Arc Iris Built An Art-Pop Sanctuary In Their Own

Constructed in the duo's backyard with minimal assistance, Glass Hill has hosted WILLOW, Reggie Watts, and many others. Read full story on the Bandcamp Daily .

“Do you have a chainsaw?” That’s not a question I ever expected to ask during an interview, but when Arc Iris gave me a tour of Glass Hill, their open-air venue nestled in the hills of northeast Los Angeles, it’s the first thing that came to mind as we passed a massive pile of decimated trees. But Jocie Adams, the band’s lead singer, didn’t need a gas-powered machine for her arboreal deconstruction.

She just needed her hands and a pair of clippers—yet another example of what she and her bandmates, Zach Tenorio-Miller and Ray Belli, have accomplished with far less than what most people expect. Glass Hill is in Tenorio and Adams’s backyard. When they first moved to Los Angeles in the thick of the pandemic, the only two structures on the lot were a 120-square-foot shed where they slept with their cats and a small hut where they relieved themselves in a bucket.

Over the course of two years, with minimal assistance, they constructed a stage, recording studio, cleared space for 175 people to enjoy the music (perhaps more after Adams’s latest clipping session), and the hut with the bucket is now a functioning bathroom. Major artists such as WILLOW, Kimbra, and Reggie Watts have performed on Glass Hill. The stage sits on the roof of their music studio, where they finished their latest album, iTMRW.

The LP represents another titanic expression of human will; it was conceived almost a decade ago as a sci-fi ballet, a concept work merging choreography, graphic art, costuming, music, and set design. The core narrative, set in the 2080s, centers on a tech company called iTMRW, which has managed to assimilate every human being into its own destructive, isolating fantasy. Initially, the only reasoning Adams can give for being able to make shit like this happen is a single word: “Enthusiasm?” followed swiftly by “I don’t know!”

But then she links their ability to build epic creations to their approach to music itself. Throughout their six albums, they have established a detailed, esoteric art-pop sound. The early iteration of the Arc Iris had 10 touring members.

Their self-titled debut featured full string and horn harmonies as Adams guided the band through several of her own folk tales in a single song. Their latest, iTMRW, maintains that same adventurous spirit, but with a stylistic, symbolic caveat; the instrumentation and sonics lean more heavily into electronics and synthesizers, which drives the futurist drama home even further. In Adams’s telling, Arc Iris never actively sought out, or even subconsciously searched for, such uncharted musical terrain.

Rather, it’s the byproduct of the members’ varied backgrounds; Adams is well-versed in classical composition, Tenorio is an expert in jazz harmony, and Belli studied Indian classical rhythms and tabla. Plus, they all love popular music. “It makes sense that the music flows out in a slightly unusual fashion.

Within that context, we always work from the song, which grounds the breadth of our musical language,” Adams explains. “We are always trying to make the best and most satisfying music that we know how to make.” When they discuss the iTMRW sci-fi ballet, they go into everything they planned with infectious enthusiasm.

“There’s so much to organize: the lights, the costume changes, who’s switching with whom for what scene,” Adams says. Looking over the cue sheets, which were stapled together vertically and measured longer than the artist was tall, she found the whole process to be all a bit absurd. “We dove into it, sort of knowing what we were getting into, but not having a full idea of the actual scope of how much work was going to go into it,” says Adams, “but we set a date, and it had to be done.”

On top of the bold production, they gave themselves a relatively tiny window to make it happen. Adams started writing in September 2019 for a January 2020 premiere. And yet, despite having to restart the choreography process more than halfway through because their initial ballet company wasn’t working out, they made their premiere date with two sold-out shows.

More than the thrill of the early success, they were assured they had found their identity as conceptual, multimedia artists. “We found our niche of doing these grandiose, weird, avant-garde productions,” Belli says. “We cracked the nut.

This was it.” Unfortunately, something else cracked soon after: the pandemic. They never did more shows for iTMRW, and in the blink of an eye, they were living in some of their most depressing predictions of 2080.

Everyone was forced to isolate, finding connection only through the layer of eye-melting blue light emitted by Zoom calls. Then, a short time later, many of those same people were only finding connection with ChatBots, just like “Mother Silver,” the AI therapist built by iTMRW. “The reality has shown that whatever my expectation was when I wrote the songs six years ago was not even close on the AI front to what is happening,” Adams says.

“My optimistic side wants to believe that people will take all these tools and do something great for our climate, AI, and how we treat people. But my real side of me thinks the apocalypse is coming.” In the version of the world they prophesied, the antidote to the apocalypse is found in human connection.

In most cases, it takes time to build a community after a move to a new city. However, they knew people in L.A. from their longstanding music careers, so they built a space for them in their backyard. “[Glass Hill] was a space where people could safely gather,” Adams says.

“To listen to music and watch shows because it had been a long time since people had experienced that,” Tenorio continues. “We made this for ourselves, too, because we want to see music, and we want to play music.” “And have a venue with good sound,” Belli then adds.

I was surprised that Glass Hill needed a sound rig. It seemed like amps, drums, and a small PA for a mic would fill out the space nicely. But Belli bought Tenorio and Adams a 32-channel console as a wedding present.

They bought the speakers. Sound was one of their highest priorities. Now, numerous regular attendees, many of whom are artists, have called Glass Hill the “best-sounding venue in L.A.” If they had opened their space just to jam, people still would have flocked to escape the dread of the pandemic.

But as usual, Arc Iris gave everything they had to it...and to their community. “I remember people telling us the community aspect is difficult in L.A.,” Adams says. “I never experienced that,” Tenorio quickly adds.

Arc Iris has performed at every Glass Hill show since the venue opened in 2022, and songs from iTMRW have remained in their set the whole time. Now with their new studio, several more years of musical experience, and an even greater Rolodex from their time in L.A., they decided to finally release the music into the world. The original recordings made up the bones, but they wrote new string parts.

Tenorio learned Ableton in the interim, which provided some extra sheen, and their new friend WILLOW topped things off. She served as the foreboding yet affable voice of the company, iTMRW. “She was the last ingredient,” Tenorio says.

“She did all her vocals in one session.” “In like 45 minutes,” Belli mentions. Now, with the concept at the front of their minds, Adams is inspired to revive the full production.

Because, regardless of how many frightening elements of their idea have already come true, Arc Iris’s ability to build communities around ambitious art projects gives them hope for the future, and for her son’s future. “[I feel] very nervous, honestly, but also in the scheme of human time, it’s a pretty sweet time to be alive,” Adams says. “He’s exposed to so many amazing things,” says Tenorio.

“Music specifically.”