“Droplet,” the opening monitor from Turner Williams Jr.’s Briars on a Dewdrop, performs like a subject recording from a parallel world, but there’s one thing acquainted in how its shimmering harp-like tones dart across the core six-note motif. Williams performs primarily with indigenous deep-folk stringed devices, which he modifies and soaks in results processing to create an enormous palette of microtonal bends and moans. Agitated countermelodies create a name and response over the tentative essential theme, and “Droplet” ends as mysteriously because it arrived.

As was the case in his earlier tasks (Ramble Tamble, Guardian Alien), Williams does not shrink back from flexing his proficiency. “Droplet” reveals that Williams spends hours with these devices, however the heartbeat of the music is not suffocated by a barrage of “unique” arpeggios or athletic shredding. The place a lot present solo instrumentalism tends to be outlined by what it shares with John Fahey, Williams lies nearer to the weird-blood lineage of Tony Conrad and Angus MacLise, still-ineffable twentieth century polymaths whose legacies, fortunately, proceed to be excavated.