With silent film cinematic aesthetics imbued with unique and 21st-century flair, Ukranian Coldwave Duo The Glass Beads invoke sorrowful sounds, both strange and sensual, on their debut LP Therapy, melancholic life stories focused on the search and struggle of trying to find your way as an individual way and to accept yourself.
These themes explored on the record are filled with pain and anger as well as hope.
The Glass Beads feature the talents of musicians Mark Arshynnikov and Morin Sane, a pair of musicians whose Slavic features construct an appearance that is altogether commanding, beautiful and timelessly Gothic, yet gracefully tempered with a modern and tasteful style woven between two eras of the centennial: 1920, and now.
In collaboration, Mark and Morin conjure melodies that reverberate like footsteps through the hallways of an abandoned house, haunted by memories of love, sickness, and death. Their melodic music is interwoven with sighing keys, palpitating drum machines, sauntering basslines, and disaffected vocals like an eastern european version of Velvet Underground chanteuse Nico.
It has been 4 years since the two made their debut with “Going”, a song that would two years later make itself part of The Glass Beads’ 4 track debut EP Phobia issued on cassette via Squall Records.
For that release, The Wave of Things spotlighted the pair in their Sounds of Ukraine episode, Describing them as a cross between Lebanon Hanover and Drunken C, and highlighted their mesmerizing video for the title track “Phobia” where a blindfold vocalist Morin Sane drifts amongst a field of sunflowers in stark black and white.