Jake Fox of Lunar Syrup took Happy through the full album concept of Dream State War, and the hallucinatory process of how it came to be
Lunar Syrup’s Dream State War is a genre-fusing blend of love and loss, of push and pull, and of the ebb and flow of life.
The process of making the album was, for frontman Jake Fox, full of hallucinatory imagery, a supernatural presence and the struggle of real-life relationships.
Explaining the album through The Awareness, The Haunting and The Acceptance, Fox takes us through the ethos of each track, and how they each come together to make the surreal experience that is Dream State War.
Check out what Fox had to say below.
Dream State War is the second coming album from Lunar Syrup. It follows the concept of duality with reference to masculine and feminine energy, push and pull and dark and light. The songs highlight the darker sides of life and how we can eventually find understanding and peace within the chaos.
The title Dream State War has a few different references. It’s about conflict and understanding that everyone is going through their own battles. It’s the conflicts we have within and with our self-talk, the conflicts we have in relationships and the conflicts we have in society.
We all have our personal views of the world and subconsciously challenge each other. When you can take a step back and be conscious of your own world, you are able to change your own way of thinking and tap into a source of unrealised potential. This is the dream state. Taking this into the physical world is the war.
Dream State War is our most emotive project to date and all the songs are based on true stories. The songwriting was inspired by Hermetic principles, the movie “Waking Life” and Carl Jung’s philosophy of the shadow self. The production styles we experimented with also take reference from Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative ACT: A Way of Being.”
The cover expresses the concept well. The background shows the distraction mixed with ambition – an unconscious dream state. The middle is the world in which two energies can come together. The kiss is the longing for connection and while the astronaut is there, he is feeling the connection whilst also unable to break from his own world.
I’ve split the album into three parts I like to call “The Awareness”, “The Haunting” and “The Acceptance”. The songs have all been produced in a way to accentuate the songwriting and induce hallucinative states to listeners.
The Awareness
Choose Your Weapon
The first song ‘Choose Your Weapon’ I started writing mainly with the hook of the chorus. When expanding the concept of ‘Choose Your Weapon’ and what that meant to me, I realized that I was at a point of my life where my ambition, my goals and my passions were all colliding with relationships and other aspects of my life.
I was continually asking myself if I should be pursuing my goals or choosing different paths based on societal norms. I was completely drained and had a push and pull feeling of letting go but knowing that I never could. This was when the chorus came together.
“I dream of what it would be like to live with an apathetic mind and you know I adore your resilient ways but now it’s time to choose your weapon”. This was the feeling of giving up and society telling you to make a choice.
The outro repeating “Never give yourself away” was me making a conscious decision that I would continue to chase my goals although they were conflicting with most things in my life.
Classified Sin
‘Classified Sin’ was written by our drummer Matt Bishop. The song is about the current state of the world and the conflicts we have with a highly opinionated society. The song is based on true stories of losing close friendships based on altered opinions.
It’s the sense that the way you live will not be accepted in society and that people must live in a hidden way. We can’t say how we feel, or act how we feel without being judged or without the fear of losing people close to us. I connected with this song as well with my own awareness that I wasn’t living the way I wanted to live with the fear of losing connections.
The Art of Sleeping
‘The Art of Sleeping’ is the title track of the album and where the project really began. After years in a relationship that I thought was stable and would go the distance, it suddenly ended. There were difficult conversations and times of disconnect but overall I felt like these were passing moments and phases.
After we ended things I went through some time trying to understand the faults and looking back on the last months. In a way there were signs that she was preparing to leave, and making plans on how. I was simply focused on how I enjoyed the life we had and ignored these signs. This is where the chorus came from. “I was deep in the art of sleeping, you were in a dream state war.”
The verses dug a little deeper, talking about how social media can have a toxic effect on relationships. The lyric, “This city is not the same” is literal and about how you don’t want to be in an environment after a breakup but it also talks about the world you create with someone and how the things you thought were true never were and how this world can fall. After I wrote ‘The Art of Sleeping’ I knew that I was at the beginning of a new project and took the lyric “Dream state war” to continue writing.
The Haunting
So High
‘So High’ was written at a very difficult time. I had an injury and was unable to walk for a short time. I realized that a lot of the problems and traumas that I had, I’d been able to avoid for a long time but being incapable of doing much, they all hit me at the same time.
