Glint

Jase Blankfort needs a break. And he’s going to get it whether the audience — or even the label — likes it or not. Immediately after our interview, the principal songwriter and vocalist for Euro-rock outfit Glint was heading to the Adirondacks for, well, he didn’t really know. And that’s exactly how Blankfort set up the trip in the first place.

To create the sounds that commonly get compared to Muse, Blankfort says he needs to get away and escape the machine known as the music industry. Thus, this trip is one of many he’s taken to complete the second record. Whether he’s grabbing an apartment in the south of France or heading to a mountain cabin, one thing is sure: Blankfort is intent on allowing his music to have all the space it needs.

SSv: So you’re heading out of town to the Adirondacks?

Jase Blankfort: I’ve always loved creating a sense of intrigue. One of the guys who work at our label has access to a really nice cabin on Indian Lake, so I just try to not learn too much about where I’m going. I like there being this mystery to where I will be for 10 days. I bring my remote studio that fits in my car and I just like that sense of not knowing. My wife and I have a place up in Woodstock, so I had a great week-long session there. I’m pretty much almost done writing the record. I like always leaving that door open to explore and nurture it. That’s where I’m at right now.

SSv: If you’re almost done writing the record, what are the hopes for this time in the Adirondacks? Are you hoping to just round out the material? Hoping for a couple new tracks?

Jase: I just like being in these periods of time with nobody. I’m always writing music, but I like just letting go of it and not having to do anything. I have a studio at home, too, that I can use when it’s time. But when I’m making a record, I always like to take every possible avenue to further explore it. You know, it’s been a really easy process this time. I think it’s the culmination of the tours we’ve been doing and the great responses all over the world. It all culminated and I just started writing like a madman. It all started coming so instinctually with no effort involved, so this was the easiest record I’ve ever written.

SSv: I was going to ask about that. If they are coming so easily, is that much different than the last time?

Jase: No, I always go for what instinctually comes. When I try to over-process it and force it, I can achieve those results but it just takes hours and hours and hours. It becomes an arduous process, so I try to step out of that circle for a minute and divert my senses. I’ll try to get back to that spontaneous instinct. But in some miraculous way, I never intended for this to be a conceptual record, but it just manifested itself organically, which is something I’m really proud of.

I never intended for this to be a story or to be this total cohesive album. With some energy, I don’t try to overthink it and it just unfolded itself. I was in Woodstock this last weekend and finally listened to all of this new material together. It just told this beautiful story that I didn’t realize. I love how it wrote itself. I try not to let myself get in the way of the music. I’ve always wanted the content to speak for itself and not let my own mind and feeling fuck with that.

SSv: Does that mean you’ve learned the hard way not to overthink it or have you just received advice to not allow it to happen?

Jase: Whether I like it or not, I’ve had to teach myself over these past years to not take this so seriously. I guess I made the decision 10 years ago as a young teen that I can’t live without doing this. When I found myself creating music, my life started to normalize. I wasn’t as much of a mess, but I still overthought everything like a method actor, I was taking it so fucking seriously. I want to be more of a human being than a musician. You find out the hard way, I guess. Music needs a life. You have to live a life outside of the music world to be able to write, I find. I don’t know where everyone else is at, but I’ve found that my music needs life.

SSv: So you didn’t know that when you first started?

Jase: No, I learned it on the EP. I’ve had a couple other records, but it was this last EP that I noticed or started to see the signs that I wasn’t really allowing myself to maintain that essence of making music as a kid. Once you get all of these components involved and you have eight people outside of the band as a part of this — from two managers to a publicist to booking agent to distribution — all those heads can really fuck you up and fuck everything you’ve worked so hard to be yourself with.

It’s a conflict of interest with the industry’s agenda in many ways, but that’s the beauty of the label that I’m on with Rely Records. There’s all this bullshit involved with business plans and record releases and number projections, but it does not fucking matter. What matters is that you’re putting forth something you can believe in. I’m not saying it’s always easy talking to the label, but it’s definitely better than a lot of situations that some of my friends’ bands are in. They just have these demon stories of working with their label, so I feel quite fortunate. It’s never easy, but it’s better than it could be.

SSv: So these sabbaths that you take become necessary to preserve the art.

Jase: Absolutely. I have to just turn off my cell phone. I can’t check my e-mail. I can’t be that guy, which I’m totally fine being. I’m fine being the point guy, but there’s a time and place to be. You have to shut off the creative thing and go on a tour. I’m still writing and being myself in that tour, but you let the craft of bringing a band around the world take the first seat and the creative mind has to take the backseat. That’s also something that I think took me a bit of time to get used to, because I never wanted to put anything before creating music, because it’s what I was made to do.

SSv: When did you first realize sabbath was essential? Was there a breaking point?

Jase: I’ve always felt that it was so inspiring to just go into this atmosphere. Technology is so beautiful right now. You can fit an entire studio in a knapsack and take it wherever the fuck you want to go. The beauty of that opened itself to me when I started to develop technologically in how I’m making the music that I’m making. I’m not just a songwriter, but I also love to create sounds. That’s why it’s just a different head for me. When I’m in my producer or songwriting head, that’s just a different space for me. When I’m in the live show, I can’t think of recording.

They are all huge roles that I can’t do at the same time. My management finally got it, I think, and they finally just knew that they had to step back and let me do my thing. So on the European tour, I met my wife who is from Marseilles in the south of France. After the tour, we met for a month in Marseilles and we had an apartment there for a month and some change. I set-up my studio there and that’s where the album started to take its form. I didn’t have a crew of people telling me what to do and where to be. It was just a simplistic life. The only worries were ‘what’s for dinner’ or sitting down and taking a track and seeing where it takes me.

I took so much material from that time in France and I started speaking to the people I work with on the label. I told them, ‘This is really going to work, but I have to submit myself to it.’ When I’m in that zone of isolation, I don’t have to worry about anything. I don’t have to eat at a certain time or worry about my appearance — not that I do — but all those things that come along with being a human being, you can just answer every second to that mind that I always live with and walk with every day. But I finally don’t say ‘no’ to that zone. If it’s three in the morning and I hear something, I don’t say ‘no’ to it.

I finally have mastered this way in getting in touch with myself and leaving the rest behind me. That’s why I’m so incredibly proud of this record, and from the demos I’ve played for the other guys, they are loving it, too. So is the label. I think it’s just really working out for us right now.