Joao Gonzolez, or Soft Glas, is a Brooklyn-based DJ, producer, and singer. His music brings a variety of influences to create a distinctive electronic sound. His new single, “Prudence and Poise” is a warm and relaxed Latin-jazz mix with steady percussions, smooth guitar and a relatable chorus that articulates what almost everyone has been thinking for the past year.
Can you tell me and our audiences about yourself in your own words?
My name is Joao and I have a project called Soft Glass, and I’m a producer, songwriter, and singer, I guess by default. And yeah, I just make music and I love to create in as many ways as possible, and that includes music and film — anything I can make.
Did you do all the production on this new album?
Yeah, I did. I did all the production. I did have some additional production by Adam Straus, who is the engineer I work with and I’ve been working with for three years now and then on some songs that have additional production from Alex Szotak and Cautious Clay. But for the most part, I think up to 80% of everything is just me.
What first got you into music?
I grew up in a musical family. My dad’s a pianist and just having music around me basically since I was born, I think normalized it. My parents never pushed any of their children to play music or even get into the arts. But I think like anything, it’s so normalized that if you show any interest in it, it’s not met with any friction. So the moment that I told my parents that I wanted to play drums when I was like I was six or seven, they were just like, ‘okay.’ And there was no, ‘oh, it’s just going to be a hobby.’ They saw that I was extremely passionate about it from the beginning and they supported it.
Was there a point when you realized that you could make a career out of it?
Yeah, I mean, in high school, I was pretty set on being a jazz drummer as a career. That was the most intensely I ever practiced the instrument. And because at the time I thought, ‘I’m going to go to a music school, and then I’m going to just be a drummer for the rest of my life.’ It’s funny because after I applied to music school and I didn’t get in, and after that I second-guessed whether or not I was going to pursue music as a career.
After college, that fire got re-lit. I moved to New York in 2013 after college and I think when I moved to New York, that was kind of the final nail in the coffin. And like that was when I decided, okay, I’m going to try to make this a career. Because, why make this move, this very intense and drastic move and sleep on a couch if I’m not going to at least try. So it was a little late later in life that I decided that it was going to be my career right after my initial high school phase.
…I moved in with a friend of mine who was also trying to just make it in music. He had already been performing and recording, and he had a roommate move out. So he was like, ‘hey you want to come live with me and in Brooklyn and we can try to do this and you can be my producer.’
What did you end up going to college for?
Psychology. I actually didn’t have a major for the first year. It was an exploratory program, you just get to take whatever classes you want and figure out what you want to do. And I had a psych class that I really enjoyed. So whatever class I got an A in, I was like, ‘this is what I am going to do now for the rest of my life, I guess.’ I actually ended up graduating with a degree in psychology that I just obviously didn’t use. But I did want to finish school, and I think it was important that I did because in school I learned how to learn. I figured out how I most efficiently process information and I think that’s a very valuable thing to know, because later in life, if there’s anything that I’m trying to learn, I know what’s the best and most effective way for me to go about it.
You’re Cuban-American, and you have a jazz drumming background. You also really appreciate a range of avant-garde classical musicians. How do all these influences combine into your music, which is a little bit more electronic?
I mean, I think the beautiful thing about influences is. You know, unless you’re trying to just overtly reproduce those things, you don’t know how they’re going to manifest themselves in you. You don’t know what the result is going to be. To me, it’s very obvious and that’s so funny because I’ve talked to people about that before, and they kind of ask the same things like, well, ‘what do you take from classical music?’ To me it’s just so obvious and that I’m just like ripping Debussy and Ravel in my music to the point where I’m, like, worried. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m just like a fraud or just copying this stuff.’ But yeah, I mean, I take a lot from all that stuff.
I think the important thing is really listening, I think it’s just how much I listen to that music, it’s, you know, I’m not just taking surface level, very obvious things that one might listen and be like, ‘oh, it’s like piano classical stuff.’ Whereas maybe I’ll take some chord progressions that they obviously tend to write, and with jazz drumming, I think it’s how I program my drums or how I mix my drums. It has a lot to do with how I liked to play the drums when I was younger.
Yeah, it’s funny, it’s I think it’s very important to listen to a bunch of stuff because you never know how those things can combine within you and how they’ll all manifest. I’m glad that it’s not blatantly obvious that I’m just a cheap rip-off of all of my influences.
Well, almost nothing is totally original. You have to be inspired by something.
1000% agree.
What was it like making a whole album during covid?
It wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be, because I guess I realized how insulated my process usually is. I usually work alone in my bedroom, and when I do collaborate with people, it is usually remotely because a lot of my friends and collaborators were in L.A. when I was in New York or were in New York when I was in Florida. So I think not too much changed.
