Released this March through hfn music, Glas’ ten-track, self-produced album “Kisses Like Feathers” features the Copenhagen duo’s complete musical range. Beyond just musicians, Lisbet Fritze and Louise Foo integrate their diverse artistic expertise into Glas. Lisbet’s ventures in architectural design and Louise’s explorations in visual arts enrich their multifaceted sound. The album reflects the complexity of Nordic sentiments—brooding yet simultaneously brimming with luminosity. From dance-floor anthems to solitary listening experiences, the duo weaves harmony with disparate musical elements.
“Kisses Like Feathers” encapsulates a deeply personal narrative, tracing their life’s pivotal moments such as relocating, motherhood, and navigating solitude. Their music straddles an intricate balance of emotive intensity with a composed demeanor. In our interview, we delve into the creative essence of Glas and its finely curated universe.
KALTBLUT: Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the themes and emotions conveyed in your upcoming album “Kisses Like Feathers”?
Glas: The themes in our songs are in a way fragments of different emotions, stories and moods. It’s like a collage of feelings that we are trying to express through song writing and the musical landscape of Glas. As life might be linear, history and emotions are not and for us music is a way of mapping those emotions, to look at them from different angles and to maybe learn from them – or just observe.
KALTBLUT: How have your personal experiences influenced the songwriting and musical composition for this album?
Glas: Since our first band Giana Factory, we have delved into interactive art and architecture. We are both very visually and spaciously oriented and maybe this effects how we build up a composition of a song. Sometimes we feel a song moves in time and other times it develops in space and becomes more like a 3 dimensional layered room. We didn’t have an overall concept for this album, but we are rather trying to follow the dna of each song and develop it in its own right.
On our journey into forming Glas, we both became mothers of small boys and this new chapter in life also influenced the song writing and at the same time strengthened the bond between us, as we could relate to the same new feelings of fragility and uncertainty.
KALTBLUT: Can you discuss the creative process behind the self-production of the album? What was it like having complete control?
Glas: Having control over both the songwriting and the production was both liberating and super scary. It was amazing with a clean canvas that we could fill out with exactly the colours we wanted – and we were not in a hurry at all. We wanted to take our time writing a lot of song sketches, exploring different musical expressions and really just see where the music would take us. Often it was hard as the possibilities are obviously endless and we also needed to educate ourselves along the way when hitting a technical barrier with sound and production.
KALTBLUT: What was the reasoning behind choosing “Melting Point” as the first introduction to the album?
Glas: Melting Point was one of the first songs we wrote for Glas. It was on the “maybe-list” for a long time, as we kept writing new songs that we also wanted to explore and work on. By the end of the process, we eventually brought back this first sketch as it in a way holds the different expressions of the album, distilled into a single song: The simple and almost naive songwriting, our two distinct vocal expressions that sometimes melts together, and then the expressions of the more gloomy pulsating instrumental towards the end with arpeggios and dirty guitars.
KALTBLUT: How do your individual talents and other artistic pursuits outside of Glas influence and contribute to the overall sound and style of the album?
Glas: Besides making music, Loui is doing interactive art and Lisbet architectural design. We think it’s exciting to bring our other artistic facets into the Glas universe – as we feel the music often gets amplified when the listener are invited into a curated visual universe.
KALTBLUT: What challenges did you face during the recording and production process, and how did you overcome them?
Glas: We always try to have a playful approach to things and not a final goal for how they should turn out. Our experience is, that the more we let loose, the better the output becomes somehow. At the same time there’s of course a lot of hard work in the process of making an album – especially when the music from the speakers just doesn’t sound how it does in your head.
We spend a lot of time experimenting with old drum machines, varies guitars and new software plugins. We also tested different ways to record the vocals and how to use our two quite different vocal expressions. Many days it felt like we had such a long way to go, and then on some days things finally melted together. Some song were intuitively easy to “give birth to” and other songs were such a pain and we had to let them rest for some time and then open them up again with fresh energy. For some songs this process helped, and for other songs we would just have to ditch them.
KALTBLUT: How will you portray the album to a live audience?
Glas: We love to imagine how to convey our music into a live situation, and we already started brainstorming. Together with the new media art duo Uberørt we want to develop a visual universe with a “Mixed Reality” scenography with dynamic visuals that can sort of listen to the music and respond to the energy and movement from us on stage and from the audience. Its still very much on the drawing board and we will develop it further at VEGA LAB in Copenhagen in May, where we will experiment and develop an interactive exhibition for the audience to move around in, before the dynamic scenography eventually will follow us out on the real stages.
KALTBLUT: What is next for you?
Glas: Our first live performance will happen May 29th in Copenhagen at VEGA Ideal Bar!
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Kisses Like Feathers is out now: https://glas.lnk.to/Kisses
