Louder Than The Music

British DJ Galactus Jack has just released his new album 'Universal'. The EDM artist has written this special guest blog for LTTM introducing the album and giving an insight into each song.

UNIVERSAL is a bit of a concept record in the sense that it is designed to reveal something of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the music and lyrics, the liner notes, and during the live performances of the tracks. The key passage of scripture that the album was built around is Romans 10:9-15. Salvation is available for all who openly declare that Jesus is Lord, who believe that God raised him from the dead. But this is a message that we don’t simply receive and believe, we must to also take it to the world so that all will know.

Here’s a little breakdown and behind the scenes insight for each track...

1. Eternal

This was one of the last tracks produced for the record, and it came about when I placed Initiate at the start of the record, and yet I didn’t want the album to just open with a beat, which that track does. I wanted to set the scene for the album a little bit, and so Eternal is a simple intro track that sets up the next 30 mins of listening. Thematically the track was inspired by the idea of Gods eternal existence, from which everything was then created.

2. Initiate

There were two objectives with this track. First, to write a song with a huge drop that would go off big time in the live shows! Second, to create a mid section that represented the house and euphoric end of the spectrum of my music and shows. I’m all about light and shade, I love the heavy stuff and I’m not afraid to go full on with it, but I love to temper it with the lighter, more euphoric, and even poppier end of things. Initiate has been closing my shows for the last few months and it plays great every time. I love how the euphoric mid section seems to enable people to worship with a real sense of joy, before returning back to the full on madness of the final drop. Thematically this track is about God initiating relationship with us, what will our response be? Hopefully we will dance in celebration and acceptance of his gift of life!

3. Captured feat. Lucy Spearman

This song evolved a lot. I had a demo version that I’d been playing out for about a year and it was good, but it wasn’t quite doing what I wanted it to do. I left it alone for quite a while and when I revisited it on the home stretch of finishing the album (working with the supremely talented Tim Gosden) I decided to keep the general chords but start again with everything else. Initially the song had quite a sustained melody, with a lot of reverb all over the synths which made it all feel a bit sluggish, so we reigned all that in to get a punchier, poppier sound, which brought the drop to life and gave it that big summer sound I was hoping for.

Lyrically I built the song around the gospel, starting with the central hook of being ‘captured’ by Gods love and reverse engineering it from there to tell the story that on some level every human experiences. We start with rebellion against God which hurts us, but God calls us back to himself, he gives us life in his (and by his) love, from which we can then go and be the light of the world. Obviously many have not yet heard the call to come home, so this song will hopefully play a small role in helping people realise that they don’t need to live in brokenness, God is calling you home. Lucy Speakman from the band Brightline came in and really brought the lyrics to life, giving it some proper Welsh oomph in the pre-chorus build to the drop! I’m really glad we managed to get her amazing vocals on the record, and you should check out the Brighline album Life In Full Motion to hear more of her brilliance.

4. Antidote feat. Crown Freedom