Glass Ocean: The Next Voyage
As time progresses more and more talented Australian bands are rising to the surface. Progressive outfit GLASS OCEAN have been spending the last few years sharpening their skills and honing their craft out on the road preparing for their debut album to come to fruition.
“We’ve really taken our time to write this record,” states frontman Tobias Atkins. “Since the first couple of EPs we’ve had a really good opportunity to tour a lot and spend a lot of time in the scene here in Australia and really get to know the East Coast. We’ve also had the opportunity to play the songs live and hopefully play them better than what we did on the record. It’s allowed us to really tighten up as a band and the vibe we’re going for as much as possible. We’ve really improved as a live act and a creative writing unit. We wrote about two albums worth of material but decided to go with this material instead and that’s why there has been a bit of a gap between releases. The scene is so deep in Australia considering its such a small place in terms of population. It’s really cool and I’m happy to be a part of it.”
The Remnants Of Losing Yourself In Someone Else will see GLASS OCEAN venture into different territories, expanding their sound more than ever before. “For those that don’t know our previous material we had a lot of light and dreamlike sort of aesthetics to our music,” explains Tobias. “The album functions more like a piece of theatre and there is a story that’s embedded within it that we hope people enjoy and take something for themselves away from it. It’s a lot darker than our previous material but its also got a bit of everything. It’s kind of a new soundscape in terms of the sonic aspects as well so I hope people get something out of it. Basically it’s meant to be a conversation between two forces, either internally or externally. There is an overarching theme that’s behind the conversations that are being had within the album. It follows a story of someone coming out of some trauma and doing everything they can to basically hit the reset button. There are a lot of ups and downs like romance, betrayal, loss and by the end of it we’ve kind of left it like an open book for interpretation for people to make and it’s going to continue into the next album.”
As well as devising a conceptual theme which spans throughout the release the band have also explored new opportunities within their writing process. “It’s been really cool this time round as GLASS OCEAN wasn’t really a band back in the early days it was just myself and my main writing partner Nic Pettersen from NORTHLANE. We’ve generally written all of the songs together. For this record we’ve had the other members of the band really get involved in the writing process and it’s been awesome for me to be able to sing over stuff that I haven’t written on guitar. It’s been really fun and I’m really happy that we got to do that on this record. I’m from a theatre background and in my teens and my childhood my family were heavily into musical theatre so that plays a big part in my stage craft and the videos that we’ve done. We really tried to instil that kind of performance element and make them as theatrical as possible. Because the album is story driven we wanted to give them an added sense of drama and there was definitely a conscious effort to put as much of that into it as possible.”
GLASS OCEAN offer up a variety of elements which help set them apart from the pack. Combining uplifting, vibrant tones to create an engaging and endearing soundscape that they feel will allow them to broaden their fan base. “I think the sonic aspects create a listening environment that allows people to not get too deterred from the fact that it is more progressive music,” discusses Tobias. “I feel like people can attach themselves to the guitar tones that you’ve heard in the 80’s, the very clean rhythm tones. I feel like it lends itself to a more sore of mainstream audience in a way. The vocals being quite baritone is quite uncommon too as it’s not something you generally find in prog so I think that will help bring in an audience. We felt like we’d done the clean tone thing before so this time round we really tried to texturally vary the guitar tones so people hear a lot of interesting new effects and pedal work as well as a variety of distortion.”
“The material is quite different to things we’ve done in the past but we’ve had a great response from the tracks we’ve released so far. The singles vary quite a lot in their temperament, tone and the tempo so we’re really glad people have gravitated to the quirkier songs like Bolero which is not usually our sort of go to format. I’m from a theatre background and in my teens and my childhood my family were heavily into musical theatre so that plays a big part in my stage craft and the videos that we’ve done to compliment the singles. We really tried to instil that kind of performance element and make them as theatrical as possible. Because the album is story driven we wanted to give them an added sense of drama and there was definitely a conscious effort to put as much of that into it as possible.”
The Remnants Of Losing Yourself In Someone Else is out now via Wild Thing Records.
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