I had a lot of voices in my head, a lot of nightmares and was constantly fighting these internal battles. I’d been producing the other songs but was in a bit of a lull because of this downward spiral. After a night out and crashing my car, I’d hit the bottom and weirdly it didn’t phase me. It’s like I knew I had to go there.
Slowly I was coming out of it and figuring out ways to process the amount of information I had to deal with. Myself and Niall sat down in the sun with some acoustic guitars and wrote ‘So High’ together. The song is full of major happy chords, however the verses are about wanting to escape the feelings of loss and depression.
It’s the dark and light fighting each other. The conversations behind the vocals accentuate the lyrics and the essence of the song comes out with the vocal “You can’t have happiness without darkness.”
Your Sway
‘Your Sway’ was written on one of the days after writing ‘So High’. At a point of processing the things I was going through, I was going back to relationships I’d been in. I realized that a lot of the pain I’d felt was from the sway of emotion and the fantasy I’d created of being with someone.
This song majorly highlighted the push and pull feelings involved in my relationships. It was the way I’d fall into moments when they were great and thought I could make them last forever but also recognise the feelings of not being completely in sync. After writing ‘Your Sway’ I had an intense moment of understanding and this song became very close to me.
I knew I wanted it on the album but it was very different to the others and myself and Niall decided the only way to record it was to capture the moment. The two of us took some acid, set up a room and microphone for recording and began to have a conversation.
We agreed that if I started to play the song we would let it go, and whatever we recorded would be the foundation. For hours we spoke about life, relationships, psychology, philosophy and what this song and album meant to us. As the conversation grew a lot darker we began to see the lights all flicker around us and shadows swimming around the walls of the room.
We knew there was a presence with us and the moment arrived. I played the song with guitar and vocals live, start to finish, and this became the foundation. We then overdubbed the other instruments to the live track. This presence that entered the room we tried to incorporate into all of the songs on the album.
Flora
‘Flora’ is the main character of Dream State War. I was at home listening through the songs and working out ways to continue the production. I’d had some mushrooms and was chilling with some blue lights on and the room became very intense.
All of a sudden the lights began to flicker wildly and I felt the same presence behind me as I’d felt on the night of recording ‘Your Sway.’ I had the feeling of an arm wrapped around my chest, embracing me and then I heard a woman’s voice whispering in my ear that said it’s all okay.
As everything went back to normal I tried to analyze what this presence was because it felt so chaotic yet nurturing at the same time. I formulated a few concepts into one. I felt like this was a feminine presence that was on my shoulder, nurturing yet working through me in some way. Wanting the things I wanted. Experiencing things through my experiences.
I called her ‘Flora’ as a way to identify. I then began to think of this feminine presence being within all the women I have relationships with. In each relationship they see a different version of me and I see a piece of ‘Flora.’ I sat with my phone open and could hear the song in my head as I wrote down all the words.
The Acceptance
Always
‘Always’ is a song of memories and acceptance. The verse lyrics highlighted events that happened in my relationship. Walking through the trees, carving our names and saying that it would always be. This was a difficult song to write but I hoped that others could relate. I was thinking deeply about the concept of time and memory.
I wanted to imagine that instead of how we think time works with past, present, and future, each moment that we have had or will have is happening continuously and simultaneously with the present. I heard a quote that was something like “Although we think we are significant as humans, everything we do makes a mark on the timeline of the universe.”
When I thought of this and zoomed out from time, our lives are just a fleeting moment, yet the love we feel for each other is the mark we leave on the universe. The lyric “carving our names” became the metaphor for leaving our mark on the universe.
It was something that when I thought of love with this lens, I felt more acceptance for everything that had happened. We played with production of this song a lot and included a live guitar and vocal in the outro to create more of a genuine feeling.
Dark Rainbows
‘Dark Rainbows’ was a very quickly written song, but I knew it had to be on the end of the album. Quite simply, it was about the conscious realization of being within a moment and knowing it would have to end. When a rainbow happens it is a type of magic that stops people, however not many people have the conscious understanding that the rainbow will be gone in a short time and how to feel then.
This was another song of acceptance and gratitude. It’s about learning to take the moment for all it is. It will end one day but while it’s here, be grateful for it and don’t turn it into anything that it is not. It’s also about having the courage to say yes to a moment even though you understand the pain of it ending.
Head here for an in depth interview with Lunar Syrup.
