A brilliant hybrid project, Glassio is the indie-dance and dream-pop project of Irish-Iranian singer, songwriter and producer Sam R. An artist who has amassed over ten million streams and received acclaim from the likes of Consequence of Sound, NYLON and FADER, Glassio delivers a brilliant blend of electronica, new wave, and dance-pop that shine with vibrant harmonies and production textures reminiscent of groups like Air and Massive Attack.
His latest single, ‘Magazines’ features an illustrious and bright mixture of acid house, folk, and country, arriving as the perfect song to lift your spirits and inspire hope through difficult times. An inspiring dance-fuelled track about accepting your flaws, climbing your way out of darkness, and not comparing yourself to images of perfection, because they don't exist. Glassio wrote this song during a time of struggle, as a coping mechanism, and finished the track after losing his father to COVID alongside Dave Rublin of American Authors.
Glassio confides, “I made this song to help me get up and out of bed through a rough patch in the Summer of 2020. 6 months later, I went through a very unexpected life change. I lost my father to COVID. The song and the full album were both halfway finished when he passed. My dad loved how it sounded and beckoned me to finish it - along with the rest of the songs on the album- in the last few weeks of his life. A few months later, I brought it to my friend Dave Rublin of American Authors and we both just began dancing to it when I played him the version I had made. We decided to finish it together. Working on finishing the song brought me a lot of much-needed serotonin and adrenaline through that initial period of grief. I’ll always remember this song for helping me through that.”
Glassio’s debut single ‘Try Much Harder’ broke the Spotify ‘Global Viral Charts’ in early 2016, peaking at No. 9. A series of successful singles followed in 2017 and 2018, garnering over five million streams cumulatively on Spotify. The release of the singles ‘Morning House’, ‘Daydream’ and ‘Back for More’ brought Glassio to the top tier of up-and-coming electronic artists in NYC. After the project became a solo effort in 2018, Sam R. released the ‘Age of Experience’ EP, heralded by Mother Jones as "proof that electronic music and great storytelling are a perfect match."
A debut album, ‘For The Very Last Time’, was released in July of 2020, and was subsequently named one of the best electronic releases from July 2020 by Bandcamp and received praise from blogs like Consequence of Sound and Fader.
Over the next year, Glassio is expected to release his sophomore record ‘See You Shine’, a fourteen-song album that documents the exodus of a young adult out of a small town that shuns them for their beliefs and into the depths of the deserts of Arizona, looking for a new life in a distant city. The album’s sound marries Glassio’s passion for French-electronic music with American singer-songwriter tropes akin to Jackson Browne, or Wilco.
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