New Music Spotlight: Tania Cassette

The New Wave Music Podcast

Host Steve interviews Tania Cassette about her transition from the band Glass Spells to her new solo career. They explore her debut album, '

Key takeaways

Tania Cassette transitioned to a solo career to gain more creative control and personal expression than possible in Glass Spells.
The album 'The Death of Me' utilizes 80s synth-pop elements inspired by bands like AFI, Depeche Mode, and The Cure.
Musicians Kyle and Myles Mendes of NITE provided the primary instrumentation for the new record.
The album features bilingual tracks, using Spanish to convey deeper, more passionate emotions.
The title track 'The Death of Me' symbolizes the shedding of a past identity and finding hope in the aftermath.

Main topics

Solo career transition
80s musical influences
The Death of Me album themes

Notable quotes

The death of me symbolizes the pain and struggle... leaving behind something that I loved and adored.

Conclusion

A deep dive into the evolution of an artist finding her unique voice t

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This is Jonathan Horstman with Urban Heat. Speaker 3 (0:11) And you're listening to the New Wave Music Podcast. Speaker 1 (0:16) You're tuned into the new wave music podcast. Speaker 1 (0:21) Your go-to destination for exclusive interviews, album reviews, and the latest music news. Speaker 1 (0:30) And now, here's your host, Steve. Speaker 4 (0:34) Welcome back to the New Wave Music Podcast. Today I'm joined by Tanya Cassette. You may recognize Tanya's voice as she was the former frontwoman behind the band Glass Spells. However, she has now stepped into a new chapter with her musical career. Her solo debut brings together dark pop, synth pop, electronic music, and an unmistakable 80s influence, with songs that balance romance, darkness, danceable rhythms, and personal storytelling. Today we're talking about her journey into her solo career. the new album, The Death of Me, and some of the individual songs that make up the record. Tanya, thank you so much for joining me here on the podcast today. It's an absolute pleasure to be speaking with you. Speaker 2 (1:13) Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here. Speaker 4 (1:17) So for anyone discovering you for the first time, how would you describe your sound and kind of what you're creating with this, with your solo career now at this point? Speaker 2 (1:26) I would describe it as a dark pop mixed with a touch of 80s and quite a bit of dark wave. Speaker 4 (1:40) So you're already known to many of our listeners as the vocalist or the front woman of the band Glass Spells. When did you first start thinking about creating music completely on your own? Speaker 2 (1:50) It's always been kind of like an ongoing dream of mine to just branch out on my own. Ever since I was little, I always kind of pictured myself being, I guess, kind of like a pop star, you know, when you're in your bedroom, like, you know, singing into a hairbrush type of situation. So it's always been in the back of my mind, just the way that my life routed. I did go the band route at first. And then... Over time, I started getting this feeling of wanting to have more creative control and be a little bit more personal in my songs because when you're with a band or a duo, sometimes you're kind of representing both people. And there were just some themes that I just felt like this is more of my thing that I just felt like it needed to go in a different direction. than what I was doing previously. Speaker 4 (2:48) So was there kind of maybe a bit of a creative process for you when you're writing as a solo artist versus working within Glass Spells? Speaker 2 (2:56) I think the biggest difference is the producers that I'm working with now. They are a little bit more. They're much more open to just starting off the slate with what influences I'm drawn to, what. what kind of vibe I want for the songs and what I want the song to essentially be, whether that's, you know, something inspired by my favorite band, AFI, mixed with, you know, a different genre. So a lot of these songs came together based off of like a playlist I would send being like, okay, can you mix, you know, this favorite B side of AFI of mine, you know, with, but like make it. synth pop and, you know, add this different element to it. And they just absolutely got it where, and they would send the instrumental over. I'd write, I'd write the vocal melody and the lyrics, just like I would do a glass bells. It's just the biggest differences instead of just getting a track and having me kind of blend and mix and turn my way into making myself fit into, um, into another vision that like, I didn't even know what would. sound like prior. It was more so like I was in the headspace of the song I wanted to create. So the songs came a lot faster. Speaker 4 (4:20) There's definitely a strong 80s feeling throughout your music, but it doesn't sound like you're trying to recreate the era. What is it about the sound of the 80s that continues to inspire you? Speaker 2 (4:31) Well, I love synthesizers, first of all. And 80s music has always followed me throughout my life. When I was in show choir back in high school, my teacher was very much a, or my instructor was very much an 80s guy. So a lot of our themes around the songs we would perform for like performances or competitions would be based around 80s songs. Um, and you know, again, bringing up AFI, they're probably going to be brought up a lot because they're just like my favorite band in the whole world. Um, listening to AFI talk about their influences and the type of music that they listened to. Davey Havoc talked a lot about bands like Depeche Mode, The Cure, um, you know, uh, Pet Shop Boys, you know, so it, it made me want to go ahead and, and, and discover that type of music too. And on top of that, you had the VH1, I Love the 80s videos playing. So it was kind of like that music surrounded me all throughout my life. So I always just gravitated to that. Speaker 4 (5:37) So your debut album is called The Death of Me. What does that title mean to you? And what story does the album tell as a whole? Speaker 2 (5:44) So The Death of Me, the title is basically about shedding my past self. However, you knew me in the past. Speaker 2 (5:53) that that's been shed away. And this is who I am now. It's, it's rising Phoenix energy, you know, I had to make the hard decision to branch out on my own, which was very difficult to do one of the most difficult decisions I had made in my life. And it was a very scary decision. So the death of me symbolizes the pain and struggle. the internal struggle that I went through and leaving behind something that I loved and adored and just my relationship with my fans and how that broke me and broke my heart in so many different ways that I didn't know a heart could be broken. And so I channeled a lot of that heartbreak energy of like all the turmoil that was going on within me of like how I felt making that decision, but also adding a romantic element to it to Because I always gravitate towards like a dark romance kind of vibe. So yeah, The Death of Me is just simply my interpretation and my artwork of how I interpret my pain and how I turn that into an artistic form, into themes that I love, like dark romance. Speaker 4 (7:06) When you started working on this amazing album, did you already have a clear vision of what you wanted to sound like? Or was it something that maybe developed as you were recording the songs? Speaker 2 (7:15) It was definitely something that developed as I was writing the songs. I didn't go into it with the... Well, when I first went into it, I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do, like influences I wanted to pull from and what I kind of wanted to sound like. But... As the album took shape, it ended up sounding more like me than ever. So