Jake Taylor - In Hearts Wake ‘Music Can Be An Amazing Mirror'
In the heart of what has been one of the biggest release weeks within the scene, In Hearts Wake has offered their latest creation in the form of Incarnation- a direct sequel to Divination, and a mark of finality that sees the rest of the tarot deck explored in visceral and emotional ways. Perhaps back to their heaviest, and of course, their proudly outspoken selves, Incarnation is not to be missed.
We sat down with frontman, Jake Taylor, to dive into the process behind the album and some of the inspiration!
In Hearts Wake is grappling with a very juxtaposing journey right now. You're releasing this new chapter of work, but it's also measured up with Kyle Erich leaving, and some big movements like that. How have you been balancing this natural order? That change isn't always easy, but it's something that comes.
Jake: I can't hear any cars where I live. Like, I'm out. I’m very lucky. I live out in what people say is, you know, woop woop, and living out in woop woop, it's pretty baseline here. It’s pretty soothing and sort of very calming and balancing. So whatever noise is happening in the world or within, whether it's in In Hearts Wake with someone leaving or something happening like that, all of those highs and lows or whatever that is, it feels unaffected in this environment. So that's kind of my balance because then I just, whatever is going on there, we sort of sit with it and take it here to feel how that feels and then go back. And not react, but sort of take the next move.
I think it's good that you have these spaces because obviously it's giving you time to think. And in this time, Incarnation came about and it's acting as this sequel to Divination. But I think even in the songs that have come out, there are these inescapable moments from every element of your past. Even in ‘Orphan’, it sounded like there were homages to ‘Worldwide Suicide’. Do you think this album, to you, acts as kind of a cumulative representation of In Hearts Wake and the journey so far, more than just being the sequel?
Jake: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, for sure. Look, if you took away all the song titles and all the imagery, it's still going to be In Hearts Wake’s evolution and the culmination of our discography to a degree, because it is coming through the same instruments. My throat or their guitars or their drums, you know, so, like, it's still us, no matter what, sequel or no sequel. However, when you really tap into the lyrics and the stories and the narratives, it's very much influenced by its intent to be the sequel to Divination. And I think that's what really steers it into focus, particularly with the imagery. And I feel like music these days isn't just enough to be. The other half of it is the imagery of what the words provide and the imagery of the artwork, even if it's just a Spotify canvas that you see and in the song titles, and it's all that storytelling that really fits into the sequel, I feel.
In the essence of storytelling, I think this has been one of your most visual albums so far. You've got some insane music videos going, and then you've got interactive websites and things for fans to explore and also get a tangible look at elements of this. How does this come about? Is it a conscious group effort? Do you come in with your own different designs and things to add, or is there someone who is in charge of this creative side of it?
Jake: Visually, I feel like the guys really trust me to pitch to them. I always explain where I'm feeling. I never want to boldly go somewhere where they haven't given approval to go or haven't questioned anything. And then if it didn't go so well, let's say, then I would feel extra responsible for having taken that plunge. So let's take it to the guys and we'll chat about it. What, you know, could, may or may not work in that setting. And with those ideas also comes costs. You know, getting lasers or being hung up to now getting snakes. Like, it all comes with a cost. You can't just get anything you want, but there's always a way to make it work, I think, in the visual world. With the website, I work a lot with Luke Logemann, who was working at UNFD. He was part of the inception of that record label and was managing the band for a while, seven years or something. Now he's not at UNFD anymore, but he and I still work on the band. And so that was the website, it was a combination of us talking and our ideas. And he's very good with marketing sort of things like that. And then I kind of bring in the ingredients that really makes it In Hearts Wake, if that makes sense.
Absolutely! Well, speaking of ingredients that make In Hearts Wake, I feel like for your whole career, but particularly your last album, the words of environmental activism have become inextricable with your band name. Kaliyuga in particular really championed what it meant to acknowledge your own presence in the music industry. And, you know, once you acknowledge it, you can change in terms of your carbon offsetting, how you produce the album. Did anything from that album cycle transfer over to this one in terms of how you produced and did it environmentally?
Jake: Yeah, yeah, for sure. All of it. All of it. Green Is The New Black was kind of a “let's look at how we do everything”, we had to speak about it and we wanted to share how we did it. But now it's not really about flying the flag about if we did this or we did that. It's just implemented. So, the vinyl has all been done the same way through the same vinyl plant, using recycled materials wherever possible and not being put in shrink wrap. Same with the CDs. They're all, I just got my CD, like, yesterday in my hands! You don't feel like you're holding the shiny piece of material. I mean, I used to love that as a kid. Don't get me wrong. The jewel case, it became, like, this thing. You knew that. Now, my relationship with CDs, the more organic it feels in the cardboard fold-out, the more it feels like I'm getting something that is done with more care and more handmade value. You know, something you might get at your favourite market or health food store. It's got that touch to the paper and stuff. So, anyway, yes. The answer is yes. It all bleeds through!
Amazing. I would agree with the touch and the feel! I have three variants of the last record, and they're just so nice to hold, and it does feel different. It has this kind of energy to it! Something I am really curious about, both Incarnation and Divination are incredibly well structured, and they're emulating the 22 major Arcana tarot cards and deconstructing their meanings and representations of it. It seems like it's not merely a theme, but a bit of a passion. And I'd like to know a bit more about where this fascination grew from and how you took the first steps into this journey of exploring the tarot deck.
