All on Camera

“John and I were both in-between projects and decided to get together in the studio to blow off some steam and have some fun playing music,” van Leuven says of Sun Breaks’ beginnings. On John Atkins and James van Leuven's debut full-length All on Camera, Sun Breaks fuse live instrumentation and electronic manipulations with dubby outboard treatments and pensive melodies of Northwest indie rock.

The title track demonstrates this fusion, with Atkin’s vocals and van Leuven’s cyclical drum patterns, banks of synths, and psychotropic production techniques. Every song becomes a new template and new battle plan. The tactics might yield the string pad hooks and dreamy vocals of “A Common Wave” or the big drum sounds and psychedelic instrumentation of “Moments”.

Restless angst isn’t entirely absent from Sun Breaks’ vision, but has been replaced by the search for light in the dark. “One of the constraints I've tried to work within lyrically is to not be too negative,” Atkins explains. “A lot of it is derived from the first vocal takes and deals with digital angst, psychedelic surveillance and childhood memories.” The result is lysergic, with both positive and negative energy swirling in a cosmic tapestry of sound.