Little Glass Men brings us his newest creation, rife with spliced acapellas and vintage recordings balanced with deep sublines and modern drum programming upon which your drifting mind will capitalize. Due Aug 28 2016, Until it’s Gone is a reflection on the temporary nature of life and will be released story by story on Soundcloud and Bandcamp with select works put under a creative commons Attribution 4.0 license.

In this interview feature, we chat with Ryan about his newest release, influences, navigating the digital music world and more.

Q&A along with streams and links below.

Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)

Whats up guys, my name is Ryan and I make textural introspective grooves under the name Little Glass Men. My sound is created by a fusion of live instrumentation, found sounds, and synthesis. I like to mix unorthodox recordings together and keep pushing the effects and layers until something hynotically odd comes of it. Originally from San Diego, CA I am now living in San Francisco where I work and play as a graphic designer and composer.

What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?

I got introduced to producing and DAW life in high school and was mesmerized by the endless possibilities digital music creation offered. This new world of being able to record something and go back to my car and play it was really pretty incredible for me and the bug stuck. I think initially I was really concerned with making my subwoofer puff but it kinda grew into me trying to create real tracks that resonate with others. I’m really attracted to finding the fine line between seeming novel yet relatable, odd yet tangible, imitative yet innovative, methodical yet effortless.

Who or what are your biggest influences when it comes to your creativity?

I get really inspired by reading or watching interviews of people that are themselves motivated and inspired. People are doing such rad stuff these days from self driving cars to creating ambisonic habitats for VR that everywhere you look you have a reason to get inspired. And there’s so many talented producers.  I’m always watching master classes and tutorials from other producers and engineers where you can get lost for weeks (years?) exploring some of the concepts.

Here’s just a quick list of artists that’ve blow my mind lately:

Bonobo, Thrupence, Leon Osborn, Mt Kimbie, The Seshen, Tipper, Hundred Waters, Tsuruda, Indian Wells, Nickelman, Lullotone, Greybox…

How is your new release different than previous ones? Did you set out to accomplish anything specific?

This album is much more foley and sample based than any of my other releases. I think this is my best work yet because there is so much more texture, depth and novelty to the sounds which you can’t get with a library patch. For example, I like using car tools and spoons for hi hats and Bach chorales down pitched for wholesome pads. There is an element of uncertainty and mishaps when manipulating these recordings that come and bring life to your productions. This of course is nothing new, but for me it’s been an important milestone in my evolution as an artist and opened up the way I look at and experience audio. I’m curious where it’s going.

I set out to accomplish having a central theme that unites the album. Honestly, in the past I used to bunch unrelated songs together and call it an album. This time everything is much more deliberate. Everything from the music to the artwork and videos is based around the realization that whether we like it or not everything is only temporary, so we might as well enjoy what we have Until it’s Gone.

Here are a few tracks from the album:

https://soundcloud.com/littleglassmen/on-the-floor

https://soundcloud.com/littleglassmen/until-its-gone

Do you face any challenges as an indie musician in a digital age? On the flip side, how has technology helped you (if it has)?

Hell yeah! The music business is a tricky and ever-changing industry and it’s always going to be a hustle to make a living from our craft. For me the path that most makes sense to generate income is to license my tracks for media projects. Little Glass Men as of now doesn’t tour which we all know is a very important income stream for artists so I’ve really focused on getting my tracks into film, TV, commercials, etc. Not without effort it has been somewhat successful. In the big picture, technology is helping me in that regard because there is more content than ever coming out which means there are potentially more opportunities for my music to be used and generate income. Conversely, technology has also enabled the market to become oversaturated and I think it has been driving the perceived value of music down to nothing. People want free. How can you compete with that?

How do you feel about streaming services? Any romantic attachments to the physical formats: vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, CDs?

I think we have to embrace streaming because it’s not going anywhere. Plus, if they’re not gonna stream it they’ll torrent it. I do agree we need fairer streaming royalties (excellent discussion on this at https://soundcloud.com/sfmusictech/fairer-streaming-royalties) but there are some perks that we can use to our advantage. Streaming opens up insights and analytics for the independent artist to use and make savvy business decisions. For example, knowing who exactly is listening to our music and where is imperative to creating an effective marketing campaign and streaming instantly gives us that data.

Where can we follow you online and hear more music?

• www.soundcloud.com/littleglassmen will take you to my latest works
• www.freemusicarchive.org/littleglassmen will take you to previous albums which are all under a creative commons license 🙂
• www.clauscreative.com will take you to my website where you can see my music and graphic design portfolio
• www.instagram.com/clauscreative is where I post a lot of my artwork and musings, come say what up!

Anything else before we sign off?

Literature!

Some books that I can’t live without:

• Musicpreneur: the creative approach to making money in music – Aaron Bethune
• Mastering Audio: the art and the science – Bob Katz
• All You Need to Know About the Music Business – Donald Passman
• The War of Art – Steven Pressfield
• Steal like an Artist & Show Your Work – Austin Kleon
• The Last Safe Investment – Bryan Franklin
• The Startup of You – Hoffman (co-founder Linked-In) and Casnocha
• The Courage to Create – Rollo May
• Music and the Mind – Anthony Storr
• Hermann Hesse- Narcissus and Goldmund
• The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran

Thanks for the questions!

Ryan Claus