In a time where terrorist attacks are ever present, the duo that make up Glasxs saw first hand what that kind of hate can do. With a few gigs of their own having to be cancelled because of attacks and threats, their own İnanç said those moments and a lot of what went down in 2016 made things feel meaningless, but that “there is always hope.” Which is a exactly why he and Melis continued to push through and release their latest, Planet Reverse. We talked about the music, their own Istanbul and more…

Kendra: When working so closely with one other person, you definitely have the chance to bring out the best in them. What’s something your partner has brought out to you since starting the group?

İnanç: We have been making music together since 2004 and were involved in two other bands together before. Our influences and musical tastes are almost similar so it helps us to think the same way when we are recording new songs. Melis has a talent for composing new music at short notice. You know when you’re trying to make a new music, you waste your time to put all materials together and it’s very easy to get lost in it. So that makes me free and easy in our music.

Melis: İnanç is a really good musician and a really good friend. He makes the songs really grounded. It is very important to us that we want to create music that we would enjoy, so having similar music taste, we think in similar ways that makes what we do so much fun. But despite all the similarities he always comes up with some unique ideas for the songs and takes them to the next level.

“Live with Ghosts”

Kendra: When it came to hitting the studio for Planet Reverse, who was responsible for what?

İnanç: Melis started this project as Glass by herself and had four or five songs including “The Boy With No Soul” and “London Smelling”. I thought these songs needed more bass with strong beats and rhythms, so we started to record bass lines and make some changes in mixing process.

Melis: Yeah, usually I start working on the songs and then Inanc listens and gets involved in the composition process. Mostly I do the vocals, production, and the mixes of the songs and he contributes to the arrangement, and adds the bass.

Kendra: Getting scientific for a second, if you had to compare the album to one of the planets in our solar system – which would it be and why?

Melis: I guess it would be a Neptune coloured Saturn. I guess it’s because of its planetary rings.

İnanç: I think it would be Mars. We tried to talk about possibilities of different planets with different environment, life, creatures, robots and cities or maybe the same planet we live in, but in a different way, in our debut album. We learned that Mars have similarity to the early Earth and it had liquid water and may have been habitable for microorganisms so it is possible to believe life existed there before. Besides that, I liked Mars because one of my favorite Looney Tunes character was Marvin the Martian and I think it would be great if we could live there.

“The Boy With No Soul”

Kendra: From science to art (we’re getting all educated today), if you had to draw “The Boy with No Soul,” how would he look like?

Melis: It should have looked like Sam from Supernatural, since the song is very inspired by the character from early seasons of the series. I’m a huge fan of it. Another inspiration was Poor Edward by Tom Waits. So, I guess the drawing would be two Sams bound with an invisible rope or two headed Sam.

Kendra: Spending a lot of your time in Istanbul, can you tell us what the music scene is like? Are there a lot of western influences?

Melis: There are some great bands in Turkey. As talking about the alternative music scene, you could say there are some western influences. Turkish audience care a lot about the new European sounds. I know that there are lots of English or some other European bands who have the most listeners in Turkey by their Spotify statistics for instance. So, when you think that way, it makes sense that the musicians here has the Western influences in their art some way. It’s kind of a mixture of it and surely the vibes of how you live and where you live I guess.

Kendra: Will you be doing a good amount of touring in 2017?

Melis: We love gigs, and really hope to arrange as more gigs as possible across the world. We have four gigs in the coming months in UK and Germany, but we are still concluding the details.

Kendra: What else did you two have planned in 2017?

Melis: We want to tour a lot and spread our Planet Reverse. We have some visual surprises about it. Also, we have some other surprises other than Planet Reverse. We are working on some new songs as well. Sorry to keep it all mystic but they are still secrets right now.