Feature: In Hearts Wake – Altruism & Skydancer

Nine years, three EPs and three albums into their career, Byron Bay four-piece In Hearts Wake have never been more ferociously effective.

Frontman Jake Taylor proudly wears zealous activist like the politically-charged greats before him, and while on record he may sound as though he has razor blades embedded in his throat, his message is much gentler: “We're doing whatever we can to protect our local community.”

The concept for the band’s latest release Skydancer, out today,has been kept secret since April 2013. Hints of it were indeed evident to their most fervid fans (The Skydancer Project charity initiative in 2013, a hidden booklet in the Earthwalker album sleeve), but unbeknown to most, In Hearts Wake and their label UNFD had been labouring over one of the most curated projections from a hardcore band in recent memory.

Stopped in Texas, nine weeks in to a US tour, Jake Taylor chats to TMN about the ambitious double album concept, which he says he even made a ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ list for before pitching it to UNFD Head of Recorded Music Luke Logemann.

“[I said] ‘I’ve got this album concept of duality, the feminine and the masculine and I’d like to keep the second part a secret’. That was the beginnings of it, but pulling it off was another story."

Taylor saw a ‘pro’ for the concept as taking a road that was previously untraveled: “People have done double albums before but keeping the second one a secret and having it be not just Part One and Part Two… They actually relate to each other in concept,” he continues. “The mother, the father, the masculine, the feminine. That was a big ‘pro’ – we’re trying to create something epic here. That was a story and a story that I thought needed to be told.”

In the lead-up to Earthwalker’s release in May last year, the band teamed up with Carbon Neutral to plant 1,379 trees and released video game Earth Invaders where the aim was to save trees from being bulldozed by Tony Abbott. The record debuted at #5 on the ARIA chart and still sits inside the Top 50.

Naturally, both Earthwalker and Skydancer are Taylor’s digestion of an internal journey he’s been walking since he was seven-years-old, when his parents separated.

“It flung me into two different worlds,” Taylor said during the filming of a mini-documentary for the project. “The divine masculine, which was my father and the divine feminine, my mother.”

Corrosively excluding of their local hardcore peers, trademark-shaping and most importantly underpinned by a altruistic motive, not a barely latched convenience store trend, it’s incredible to think the undertaking was agreed upon with just six tracks in the bank. It was because of this that when the band approached UNFD, Taylor felt a heavy ‘con’ over his head: “The con was that putting all your time and effort into a concept that possibly could be quantity and not quality,” he admits. “That crossed our minds. But we had a very strict discipline scheme wherein whatever we were creating, if it was not quality as it was going, we’d stop and take it back.”

UNFD’s Luke Logemann, who has seen even his heaviest acts hit the high reaches of the ARIA Albums chart, said the label has never had an 18-month lead time from recording to release before.

“The only people that knew were the band members, the producer, the core label people and probably Northlane (their drummer played on the record) and Blunt Magazine,” says Logemann. “Everyone else we just didn’t tell at all – even friends and other bands. It was massively under wraps.”

While the Skydancer campaign began with the basics: music videos, a documentary, local and international print and radio press commitments (the band premiered the single Erase on BBC Radio 1), it turned into their most future-contemplative yet. On April 10 the band launched a charity auction featuring items donated by acts includingThe Ghost Inside, Northlane, Vance Joy,Enter Shikari, Stick To Your Guns and Hacktivist. Proceeds will go to Local Futures, dedicated to a grassroots safeguarding and renewal of ecological and social well-being within communities, and Byron Young Residents Alliance (BYRA), which aims to provide a platform and voice for young residents of the Byron Shire as well as ensure the protection of Byron on an environmental and social level.

The band’s Rickroll-esque April Fools joke saw them upload an overdubbedlive version of the album's title trackto the UNFD YouTube page, andvideo game, Skyhoppers has become another successful addiction for fans. The game sees players fly through the sky unlocking tracks as they go; the person with the highest score by the album’s release date (May 1) wins a rare vinyl test pressing of Skydancer.

“Almost every vision of In Hearts Wake starts with Jake Taylor,” says UNFD’s Luke Logemann. “He’s a genius that thinks with more ambition than most humans you’ll meet.

“It’s just a genius story. I don’t think it’s enough to just make music nowadays, you need something else to really draw people in. I’ve never been interested in the pretty boy singer, or the rock star image – so doing things outside the box is the approach [UNFD has] always preferred.”

“It’s very hard to bring this to any business,” adds Taylor. “[…] They have overhead costs too. It’s been really nice to work with a label and people that really want this system to come forth where everyone wins. And it’s proven that that can be done, it is possible.”

The tracks on Skydancer may not have been written for the masses from a commercial standpoint but the release will be hugely influential. The charity auction has raised over $6,000 for BYRA and Local Futures, the record hit #2 on the iTunes chart today and a strong debut on the ARIA chart next Saturday is expected. With a collective social media following of over 173,000, the band’s reach runs deep into the underground, and has the power to create change in ways most acts seek self-gratuitously.

“My personal goal is really not to run a business,” says Taylor. “It really has been to create a platform that helps out the Earth as well as helping the consumer, for use of a better word, as well as helping out the band and helping out the label […] a system where everyone wins.

“That’s happening now, but I would like to grow it to a level where it’s really promoting an awareness for the Earth that we live on.”