drone there are endless variations, looping and slowly transmogrifying cycles that sound a bit like a wobbling tone from a record pressed off-center. I’ve listened to this CD four times now, and each spin has pulled me in deeper and deeper into Wallace’s exquisite sound world.
