glass beach band

plastic death demos

hey here's the big release of demos for plastic death. lots of stuff in here, maybe some of it you will think is interesting. :) sry bout the holdup on getting this out, had a lot to sort through & the new album has still been the main priority

will be posting some demos for the new WIP stuff soon too. it's coming along well. making some other plans with the band too now. lots of big stuff on the way. thanks always for sticking with us <3

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VOdSPCtG6XNQvD0pJy-_jtRQubDTXTYD?usp=sharing

plastic death vinyl art

related to the last post, here's some hi-res pdfs of the full vinyl art for plastic death, made by daxe and I :)
if the colors seem a little dull maybe try opening it in a different program, it's CMYK colors for printing so can appear a bit off in some software

more content to come soon! some demos from this record as well as brand new demos / WIPs for my next project! thanks for sticking with us! -j

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OIN8NHLzNhJbmrJoCIZilfnmPMh4yuQt?usp=sharing

plastic death vinyl master

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1W-Z-KPB93wKZBLrshQYkHaWtqh1XUdoV?usp=sharing

when plastic death was mastered, two different versions were made, one for digital, one for vinyl. the vinyl master has more dynamic range and isn't so heavily limited, and many people have said they prefer it to the much louder digital edition. some vinyl rips have circulated online, but the format of vinyl itself is lossy and tends to compress things a bit, so it isn't the absolute best it could sound. this is the original wav files that were printed onto vinyl, unaltered. enjoy -j

WIP song - candyglass

hey!!! I promised I'll be putting out works in progress for the new album I'm currently working on so here's one of those. I have a number of songs that are pretty far along but this one is especially in a decently shareable state.

My new solo record is somewhat different from where glass beach has left off, in many ways a return to sounds and ideas I had long abandoned (chiptune, punk, emo-ass emo, Cardiacs worship) but with a good bit of totally new ideas as well, all centered around weirdo pop songwriting. I really have not ever put this much time and energy into a solo record ever, at least since he's not with us anymore.

This particular track is one of the oldest which is why it's now so far along, and it sounds to my ears like a sort of transition between the dense post-punk/shoegaze influences of plastic death towards the new sound. It's named "candyglass" after the sugar-based substance sometimes used as a safer way to simulate glass shattering in movies. The song is about schadenfreude, and about planned obsolescence, though in a broader sense than the usual "your iPhone starts acting up right as the new iPhone model is released". It's actually one of the longer songs on this album, most of them hover around 3 minutes, though I of course couldn't help including at least one very long track.

The mix is probably a little rough around the edges and some vocal lines may be replaced. The instrumental is pretty much there. I'll do the final mix of all the songs on this record together at the very end of the process for the sake of cohesion & then we'll see about mastering. Not really trying to make this record blow your eardrums out, it's more about space and detail.

More WIP songs to come soon. Will also let yall know when this new solo project has a name, lol

Lyrics:
your fortress, concrete, steel, and candyglass
and in seconds flat, all it's over
would you say you're not affected by what's come to pass?
turned all ordinary exits into shallow fads

it's over right now
it's over now
you're a haunted house
full of dust and spiderwebs and you're crumbling

your teeth held siphons deep in diamond mines
and we'll never know how it started
would you say you're not offended to your famous friends?
as you stare through your reflection in a camera lens?

it's over right now
it's over now

it's over now
it's over now
you're a haunted house
stocks are headed south
full of dust and spiderwebs and you're crumbling

plastic death stems :)

hi

hey everyone! this is j. been a whole lot of silence from us on this front, so i'd like to come out first and apologize for the lack of updates. those of you who have continued to support us despite that have seriously helped us keep things afloat. you have all played a very important role and i'm sure it has felt somewhat thankless, so let me just say, thank you, you have all done so much for us, you've helped us make our second album.

okay, so here's where we're at now. some of you might have caught wind of this, but the band is currently on hiatus. we are not planning to tour nor are we actively working on new music together at the moment.

i have stayed busy outside of glass beach however, i am currently working on two separate solo albums, one that is decently far along and likely to be finished within the year, and one that is much more ambitious and will take longer but that i am slowly chipping away at. i’m also working on a remaster of “he’s not with us anymore,” the sole album from my pre-glass beach project casio dad.


