Glass Beams is an Australian musical trio from Melbourne, Australia. The band was founded by Rajan Silva in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the other two members yet to be revealed. Their debut EP Mirage was released in June 2021. The band blends synth, rock, psychedelic, electric guitar, eastern instrumentals, and subtle cooing vocals.
Glass Beams is influenced by founding member Rajan Silva’s childhood exposure to diverse music. Inspiration is drawn from traditional Indian popular music and western rock. A fusion of styles is evident in their self-produced works, which combine live instruments with electronic elements. Silva recalls watching “Concert for George,” a tribute to the Beatles’ George Harrison, featuring sitar maestro Ravi Shankar and western rock legends. This mix mirrored his father’s record collection, where Bollywood film songs shared space with blues icons. Silva was drawn to the work of Indian artists, such as R. D. Burman, Ananda Shankar, and the fraternal duo Kalyanji-Anandji, who pioneered the mixing of eastern and western styles.
This cross-pollination of East and West, of old and new, is a sentiment that the band have sought to capture. Across their output, Glass Beams presents a timeless fusion of cultures and sounds all wrapped up inside a mesmerizing and mystical visual world of their own making. Their debut EP ‘Mirage’, released in 2021 catapulted them into the collective consciousness of new followers who came to discover their serpentine, psychedelic-tinged tracks through social media, streaming services and word of mouth, with the vinyl copies selling-out as quickly as it could be pressed via grassroots record store support.
In the wake of the unexpected success of their debut release and an abundance of festival invitations, Glass Beams were amplified around the globe performing hypnotic renditions of the ‘Mirage’ EP alongside an additional 20 minutes of unreleased music. Early clips of these “unreleased tracks” quickly began circulating online garnering millions of views and a fast-growing and ever-hungry following. As 2023 drew to a close and the dust settled after a whirlwind of touring, Glass Beams retreated to their home studio to record this much anticipated 20 minutes of music. They have named the record ‘Mahal’.
Melbourne trio Glass Beams create sounds that are rooted in sand. The “serpentine psychedelia” outfit anchors their grooves with cosmic instrumentation and worldly polyrhythms. In all public appearances as a band they have worn Russian-designed gold bejewelled glass masks. This The wearing of intricate masks to obscure their identity heightens their air of mystery and keeps the focus on the music and not the people behind it.