What I do think changed was how much pressure I put on myself to push for something better. I don’t know if that makes sense, but before quarantine, you could go to shows, you could go to sessions and you were a little more in tune and in touch with other musicians or other artists, and that’s very stimulating; that’s very inspiring. I think that’s the biggest thing I missed was being separated from that energy, and I was a little scared that I was out of touch in some ways because I’m just not exposed to other people’s creativity as much.
I think that was the biggest difference. Logistically speaking, the process itself wasn’t very different. I think it was just the mentality and the emotional side to it. You’re definitely a little more isolated creatively.
Yeah, yeah. And I would imagine one of the best parts of being in New York is that there are so many creatives around and you can bounce off each other and that’s lacking when you can’t physically be with people very much.
For sure.
So let’s talk about your new single. What was your process of making “Prudence and Poise”?
Sometimes I’ll make songs that take me three days to make it, and sometimes they take like a week. This was one of the quicker ones. I think that song from beginning to end took maybe like, a week or two, and it was just one of those things where I started with the guitar chord progression and it kind of wrote itself from there because I had already been kind of writing lyrics in general during that time. This was last summer and I wrote another one of my singles, “Cyclones,” around the same time. And I was just kind of going through it, which happens a lot. I guess I’m just, like, always going through it.
But it must have been late April, and my birthday was coming up. I was turning 30. And I was freaking out a little bit. It caught me by surprise how old I’ve gotten and I had this feeling that by the time that I was 30, I would have x, y and z figured out, and I turned 30 and I didn’t have any of that stuff figured out. I kind of felt cheated by life because I thought you were guaranteed to have a certain amount of wisdom or a certain amount of answers by this point. And I didn’t feel that way.
So it was a pretty seamless process. The last thing I did was record the drums for it, and that was interesting because Eric Derwallis, who plays drums for the basically whole album, was in Hanoi at the time and he was like, ‘Hey man, I’ll record some drums for you remotely if you want me just to find a time where we’re both awake.’ You know, because we were just like on opposite ends of the world. And so it was either like 6 a.m. for me or super late for him. And so. That was the last part of it was just recording the drums, and we did like a FaceTime session and he sent over the stems.
And that was one of the first songs I finished for the new album. I’m happy that it’s finally on because it feels like it’s been forever since then. Obviously quarantine warps time and totally feels like a different life.
Totally. I think it has a very relatable message to pretty much anyone right now, especially when you’re a young person going through all this and you don’t know what’s happening in the world or like with yourself and figuring out where you want to go in life. It spoke to me in that way for sure.
Yeah, I think this new album is very much refrain-centered. There are a lot of things that I kept repeating to myself at the time, and they ended up just becoming the choruses to the songs because there are just things that had already been bouncing around in my head for so long. That makes me very happy that if they were to connect in some way, because it feels like it’s a very weird thing to have something that feels so unique to your own experience. And then you put it out and people are like, ‘oh, yeah, me too.’ It’s great that we all can connect on something like that, right?
Who is a dream collaborator for you?
I’ve always said Solange just because I have always loved their music and I feel like that would be a really interesting combination of perspectives and approaches to music. Lately, I’ve really been wanting to collaborate with Blake Mills, who is just an incredible producer, an incredible guitarist, and someone with who I really connect to their lyrics lately. Yeah, I think those two.
it’s very hard. I mean, I say those things, but then I don’t know how I would react if I actually got to collaborate with them. So dream collaborations… I get nervous even talking about it. So I can’t even imagine how nervous I would be to actually collaborate with these people. Maybe I don’t want to collaborate with them.
Your music is also like it’s very personal to you and it seems like a very vulnerable thing to then collaborate with someone and be like, here I am.
Yeah. And yeah, it’s I don’t know what a collaboration would entail, you know, because especially when you love someone else’s music, you love someone else’s perspective so much, you almost don’t want to taint it with your own. I don’t want to touch their process, almost. I would almost ruin it. But it would be cool to even just be in the same room and, like, talk about music with them.
Right. Conversations are collaborations, too.
Oh, yeah. The ultimate collab.
What is behind the name Soft Glas?
I don’t think I’ve ever given the same answer twice. I think I make up an answer every time because I don’t know, really. It is whatever you want it to be, because I’ve had people try to guess and get these incredibly insightful, interpretations of what it means. And I’m just like, yeah, ‘that sounds great. I wish it was that. I think it’s just kind of open for interpretation.
It was just like a random thing when my girlfriend and I were just trying to come up with a moniker, like 10 years ago. And I think we realized that those two words sounded cool together. It was just so insignificant. But I think it’s cool that you could just mean whatever you want it to mean. I think I think what it means is just like my vehicle for putting music out, and I think you can kind of project whatever you want onto it, you know?
Soft Glas’ next full-length album, titled How Strange will be released on March 19. You can follow him @softglas.