i've ALSO been dabbling more in some other media. those who are subscribed to my youtube have likely seen this animation & short song i did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZNmcnjo_HA and there is more where that came from. lots of stuff! i'm very proud of it all and would love to show off what i have, get input, engage the community, etc etc.

 so, anyway, it does not sit right with me to leave this patreon up collecting money without really using it, i think it's time to change things.

i’m going to make this a hub for exclusive content related to everything i’ve made and am currently making. first, i'm going to start uploading some glass beach content here, starting now with the full stems (isolated tracks) for plastic death. second, i’m going to start posting WIPs of all of the various other things i’ve been working on, prioritizing this new album.

i want to create a nice little community here, so if anybody has any questions or any requests for exclusive content here, let me know, i’d be happy to hear it!

thanks for sticking with us everyone. there’s some exciting stuff to come!

we're still here

i'm not going to get further into details about our personal lives, but we're pretty much done with the album now. just need to do final mixing and then sending it off for mastering.

at a certain point doing any work that doesn't directly relate to the immediacy of getting the album done starts feeling not great. so keeping up with socials, patreon, and what-not began feeling daunting as the deadline for the album pushed further and further away with hiccups, how hectic our personal lives were, or just with how ambitious we were being.

don't know if you'll ever find me (william) personally back online much, or doing any socials for glass beach. but once the album is officially done getting back to our low effort podcast could be fun.

just want to focus on music and personal projects as much as we can. y'all still help us do that, and we can't thank you enough!

being in a band and making music is what we're most interested in. social media marketing, content creation, and other current staples of the industry feel more like distractions at best, and truly limiting and depressing at worst. we're fortunate that it seems we don't have to play any games to have an audience that really cares for our music so we'll just keep trying to make the best thing we can and hope that's good with all of you too.

thank you!

the first glass beach blog

we have pretty much gotten through the writing process entirely and are back into the recording zone again today. if you listen to our podcast we mentioned a while back that we were wanting the album out this year, but we got hit with a pretty big set-back having covid run through our house for almost a full two months and then taking a minute for us to get back on track.
as always, we'll be working as fast as we can without rushing things. we'll be recording every weekend for sure for the next 2-3 months probably with some weekdays sporadically in between. gonna be fun!

thanks as always! y'all are making this second album possible!

the first glass beach podcast: ep 8

back to just the main crew here. this one definitely goes off the rails and we talk about living at the bottom of the ocean. every episode we answer patron questions, though. these are the questions we answered in this episode:

-how do you create such great and interesting basslines such as in bedroom community?
-what is you guys' favorite pixar movies?
-what are some of your favorite thrifting pickups?
-what movie or show would be made better with a glass beach song?

if you want us to answer your questions in the future all you have to do is be a patron at the lowest tier and we'll do it. enjoy the podcast episode regardless. i'm working on an update too so stay tuned for that. thank you all!

podcast 8 questions

hey! we're recording our 8th episode of our low-stakes podcast today in a couple hours. patrons get to ask us questions that we answer on the pod so ask away. just be sure to give us your name if you want us to say who the question is from or we'll just default to not saying a name at all!

the first glass beach podcast: ep 7

joined by guests: jhariah and cole, we discuss their visit to los angeles, troubles we've been having with covid, camping, and more!

we also answered these patron questions:

-what do y'all like to do at the beach?
-on a scale from 10 to 10 how would you rate bartees strange's new record farm to table streaming now?

if you'd like to ask us questions in the future, we accept questions for each episode from our patrons and our lowest tier is only $2 so think about it if you want. we appreciate you all regardless!
thank you! i'll be posting an update on how work on the next album has been going soon too, so be on the look out for that.

podcast 7 questions

hey! quickly recording a podcast episode! if you're new here we answer patron questions for it. type them as replies here and if you want us to refer to you by name make sure you tell us what to call you! we're going to start recording in about 15 minutes so quick turnaround on this if you have something to ask.
also! jhariah and cole of jhariah are going to be on this episode so if you have questions related to them now's a good time for that.

