Jonathan Glasier
Shannon Michael Terry

The Process

If the music of Jonathan Glasier and Shannon Michael Terry resembles something at once ancient and futuristic, perhaps it's because the past and the future both share an endless capacity for surprise. They are, however much we study or prepare for them, somehow elusive. Yet for all their mysteries neither is entirely unknowable; the past maps the future, even if the cartography is frequently hard to read; and in the past lie futures, both realized and unrealized. Glasier and Terry, long time students of microtonality and its exotic bespoke instruments, not only know a thing or two about half-lost pasts and futures, for this album they've excavated the physical materials of which they're made. On Process - Tools - Utility the song titles function like an open book; a history, or perhaps even a recipe, if you're looking to join in the fun. They tell you where they come from even as they push onward to somewhere new. Jonathan Glasier was a child when he first laid hands on the strange microtonal instruments made by family friend Harry Partch. By the mid 1960s he was the composer's assistant and a member of the Partch Ensemble; by the late 70s he was a founding editor of Interval, the San Diego based journal that championed the work of Partch, Ivor Darreg, Erv Wilson and other theorists, composers, improvisors and instrument builders of the West Coast microtonal movement. In 1994 he introduced Shannon Michael Terry, a Los Angeles based musician and visual artist, to the ideas and instruments he'd collected along the way. They've been improvising together ever since, and this record is the most thorough exploration of the tools and ideas they've picked up over the decades. This collection of tools defines and shapes the record as much as its musicians, the instruments - each with its own distinct character and history - setting sonic parameters for the unpremeditated free improvisations that fill its grooves. That's the Megalyra II, a massive slithering behemoth of the microtonal swamp, descended from Ivor Darreg's original, emitting bluesy moans and ominous drones on several tracks; elsewhere Wilson's imposing 70 tone Hebdomekontany evokes sacred bells and alien transmission from its tuned pipes; Godzilla, an oil drum fitted with bronze rods that emerged from the ID Project - a 70s era improvisational ensemble Glasier shared with Tom Nunn and others - lends its bellows, belches and roars while Nunn's Wing scrapes, peals and sings above. Though Terry's preferred instrument is the 31 tone to the octave, 120 note electro-acuostic Array Mbira - a soundboard orchestra descended from Bill Wesley's original 1970s design - his use of subtle electronic beats nods towards more contemporary electronic sounds, as does Glasier's use of the Lumatone, a glossy sounding electronic isomorphic keyboard, Originally envisioned by Siemen Terpstra, that Glacier programmed to play in 19- tone equal temperament. It is, if not the future of microtonality, one of many potential ones. For all the unusual instrumentation and microtonal tunings, and for all the under-heralded history that these two players draw from, what strikes me as most remarkable about these performances is their freedom and egolessness, which results in a genreless soundscape that might have been generated by one hydra-headed player or by a dozen. Above all, I hear the instruments and their sounds speaking for themselves under the coaxing of sensitive players. Process - Tools - Utility represents music making at its most grounded and pragmatic, even as it evokes the cosmos.

— Bill Perrine
Author, Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental & Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego