History & Practice

The Glass Bees is an open-ended, experimental, spontaneous music project founded by New York City-based musicians Chris Williams and Jason Das in 2006.

In the summer of 2008, after a few months of casual collaboration, Chris and Jason were joined by sound artist Andrea Williams (no relation to Chris, though they share a birthday).

The Glass Bees do not write music in a traditional sense. Our sounds are improvised live to two-track digital recorder. The band’s modus operandi is to record all of its collaborations and edit them down into coherent tracks that document their otherwise ephemeral interactions. The recordings do not contain any overdubs, and editing (if any) consists mainly of fading between live recordings.

The results are always surprising and well crafted, and as in photography, process and cropping are everything.

Using guitar, keyboards, electronics, acoustic percussion, and other found objects, the Glass Bees assemble delicate soundscapes from colliding abstract loops, ambient noise, sudden inspirations, and accidents. Their sound fits with that of other experimental electroacoustic improvisers, but is fresh, unique, and uncategorizable.

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