update/no podcast

no podcast this month. we're headlining utah youth pride so we've been busy preparing for that, but I wanted to do another little update to fill y'all in on what we're up to and how you've been helping with your support!

the obvious one you know is we were able to restock beanies thanks to y'all voting and with your support here. merch is a decent way for us to make a little extra money, but it does cost a lot up front if you don't do print on demand (which would be a much worse process for us and cost y'all a lot more) so keeping merch coming is way easier when we can rely, at least a bit on patrons.

we had 5 new songs pretty much fully tracked and in the mixing process, but just with the way we do things we've decided to build up one of those songs kind of from scratch. it's been fun though, and that's really the way we've always done stuff. just extensive demoing forever until everything feels right. we promise this kind of tedious reworking will all be worth it when y'all finally get to hear the new stuff.

we also figured out the structure and flow of a couple songs that had really been giving us some trouble, and now they're pretty collectively our favorite songs we're working on for the new record. we do most of the big tracking/practicing in a shared practice space btw that we literally use money from patreon every month to pay for. it's invaluable to have a space to go to to work on these every so often with an actual piano and acoustic drum kit. we really can't thank you enough.

things to be on the look out moving forward:

-"roll for streetwise" is a dnd music side project we did with a friend of ours, mike bachmann, and those songs will finally be out on june 7th. pretty excited about that. it was a lot of fun to make!

-casio dad is coming back to streaming! june 3rd! we haven't told anyone cos it hadn't been solidified, but j's old solo stuff as casio dad was in a sort of logistics-hell for a while and run for cover was able to help us recover and re-upload those to streaming! you're all the first to know!

-if you're a youth in utah (i think age 14-19?) we're playing there on june 3rd so see you if you are!

thanks again! i don't know if it comes across all the time, but we are incredibly grateful for all of your support! it's been a tough time around here and most of the members of the band have had to go back to working full time jobs (everyone but j was already working either full time or part time, but we've just had to tighten up) so having you all here for us at this time is amazing!

merch restock early access

today's the last day before we inform the public of the beanie restock. make sure you get it if you want it.

shop.glassbeach.band

patron voted merch

posting a couple days early for y'all before letting the greater public know!

you voted for the calico beanies to go back in stock on our website and they just restocked!

shop.glassbeach.band

the first glass beach podcast: ep 6

we have a guest: our austin! together, we talked about bands with 2 drummers, seeing bartees strange and car seat headrest, and answered these patron questions:

-why are the orchids blue?
-is everyone in the band big game grumps fans?
-what's being sampled at the start of boneskull? who's saying "I'm so miserable!"?
-if a studio producer was like "we're making a glass beach movie, you have full creative control" what would it be like
-what are your thoughts on quoting musical phrases, whether it’s a melody or chord progression from another song? is it stealing? is it something the original artist should be proud of?

if you'd like to ask us questions all you have to do is join the lowest tier on our patreon. $2 a month. we try to not really make anything exclusive, but voting on things and asking this questions are a couple of the ways we try to extra thank the people who do support us financially as they can. thank you all!

podcast 6 questions

recording another podcast episode! if you're new here, we answer patron questions during them so ask away in the comments below. we'll be recording in a couple hours so get em in quick. also, if you'd like us to refer to you somehow you'll have to put the name you want us to say in your reply here or we just won't say a name at all, which is also fine!

last vote day for merch restock

about 150 of you still haven't voted, which is fine, just wanted to make sure you do if you want to. today's the last full day to vote. seems like it's gonna be rat hats.

don't forget to vote for merch!

just reminding you to get your vote in on the merch restock if you haven't already. only 50ish votes so far so a lot of you still can! 

the 1st merch restock vote

it's time for the first patron-voted merch restock!
you only get 1 vote and this poll will be going through to the end of the month.
excited to see how this goes. 

couple guidelines we're putting in place:
-if something is chosen to be restocked, it won't be available for the next time we vote on a restock, but will re-enter the time after.
-if an item has just recently gone out of stock it will also wait out a period of restock voting. for example: our full panel shirts just got out of pre-order and won't be a viable voting option this time around.

