Glass House Point is a dreamy Florida-based alt-rock band with a knack for experimentation. They love to blend genre to create colorful and eclectic soundscapes. Glass House Point consists of Dylan Graham (vocals/guitar), Ian Campbell (bass/synth), Dylan Methot (guitar/synth), and Jansen Valk (drums). Their music has been streamed over a million times, and they are well-known among their Florida music scene. Their latest EP Verglas is available now.
MR: How did Glass House Point come to be?
Dylan Graham (Vocals / Guitar) We all met in highschool and were fortunate enough to start gigging around our hometown at a young age starting in 2013. Our gigs gave us something to look forward to and practice for, and eventually it gave us the financial means to record our first EP, which kicked off our journey of writing music and touring together. We’ve just never stopped grinding from there — 8 years of hard work later, and here we are.
MR: What inspires you to create the music you do?
Dylan: We are very much inspired by our live shows. We’ve played hundreds and hundreds of shows, and we toured as heavily as we could while we were all full-time students in college. Playing live is such an essential part of our identity as a band, and it’s definitely one of the key influences and inspirations that we pull from when making the music that we make. We like for our songs to be dynamic, and we tend to gravitate towards creating a massive sound with heavy synth layering, overdrives, and harmonies — and a lot of that is inspired by how we want to sound live. We’ve always aspired to play big festival stages, and our music and style reflects that.
MR: What do you believe is the importance of music?
Dylan: Like any art, music serves to reflect the intangible reality of being human into something we can hold, see, and consume. The music that anyone makes is an interpretation of a human experience brought into a tangible form. It is so incredibly important because it is one of the easiest mediums for people to relate to. You can listen to music, feel music, perform music, experience it at a live show — it can be digested by nearly every human sense, and because of that it is an incredibly powerful way of conveying meaning.
MR: Where did you draw musical and lyrical inspiration when creating Verglas?
Dylan: A lot of the inspiration for Verglas just comes from personal experience and the growing pains that I experienced while a lot of things were rapidly changing in my life. The record explores fragility and impermanence through an introspective lens. Each song wrestles with some type of internal conflict — leaving the past behind, wanting more, killing your ego and becoming something new.
MR: What is your typical music-making process?
Dylan: For ‘Verglas,’ the songs started with a little bit of the musical arrangement that I recorded in Logic. Some were demos that just came about while I was jamming in my bedroom, and others were from improvs we did at rehearsals. There were many ideas and arrangements that came up during the writing process, but not all of them stuck. It’s few and far between, but for me, a song becomes a “real song” when there is a spark and the lyrics start to flow — which was the case for the 4 songs on ‘Verglas.’
Once I had a song in hand, I’d send the Logic session over to Ian and he’d start moving things around and layering new parts to add his twist on the song, and then the song would begin to take a new shape. Then Jansen and Dylan M would do the same, and we’d all come together in the studio to top things off.
MR: How did the quarantine impact your music-making process?
Dylan: More than anything, quarantine gave us a break. We’d been grinding for so many years that we were quite honestly running out of steam. Writing was a slow burn through the pandemic, but it allowed us to regroup and refresh our perspectives and determine what direction we wanted to go. All in all, the biggest change we experienced in our process through quarantine was a renewed motivation and synchronization of our intentions and ideologies when it comes to making music.
MR: What was the most challenging part of creating Verglas?
Dylan: COVID was probably the biggest obstacle. We had to cancel a ton of shows, which made things tough financially. The studio also shut down for a while. It just brought everything to a halt, and we lost momentum. All we could do is embrace the downtime and use it to our advantage, which ended up being a huge blessing for us. Over the last year, we’ve slowly but surely regrouped, released new music, and are working harder than ever.
MR: What has been your best experience on tour or at a live concert?
Dylan: just did a hometown show in St. Petersburg, Florida for a Halfpipe Skate Competition for the “Verglas” release. It was our first hometown show since the pandemic, and the energy was unlike anything we’ve experienced before. Absolutely electric. It was a big reminder of why we do what we do and the importance of music in general.
MR: How are you moving forward? Are you jumping straight into any new projects or planning any live events?
Dylan: I’d say we are jumping straight into new projects. Several new singles are already recorded and on the way. We are so very proud of ‘Verglas,’ but it’s truly just a stepping stone for our upcoming music. We’ve just recently hit some big creative breakthroughs, and we feel at our best creatively. More to come shortly.
Verglas is currently available to stream on both Apple Music and Spotify.
Glass House Point Socials: Apple Music – Facebook – Instagram – Linktr.ee – Spotify – Twitter