After working alongside chart-topping artists like Frank Ocean and Lorde, cinematic post-rock duo Wave System is taking the stage with their debut album Inside A Dream. The album takes listeners through a whimsical journey of sun-filled beaches, mysterious dreams and starry skies. Between its dreamy landscapes and dynamic ebbs and flows, Inside A Dream is a gripping cinematic journey rooted in the human experience.
Wave System is the project of composer/producers Phil Danyew and Taylor Johnson, whose music spans from intimate piano ballads to epic cinematic post rock. After years of touring and writing with Frank Ocean, Foster the People, and Lorde, the duo started composing songs together that blend sweeping orchestral arrangements with modern synthesis that take the listener from the depths of introspection to the peaks of explosive joy.
Danyew and Johnson walk us through a track-by-track of their debut release, Inside A Dream.
1. How Do You Feel: Our most recent song so arguably our favorite at the moment. It’s centered around the theme of a pulsing synth bass that takes off into an epic chorus with a massive backbeat exclaiming “How Do You Feel?”
2. Feel You Next To Me: Starts off with a cinematic piano that leads into a dreamy shoe gaze guitar reminiscent of a starry night in the desert that waltzes throughout until the chorus takes off. Lyrically we go from a notion of lament to having the memory of someone so real that it’s tangible.
3. I’ll Be Here With You: IBHWY starts off with a haunting and familiar feeling guitar line that leads into a piano driven ballad about persevering and letting that person know you’re there for them. It all swells gradually into an epic post rock anthem bound to leave you in tears!
4. Brighter: “Easy to doubt when you’re running through hell, but I got through the fire….It made me Brighter” is the standout lyric of this piano/synth ballad. From a solo piano front half to a massive M83 esque ending, “Brighter” is an epic journey made to leave the hair on your arm standing.
5. Something Real: “Something Real” is about yearning for something visible, tangible, and lasting in a relationship. The melancholy verses lead into a huge pay off that was intentionally written to feel like the closing music for a Coppola film.
6. Dedicated To The One I Love: Classic song by the Mamas and the Papas that doesn’t need too much describing! We wanted to nod as much as we could to the chamber pop elements of the original while still keeping it in 2021. Maybe 2021 should take more notes from 1967!
7. Trust You: This one takes the listener on an angsty path of not being able to be sure of someone’s intentions and if you believe anything about them at all.
8. Invisible Hands: For this one we wanted to see what it would sound like if we channeled the emotion in Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” and gave it more of a modern and cinematic feel.
9. Inside A Dream: Inside A Dream starts with a pulsing verbed guitar that surrounds whimsical lyrics about closing your eyes and dreaming to drift away with that certain someone into a lighter place than where you started.
Be sure to stream Wave System’s newest album Inside A Dream on all streaming platforms today.
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Images provided by Tyler G Halford