note!
this is only for our own personal merch store, shop.glassbeach.band
the designs on the run for cover merch store are out of our control for the most part. this includes: vinyl, tapes, cds, flags, cuttlefish shirts, cowboy billionaire shirts, the red hoodies, etc. rfc restocks those and we can make suggestions, and therefore will play no part in these votings.

merch goal reached!

we just reached the goal for restocks of old merch designs voted on by patrons! we're gonna put something together in the next couple days to start getting this going! keep on the lookout for that. we're also trying to figure out a good way to get y'all early access to the merch that does drop just to make sure you have first dibs on what you voted for if you'd like it. it might be as simple as not announcing the immediate restock on our socials and just giving y'all a few days or something, but that's mostly the plan! hell yeah! thank you all so much!

thank you, as always, and updates

just wanted to take a minute to thank all of you patrons who've been here for a while, the one's who've joined more recently, and y'all who've just showed up to support us for as long as you can.

we're well aware of how fortunate we are to have all of you. we hope we can get things moving here a bit more. maybe even interacting with y'all on a more regular basis. we don't have the best patreon model for getting tons and tons of people in here, but it's what we're happy with and it means the world that you're all on board with that.

just a little update for you so you know the direct impact you've been having:

-j is officially a full time musician. we've just met that threshold with our royalty income and this patreon to make sure they can keep focused on making music and living without dedicating time to a day job.
now, there's any number of things that could happen, our streams going down, people leaving here, or whatever that would cause a shift in that, but we're feeling pretty confident with our ability to keep that stable with incredible thanks to you all.

-we were able to purchase good quality drum and vocal mics to actually start recording lp2 properly on our own. so far we're actually close to having about 5 songs near completion. still a long way to go, but studio time doesn't really work for our process and having this income really helped us to get those mics so we can work on the album in our way and on our time.

that's really the two big ones for now that come to mind. we appreciate you. we want to try to make being a patron a little more worth your while without taking time and energy away from why we're all here (more glass beach music), so hopefully you'll notice that shift as we move forward.

also, are these updates nice? do people like them? cos i can start sort of blogging here if that interests people at all too.

the first glass beach podcast: ep 5

we talked about getting new rats, how cars are anime protagonists, and answered these patron questions:

-i'd like to know about the backstory behind bedroom community. what's the song about? what do the lyrics mean to you all? and  why is it such a banger?
-i would like to know all about your writing process- how do you create such intricate melodic ideas?
-question for anyone playing elden ring. what build/builds have you been using?
-thoughts on black country, new roads?
-do you guys plan on making more "bossa-like" songs like yoshi's island in the future?
-if you're rolling up with the squad would you rather be on a scooter or a tricycle?
-as a band with a very specific sound, do you have any advice to bands just starting out and trying to grow while you don’t necessarily fit into a scene/genre?

if you'd like to ask us questions all you have to do is join the lowest tier on our patreon. $2 a month. we try to not really make anything exclusive, but voting on things and asking this questions are a couple of the ways we try to extra thank the people who do support us financially as they can. thank you all!

forgot the link to the r/indieheads post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/e717fh/album_of_the_year_2019_6_glass_beach_the_first/

podcast 5 questions

finally recording another episode of our podcast. if you have some questions for us put them below! we won't read your name out loud unless you tell us to in your comment and what to call you. we're recording in 4ish hours so get em in!

patreon revamp

hey, just wanted to let you all know we're going to be adjusting some goals and adding another incentive for being our patrons. we want to maintain the model we built this patreon with by having absolutely no exclusive content, but instead, coming to all of you for help in making certain decisions.

like how y'all had been picking the covers by voting (which we've had to put off while working on our second album), we're going to be starting a re-issue of old merch designs about once a month that patrons will vote on to add back into our merch store.
if we can figure out how, it might be nice to give y'all early access to merch too to make sure you're able to get it before it sells out since you'll be the ones requesting which merch gets re-added.

we'll be setting that goal and hoping to reach it soon, maybe within the next month so be on the lookout for that.

we'll be continuing taking your questions for the podcast, but we've been running into scheduling conflicts so we haven't been able to record this month. we'll likely be doing the next episode next week.

