Description

Maverick musician Lucas Abelas ecstatic performances with shards of amplified glass are the stuff of legend. Their singular practice emerged within the noise underground, where the glass evolved from a means to create free-noise cacophonies into an oddly versatile instrument producing an organic form of outsider electronica. Played somewhat like a bellow-less electric reed instrument, Abela subtly vibrates their lips against the shards edges to transmit micro-sonic vibrations into the pane. This single source of audio feeds a complex array of processing giving the instrument the illusion of ghostly accompaniment to form dense layers of anomalous music.

Making Corner / Full Body Promise; are two improvisations Lucas recorded in June 2021 while preparing for their first shows back during a short window between COVID lock-downs in Australia. Lucas spent the initial Lock Down reinventing how he processed the glass instrument converting their workflow from pedals to modular and in doing so converted the normally mono glass into a stereo instrument. Using positive and negative envelopes, gates and triggers all derived solely from the glass signals dynamics and frequencies Lucas synchronises changes in a myriad of audio parameters simultaneously while triggering additional sounds all in response to performance techniques. The results produce a range of parallel audio chains accompanying or even replacing the origin signal that’s not sequenced, sampled or looped but played in unison, adding significant layers of depth and character to their glass playing, which you might say is same but different.

Artwork by Ernie Zoze