[MUSIC NEWS] DANIEL JOHNS And LUKE STEELE Reveal New Band
‘No One Defeats Us’ is the first taste of music from one of Australia’s most anticipated new bands, DREAMS – a collaboration between Daniel Johns (aka Dr Dreams) and Luke Steele (aka Miracle).
The new single, written and produced by DREAMS, was recorded at Luke Steele’s studio in Los Angeles and Henson Studios, Hollywood.
It’s a war cry. It’s like the exorcism of a bad series of events, or a bad dream. It’s the first song the famous musical duo wrote together after a long, long period of talking, thinking and wondering – “just hanging out,” says Luke. “We would catch up and talk about records and visions and dreams and we never got any work done. Then we thought we better make some music.”
Daniel explains, “No-One Defeats Us says lyrically what our goal is, it’s a journey into our vision of the future. It’s a very simple song, it has no chorus, it feels like a mantra. When Luke and I are making music, everything disappears and we become like teenage explorers, we go into our world, we are so brave when we are together, we try things that we might not try for other people.
This song is not really what people would expect from Luke and I, we’re not making super-complex music with lots of unusual chords this time. We are trying to paint this really intricate pulse. We find what resonates and try to make that pulse stronger.”
“Me and Dan excel and struggle on similar levels” says Luke. “We have so much passion and we are so ambitious. That song came from a time when we were beginning the band and we needed something deep. I wanted to build a gang – like a gang of the future. We want the band to be for the common man, the underdog, the homeless, the person who shows love to his neighbour.”
DREAMS is the realisation of a long-time friendship and musical kinship between these two iconic Australian artists. Daniel Johns is best known as the front man of Silverchair whilst the enigmatic Luke Steele fronts Empire of The Sun and The Sleepy Jackson. The artists first met in 2004 when Luke’s band The Sleepy Jackson supported Silverchair on their sold-out Diorama tour, and Daniel recalls the connection between them was so instant that after the first show of that tour they played piano together backstage, and have basically never stopped.
With over ten million albums sold worldwide and an undefeatable twenty-nine ARIA Awards won between their respective acts, the pedigree of Daniel and Luke’s new collaboration is unquestionable.
Since Silverchair’s debut release ‘Tomorrow’ in 1994, Daniel has taken home a record twenty-one statues, the most of any Australian artist in ARIA history. Daniel has also won APRA Songwriter of the Year three times, and impressively, Silverchair is the only Australian act to have all of their studio albums, five in total, debut at #1 on the ARIA chart.
Sweeping the ARIAs clean in 2008 was Luke Steele’s Empire of the Sun, taking home gongs for Best Album, Best Single, Best Group and Best Pop Release. With a total of eight ARIA Awards and two APRA songwriting awards to date, Empire of the Sun has gone from strength to strength internationally, including a spectacular sold out performance at Hollywood Bowl in 2015, in front of an audience of 17,000 US fans.
Three years later and only a few hundred kilometres away from that iconic amphitheatre in the Hollywood Hills, DREAMS will make their debut performance at COACHELLA Valley Music & Arts Festival this April. The only band ever to be booked for the festival before releasing any music, the duo is the highest-billed Australian band, promising to put on a truly unmissable performance.
Download / stream ‘No One Defeats Us’ HERE
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