lastly, if you're someone who's been waiting for us to reach tabs and sheet music goals, I'm sorry to say we're going to be taking those goals off and just focusing on easily tangible goals since this band still isn't most of our full time job yet. those added amounts of work are a little too much to keep up with while trying to finish the next album and we hope you can understand.

can't begin to tell you all how thankful we are that you're still here through this model of patreon. if you have any suggestions of other things you might be interested in (that are not exclusive) feel free to reply below and we can get talking.

the first glass beach podcast: ep 4 (spoilers for the first 5 minutes of elden ring)

we talked about the new pokemon starters, elden ring, the move "yesterday" and answered these patron questions:

-what’s the best of the new pokémon starters?
-favorite wes anderson film?
-what would a glass beach candle smell like?
if each of the four of you were a glass beach patreon tier, what would you be?
-favourite beatles album and/or song?

we tried a new model of just chatting in the beginning and then using the questions to jump off into topics and bounce around. felt pretty good and we get to spend more time on what you ask. hopefully y'all like it. enjoy!

podcast 4 questions

ok! recording another episode of our podcast. if you have some questions for us put them below! we won't read your name out loud unless you tell to in your comment and what to call you.

the first glass beach podcast: ep 3

this one's long! we tried to speed round questions, but y'all just ask too good of questions. also, our buddy bachmann is on and we just love talking to him. enjoy!

questions we answered in this one:
-who are we and why are we here?
-coolest/weirdest/best things you’ve ever been asked to sign by fans?
-if you could pull a clifford the big red dog on any type of animal, what would you have as a pet?
-frogs or toads?
-if you were doing a mamma mia-style glass beach musical, what would be the opening number, the act I closer, and the finale song?
-what were y'all's favorite solos that you've played?
-when you y'all started out, was the idea of making music that was a unique mix of jazz, indie and emo/punk originally in place, or was it a style that developed organically throughout the production of the first album?
-whats everyones favourite bug?
-is the bedroom community video ever going to be released?
-what is your stance on people using your music for things like school projects?
-where did the intersection of hazel (twinklepark) and glass beach band begin? I quickly became super fans of y’all at the same time, and wouldn’t realize that “twinklepark” was also my favorite youtuber, hazel ! I always thought it was a very fitting collab, and that the collective whole had a unique signature. do you have plans to further collab with hazel?
-do you have plans to revisit a collaborative project such as alchemist rats beg bashful for 2nd album/anything in general?
-fav mcr album/songs?

we'll try to keep the next one shorter! thanks again everyone! we're hard at work on the next album and this is a fun little thing we get to do on the side. if you want to ask us questions in the future on here you do have to be a patron, but you can join our lowest tier for just $2 a month. if that's something you're interested, we'd love to have you!
check out rollforstreetwise.com for the side project we have with bachmann. check out the "greetings adventurers" podcast. fucking love them! see ya!

podcast 3 questions

we're recording another episode of the podcast today! put your questions below!
we also have a special guest: mike bachmann, from the greetings, adventurers podcast who's here working with us on our little d&d music based side project "roll for streetwise" so if you have any questions for him throw them in too!

oh! and if you want us to say who the question is from put the name you want to be referred to at the end of your question. otherwise I won't mention it.

the first glass beach podcast: ep 2

the second episode of our very low-stakes podcast is up!
our drummer (william)'s twin sister, whitney is visiting and is on this podcast as a special guest.

questions we answered:
-between origami angels somewhere city & gami gang which is everyone’s favorite between the two?
-I wanna make brownies today, what mix-ins should I get?
-who has been your favorite non-glass beach-adjacent roommate
-favorite cut of fry? (Crinkle, curly, steak, etc)
-any good reads recently?
-fav candy bars!!!
-if someone were interested in paying one / multiple ppl from gb to be make music / produce music for a project of there's how would they go about it (if that is something that is possible that is
-is the guitar on yoshis island in standard tuning

if you're interested in asking us questions in the future feel free to join our patreon at the lowest tier, which is only $2 a month, and you'll be able to do that.
thanks y'all!