STAY WIDE AWAKE IN THE UNCONSCIOUS WITH “DREAM SONGS”
THE CAF SITS DOWN WITH BRETT MADDUX AND DYLAN HEALY ON THEIR LATEST ALBUM.
In an era of Top 40 bops and viral TIkTok sounds that can’t help but burrow and live inside your brain, it’s rare to come across truly unique music. Hartford-based poet Brett Maddux and producer Dylan Healy have done just that, joining creative forces to release the second side of the aptly named album, dream songs. The secondary album starts with intermezzo, adding nine additional songs to the 21-track record. The end result is an otherworldly and melodic meditation on life, love and death. Maddux’s deep voice transports you to a hazy bonfire in the middle of the desert, possibly due to his Iowa upbringing. Meanwhile, Healy’s atmospheric soundscapes immerse you in a realm between consciousness and unconsciousness, an ethereal third state that only be accessed once you stop doomscrolling, let go of all the distractions and just listen.
Photograph courtesy of Jasmine Jones
The album’s special creative process reflects its tender and vulnerable nature. When asked how dream songs came to be, Maddux shares, “I’ve been writing poetry for all of my adult life. We've released five books to date, with the most recent book, american variation, which came out last November. Before it was published, we did a series of "warm up" shows to practice saying the poems out loud. Dylan Healy partnered with me to share the information about the warm up shows. After a show we did in June 2024, Dylan asked me if I would be willing to record some poems for him to set to music. I had never recorded my poetry before and it sounded nice to do that, so I went to Dylan's apartment on June 14th and the 28th and we recorded two 30 minute poetry sets. I sat on the floor, he miked me and I read three or four poems at a time, taking short breaks until we recorded all 21. The version of the poems you hear on the record is the result of those two sessions, which in all cases is the first take we did of the poem — mistakes and all — and in most cases was the first time I’d ever read any of those poems out loud.”
Photograph courtesy of Lauren Z.
Reflecting on the composition process, Dylan shares “I composed the music in real-time: listening to the poems in headphones, hitting record and composing to the rhythm, tone and content of his words. Almost all fully in-the-moment improvisation, which required a tremendous and newfound sense of presence. I recorded everything in one DAW file, so I was able to create seamless transitions between each piece, allowing the album to play out as a gapless, trance-like listening experience. It allowed me to tap into a more spacey, meditative, new-age sound palate, full of breathy synth pads and glitched out harps. Each session, I’d build a slightly different station/alter of analog gear to run my instruments through, making each recording setup unique from the last. Six months later, the record was complete: we had made a double album of 21 pieces.”
An entirely introspective journey, Brett reveals he doesn’t exactly “write” his work (and no, he doesn’t use ChatGPT), sharing, “I mainly just sit quietly and meditate and try to let the rat race/language/left head quiet itself so that the emotional/spiritual/right head can take the wheel and write the poem. It’s moreso like flowing or channeling and I do not take any credit for writing them. I encouraged him to follow a similar track when working on the music, just letting it flow and not trying to control it - letting the music write itself the same way the poems do.”
dream songs invites listeners to embark on their own spiritual journey, nudging them along with atmospheric soundscapes and spoken words wrapped in molasses and melancholy and spiced with nutmeg and intuition. The video work for dream songs was created by Jasmine Jones, while the album artwork features pieces designed by Cabrini Merclean and Gabriela Mims. The album was recorded, produced and mixed by Dylan Healy, with additional mixing by Justin Holden and mastering by Nancy Conforti.
Photograph courtesy of Jasmine Jones