Jake: Well, the credit goes to my mum. She's a tarot reader. And she has been doing that for 27 years. Throughout my childhood, there'd be people knocking on the door. Her clients, and then they came through. There's an office space which wasn't an office. It was, you know, a practice room. Her space, basically. I would never listen or, you know, it was always a private space. But I'd say the person arrived kind of like, not timid, but, a bit nervous or, you know, there's always that energy that they've come in because they want direction, and then they would leave looking and feeling a lot lighter. So I think that I was already being steeped in all of that from a young age, and I really feel that when you look at the media it's everywhere. Looking at Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and some of the biggest sagas, where you have Gandalf and you have Yoda, and then you have Luke Skywalker and you have Frodo. They're very much like the full tarot deck, which is going on this great big journey of the unknown, yet they're somehow chosen or whatever. And in that innocence, they then become the magician to sort of step into that transmuting role and becoming into that power. And Gandalf and Yoda were these hermit-like creatures, also magicians. And I was seeing that the tarot was really overlying all of our favorite sagas, favorite movies- the ones that really hit to the core of the hero's journey, particularly. So not just any old movie, but ones that sort of are timeless, timeless tales. And so I think that really spoke to me, and seeing how that would play out in music and lyrics was really fascinating to me.
You mentioned, you saw people come and go looking for direction through these readings. Do you think that's kind of what you've adopted now? People are looking for direction through music. And this is, you know, your offering?
Jake: I don't know if it's looking for direction, maybe being open to it or seeking direction, or even just being curious because no one else has the answers. They're always all inside the person. Sometimes it just takes all these mirrors which come up in the form of tarot cards to bounce. Like someone actually bouncing things back. So, at the end of the day, I feel whether we like to believe it or not, some people won't. We're all seeking connection. We're all seeking connection. Understanding. We're all curious. And those that aren't, have lost that. We're here to learn and we’re always learning. So I feel like I know that music can be an amazing reflector and mirror. Think of all the breakup songs when you're a teenager listening to pop punk or whatever it was, and how they spoke to where you were right then. And same with hardcore. They were speaking to the angst of a generation. The answer is, I don't feel it's my responsibility to help anyone. I'm not saying we have the answers, because we don't, but we're just approaching it from that really direct angle with a lot of intent.
Listening to the album, what really stuck out for me, was the ending with ‘Transmission’. It's this very long and emotive epic. It's far longer than a lot of the songs, and it carries this different energy to it. How important was the finality of this album for you and the weight of a closer?
Jake: That song was like a definite pick when it was finished. And we all knew that if it's a definite pick and ain't sitting in the middle of the album, it had to be a close-up. We love to bookend things like intros and outros that always feel really important because the final note, you're leaving someone with that particular song. It's very emotive, as you say. It does have a haunting-like quality. Asking the listener and the self, where do I belong? In all of the shadows and all the things we go through, there's like this longing and the desire to connect and break through, and yet, we're just kind of wading through all these shadows. So it's sort of a light in the darkest, but it's also kind of shining a light on the dark. That song, it's got a weird push and pull with a lot of feeling, and it was really real, that song, like, performing it. And it wasn't like, hey, let's try and write a really emotional song. It just came and it just was. I feel like one out of every ten songs has the ability to do that, if that. It's not something you can manufacture as an artist. We've touched on a few times in the past. Maybe ‘Wildflower’ did that in a really real way in another sonic context. It's important to summarize what I'm saying. It's important, and it was very much a real and right ending for the record.
You've got people from Parkway to PaleDusk. What is your criteria or motivations for coming up with these collaborations? Who decides on what comes next?
Jake: Us as a band definitely decide. And we, again, have discussions around what will work and what works, but it's always very specific to the song. We approach it song by song. It's not a hey, on this record let's try and make something for this person. Especially with this record, there was none of that. It was case by case. ‘The Flood’ was perfect because Winston was literally cleaning up in the flood down the road at the same time we were. And that's how we bumped into each other, and that's how we got talking on the topic of what was going down. So that was, that had written itself. It just so happened it's this sequel, so, it just had to happen. And ‘Michigama’, all those artists, they were all from Michigan. So that was specific to the story. And then this Japanese tale of the ‘Shishigami’, it had to be a Japanese artist that was speaking in these different ways and exploring the genre differently. And that was very much Kaito from PaleDusk. I was doing that and speaking about trauma for ‘Shellshock’... who does it better than Garrett, and The Color Morale. He always speaks as that voice for that topic a lot of the time, moving through pain. So, yeah, this is case by case.
Just to close up, what, for you personally, do you think is the biggest thing you learned between the Divination process and the Incarnation process?
Jake: Trust in the process. You trust in the process. Be patient with it and whatever's coming. Whatever's coming and needs to be said, just to sit with it and allow that to take shape, because often what we intended to create didn't result. It took its own path. So sort of having a target shooting for it and you'll still hit the target but it might not be the exact target you intended. So that would be my biggest advice to Divination, Jake.
Incarnation is out now! Get it here
Interview by Georgia Haskins @ghaskins2002
