Well, it's finally here. A collaborative project that's been 15 years in the making.
Following a raft of (not so) mysterious teasers, we get to wrap our ears around 'No One Defeats Us', the debut single from DREAMS - the new collaborative project between Empire of the Sun/Sleepy Jackson's Luke Steele and Silverchair-frontman-turned-solo-star Daniel Johns.
Written, produced, and recorded at Steele's L.A. studio and the Henson Studios in Hollywood, the single sounds nothing like either of the Aussie frontmen's previous bands but is obviously the product of a long-held friendship that draws from the kookiest corners of their artistic minds.
The duo describe the track's funkified four-to-the-floor as a conceptual mission statement. "'No One Defeats Us' says lyrically what our goal is, it's a journey into our vision of the future," says Johns.
"It's a very simple song, it has no chorus, it feels like a mantra... 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.”
Luke adds: "Me and Dan excel and struggle on similar levels. 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."
Luke (aka Miracle) and Dan (aka Dr. Dreams) will make their live debut as DREAMS at Coachella festival next month in California. We're guessing there'll be more new music between now and then, unless they're planning on doing a 50-min loop of 'No One Defeats Us' (we wouldn't put it past them to be honest).
The Daniel Johns x Luke Steele collaboration timeline
April 2003: Luke's band The Sleepy Jackson begin supporting Silverchair on the Across The Night Tour. They became instant friends, jamming backstage together on the piano.
August 2008: Just ahead of Empire of the Sun making their debut with 'Walking On A Dream', Steele reveals to triple j's Richard Kingsmill that he's spent several weeks making music with Johns at his Newcastle home studio, inspired by The Beatles.
"It kind of started out a White Album thing because we don't have a band, it was acoustics. And from there it kind of went a bit haywire. It's pretty pop. I guess it's quite low down, there's country songs..." And the name of that project? "Dan is William Hathaway and I'm Walter Palmer so it's going to be Hathaway and Palmer."
May 2013: During promotion for Empire of the Sun's second album, Ice On the Dune, Steele tells Pedestrian.TV that he's close to finishing an album with Johns; "The sessions we did lately sounded a bit like The Clash, with Talking Heads, inspired by African Music."
May 2015: Daniel Johns briefly mentions the project in an interview with TheMusic.com.au supporting his debut solo album Talk. "Yeah, that’s still going. That’s always going. That’s been going since we were 20 or something,” Johns says with a smile.
Aug 2016: Speaking to triple j around Empire of the Sun's third album Two Vines (detecting a pattern here?), Steele says he and Daniel have finished a two-month stint at a studio in L.A. "We've just been working on our record and it just sounds like the future. We're gonna be coming out with something pretty amazing." Johns also posts a photo to Instagram with the (in retrospect not so) cryptic caption: "EARLY Dreams".
January 2017: Discussing plans for a Sleepy Jackson comeback and an Empire of the Sun movie with triple j, Steele says Dan is planning another L.A. trip to "put this puppy to bed."
"We've really finally landed at a place with the record we wanna make which is kinda like Chemical Brothers with guitars. We love dance music but we also love bands like Suicide and Talking Heads and Lou Reed, all these grungy guitar kinds of bands. It's gonna be the biggest band in the world."
January 2018: An unknown act called DREAMS appears on the Coachella line-up poster, billed on the Friday night, and setting the festival's message board alight with speculation. A 50-sec snipped of what would become 'No One Defeats Us' turns up on social media around the same time.
March 2018: The DREAMS Facebook page begins sharing images of Scorpion logos and stickers appearing in locales around the world as part of a worldwide marketing campaign.
15 March 2018: DREAMS is officially unveiled with 'No One Defeats Us' getting its world premiere on triple j Breakfast.