With over 100 million streams to their credit, Adam and Paula (known collectively as “The Daydream Club”) have crossed multiple genres and found a receptive audience. In April they released their latest album, “Piano Project // Duets.” CCM guest author and musician Joshua Goines learned a little bit more about this talented duo.
Joshua Goines: How did The Daydream Club begin? Were you writing partners before getting married, or did this develop after being married?
Adam and Paula: We first met whilst studying at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in the UK. At the time, we were working on a multi-disciplinary, site-specific performance project in an old tobacco factory in the middle of winter. It was freezing cold but the acoustics were wonderful and there was a definite connection between us. The Daydream Club came later, in 2010, but that was our first experience of working together. The Daydream Club finally came about after working apart from each other for around a year. We were wanting to create music with a bit of heart and authenticity and who better to do that with than your partner. The obvious added bonus was that we could be more of a constant in each others lives rather than working on separate contracts which took us away from each other.
Joshua Goines: What do you think has contributed to your success over the last decade? Are there specific highlights that stand out in your career so far?
Adam and Paula: There have been a lot of highlights; hearing your music on the radio for the first time, playing your first main stage slot at a music festival, supporting musicians you respect and admire, getting approached to write bespoke compositions, getting to travel the world because of music, hitting streaming milestones like your first hundred… thousand… 1 million… and most recently 1 hundred million – these are all things which have changed the course of our career and lives. It takes a thousand small steps to build towards the bigger accomplishments so it’s difficult to say what exactly contributed to our success. I think our first big break came when we contacted Burberry to see about working together. We were very innocent and naive approaching the CEO of a global fashion house but in 2012 we did just that and ended up working together on several high profile campaigns. That was the start of us growing momentum with our music.
Joshua Goines: Many composers have mentioned that inspiration doesn’t always just flow, but sometimes there are pieces that seem to write themselves. Are there any projects or compositions that fall into that category?
Adam and Paula: We’re quite fortunate to never be short of inspiration. You just need to read the news to feel inspired these days. Emotions are very much at the heart of how we write and perform and we’re both very sensitive people so it’s not too hard to tap into something you’ve read and for the music to come. For both of us the album Piano Project (2016) is pretty special. We hired a church hall for 3 hours, set up microphones on the piano, set up a video camera, sat down at the piano and began to play. The whole album was improvised and it was magical. It was the first time we ever recorded like that and it felt so natural that for our 10th anniversary as The Daydream Club, we went back to that space again and performed side by side to create ‘Piano Project // Duets’ which we released in April 2020.
Joshua Goines: Composers all have unique ways of writing. Some sit at a desk, some work at the piano, and some hum tunes into a phone or recording device. What does your creative process look like? How does a piece go from an idea to reality?
Adam and Paula: We have, and do, all of those things. We developed an approach of working in more of a project basis, meaning each release has its own sound or genre which brings different methods of approach for inspiration. If we’re working on an indie-folk guitar-based song then it would start with a riff on the guitar that we like and then we’ll start hashing out lyrics and melodies together. With our ambient stuff that’s more of a production approach to writing, finding sounds, and then contorting them into something that inspires ideas. Our piano projects are often based around improvisation; trying to establish a motif early, remember it, develop it and then return to the original motif, this can really make an improv feel like a planned song.
Joshua Goines: Are there specific artists that have influenced your compositional styles?
Adam and Paula: This is a hard question as we don’t restrict ourselves to just one genre, which probably highlights that there are multiple artists that have inspired us. In terms of our piano compositions though, we enjoy Steve Reich and Moondog for their cross-rhythms and repetition, Jocelyn Pook for the textures she creates, Miles Davis for his modal improv approach, Rachmaninoff for the rich chords, Chopin and Nils Frahm for the space they give their music, Dave Brubeck, Satie, Prokofiev… the list could go on!
Joshua Goines: Is there any artist that you would like to collaborate with now, and any artist from the past that you wish you could have met and collaborated with?
Adam and Paula: We would love to collaborate with Justin Vernon or Sigur Rós – they both create music which capture our hearts and are a bit experimental. Moondog would have been pretty interesting to collaborate with and just chat to – he’s a huge inspiration as a person and a musician. It would be amazing to collaborate with Hans Zimmer or Joseph Trapanese as that probably means we would be working on an awesome film and in the case of the latter having some fun combining our love of classical and electronic! Ooooh we also adore Ezio Bosso – that would be a pretty amazing experience.
Joshua Goines: Any advice for up and coming musical artists?
Adam and Paula: Research is a massive part of our success, we spend hours researching potential opportunities, suitable blogs for features, platforms that will be useful and things like that. Aside from that, just be yourself. Be confident in who you are, play what makes you passionate, and surround yourself with good people. Don’t try and guess what the industry wants, we don’t even think they know half the time so just focus on you and hopefully, the rest will come.
Joshua Goines: How have you been coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and has it affected your music production?
Adam and Paula: 2020 has been a worldwind of emotions which left us feeling really overwhelmed for a while but music is a form of catharsis so we’ve been channeling it all into our compositions. We’re fortunate to be able to write and record from home so work has continued as normal in that respect. However, we could always do with more support from streaming platforms, particularly now as traditional forms of gigging aren’t an option. We encourage anyone who enjoys our music to support us by adding your favourite track of ours to your own playlists or share our music with a friend. We’ve always been a grassroots band; we’re self-managed, self-recorded/produced/
Joshua Goines: What can we expect to see from The Daydream Club in the future?
Adam and Paula: We have lots of ideas for new projects but we like to keep our cards close to our chest until we’ve refined them further. In the meantime, have a browse through our back catalogue, there are six albums to discover and explore (available on most streaming platforms).
Piano Projects // Duets is available for purchase now. Learn more about The Daydream Club’s albums on their website and listen to their music on Spotify.
Many thanks to our guest author Joshua Goines a multi-talented musician/composer/conductor and vocalist. Please follow him on Facebook & Instagram and check out his latest project “Motherless Child” below: