Soniccouture has released Glass Works, a Kontakt player instrument which collects together 3 extremely unusual and rare musical instruments which use glass to generate sound: Le Cristal, The Glass Armonica, and a set of Cloud Chamber Bowls. Just locating these instruments was a challenge in itself – the third in the collection, Cloud Chamber Bowls, proved so elusive that after a lot of research and enquiries, we realised that if we wanted to sample some, we would have to build a set ourselves. The first two instruments – both as strange and beautiful as each other – required us to make a trip to Paris. When beginning to research the Glass / Works instruments, we found that one name was ubiquitous; that of Thomas Bloch. A classical musician specialising in rare instruments, Thomas is a virtuoso who has worked with many famous names – Radiohead, Gorrilaz, John Cage, Tom Waits, and Milos Foreman to name very few. He is best known for 3 instruments – Ondes Martenot, the Cristal Baschet and the Glass Armonica.

We contacted Thomas, and to our delight, he agreed to work with us. We travelled to Paris, and down a quiet street in the freezing January weather, we found Thomas Bloch. Working in his garden studio, we spent the next few days exploring the amazing range of sounds stored within. Soniccouture would like to thank Thomas once again for his hospitality in Paris.

Glass / Works is a Kontakt player instrument which collects together 3 extremely unusual and rare musical instruments which use glass to generate sound : Le Cristal Baschet, The Glass Armonica, and a set of Cloud Chamber Bowls.

Le Cristal Baschet: A bizarre 'sound sculpture' designed in 1952 by Bernard and François Baschet. It consists of about 4 octaves of chromatically tuned glass rods, which are rubbed with wet fingers. The vibration of the glass is passed to a heavy block of metal, which itself is tuned and in fact determines the final pitch. The entire mechanism is amplified by a large steel plate, called the "flame". There are also three small fiberglass cones that amplify the higher frequencies.

The Glass Armonica: A musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction (instruments of this type are known as friction idiophones ). The instrument was invented by Benjamin Franklin, who called his invention the "armonica" after the Italian word for harmony. He worked with London glassblower Charles James to build one, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies.

Cloud Chamber Bowls: The Cloud Chamber Bowls are Soniccouture's recreation of an instrument built in the 1950s by maverick American composer Harry Partch. It consists of hanging "bowls" which are sections of 12-gallon glass carboys. Both tops and bottoms of the carboys are used. Partch had 14 (later 13) bowls hanging from a large wooden frame he called a"tori".

The name "Cloud Chamber Bowls" arose from the fact that Partch found the original tops and bottoms at a Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1950. The bowls were originally used for cloud chambers used in tracing paths of subatomic particles.