ONE ON ONE: AN INTERVIEW WITH SUNRISE IN JUpITER!

‘TAKE ME HOME’ IS BEING DESCRIBED AS YOUR MOST EMOTIONALLY RESONANT RELEASE TO DATE. CAN YOU WALK US THROUGH THE MOMENT THAT INSPIRED THE SONG, AND HOW IT SHAPED THE WRITING PROCESS?

S.I.J: I was in London chasing an opportunity that meant everything to me, but it came at the cost of being away from my wife and daughter for almost a year. That distance wasn’t just physical. It forced me to face the reality that in trying to build something meaningful, I was also risking losing the very people who mattered most. That tension between purpose and potential loss is where ‘Take Me Home’ came from. One night, I received a voice message from my daughter. It was simple, but it shattered me in the best way. That message ended up in the song, not just as a sonic element, but as the emotional heart of the track. The writing process wasn’t calculated; it was survival. We weren’t chasing a sound, we were trying to make sense of what we were feeling. That honesty shaped everything.

THERE’S A RAWNESS IN ‘TAKE ME HOME’ THAT FEELS ALMOST CINEMATIC IN HOW IT UNFOLDS. WAS THERE A SPECIFIC APPROACH TO CAPTURING THAT FEELING IN THE STUDIO?

S.I.J: We tracked ‘Take Me Home’ at RAK Studios in London, and from the very beginning, the goal was to preserve the vulnerability, not perfect it. I’ve always been drawn to the cinematic — Hans Zimmer, Pink Floyd — but for this track, the real power came from restraint. The emotion was already heavy; we just needed to let it breathe.

I like to record vocals with the music blasting in my headphones. It pulls me deeper into the moment, even if it gives our engineer Mike Horner a bit of a scare. But it’s worth it. You catch the breaths, the cracks, the closeness. And Johnny Bucci’s pulse on drums was the backbone, his feel gave the track its heartbeat without ever overpowering it.

ISOLATION SEEMS TO BE A RECURRING THEME IN THIS RECORD. WAS THAT INTENTIONAL, OR DID IT EMERGE NATURALLY THROUGH THE WRITING PROCESS?

S.I.J: It wasn’t intentional at first; it just kind of leaked through. A lot of these songs were written during a time when I was physically and emotionally isolated, away from my wife and daughter, in a city where I knew almost no one. You chase a dream, but in doing that, you can end up orbiting the very things that keep you grounded. That tension shows up everywhere in the record.

There’s a quote by Brian Eno that stuck with me: “Having no silence in music is like having no black or white in a painting.” That idea really stayed with us in the studio. We didn’t try to fill every space — we let the emptiness speak too. Isolation, in a weird way, gave the songs their shape. We didn’t fight it. We just told the truth.

‘MISSION TO MARS VOL.1’ HAS A CLEAR NARRATIVE ARC. HOW IMPORTANT IS STORYTELLING IN YOUR SONGWRITING, AND DO YOU APPROACH IT LIKE A CONCEPT ALBUM?

S.I.J: Storytelling is at the core of everything we do, even if it’s abstract, every song has to serve the bigger picture. With, Mission to Mars Vol. 1, we didn’t sit down saying “let’s make a concept album,” but the songs naturally began orbiting shared themes: emotional distance, the need to escape, the cost of leaving Earth, metaphorically and otherwise.

We chose to split the project into two volumes of seven songs each, not just for flow, but for meaning. You might think of 7 as a symbol of harmonising dimensions: the three we live in (length, width, height), one of time, and three unseen — mind, consciousness, spirit. That balance mirrors what the album’s really about, finding your place between the physical and the metaphysical, the present and the pull toward something greater. So yeah, it became a kind of emotional sci-fi. Not plot-driven, but driven by gravity, and Vol. 1 is only the launch sequence.

SUNRISE IN JUPITER’S VISUALS, ESPECIALLY ON SOCIAL MEDIA, FEELS OTHERWORLDLY BUT GROUNDED IN EMOTION. HOW MUCH THOUGHT GOES INTO BUILDING THAT AESTHETIC, AND HOW DOES IT TIE INTO YOUR MUSIC?

S.I.J: The visual side is just as important to us as the music; they come from the same emotional place. Bands like Pink Floyd, Tool, Radiohead, Muse — they didn’t just release songs, they built worlds. That’s the bar for us. We’re not trying to create content — we’re trying to create atmosphere.

The aesthetic — the signal, the stars, the silence, the distortion — it's all coded language for the emotional territory we’re exploring: longing, isolation, wonder, collapse, and maybe some kind of redemption on the other side. The cosmic side of Sunrise in Jupiter reflects how far we’re willing to travel emotionally. But at the core, it’s still about something real—something personal. Even the surreal visuals are rooted in truth. We just choose to tell it in a language that feels bigger than Earth.

YOU’VE HAD VIRAL SUCCESS EARLY ON, WHICH CAN BE A BLESSING AND A BURDEN. HOW HAVE YOU HANDLED THAT ATTENTION, AND DID IT SHIFT HOW YOU APPREACHED THE PROJECT GOING FORWARD?

S.I.J: The viral moment with “Satellite” was surreal but we knew deep down, we were only scratching the surface. If I’m honest, Satellite was more of an experiment , something we put out without overthinking, just to see what would resonate. We didn’t expect it to take off the way it did. But when it did, it taught us something valuable: connection comes from honesty, not strategy.

All the songs on Mission to Mars Vol. 1 came from the same stretch of time — written and recorded in a shared headspace. It felt less like composing and more like receiving. Like the universe handed us a story, and our job was just to catch it without messing it up.

So no, we didn’t pivot when the numbers came in. We already had the album in our hands. The real challenge was deciding which message to share first. And when “Take Me Home” arrived late in the process, it was clear, that was the heart. The rest would unfold in time.

THERE’S A FEELING OF SERACHING THAT RUNS THROUGH YOUR MUSIC — SEARCHING FOR CONNECTION, PURPOSE, EVEN MEANING. WHAT ARE YOU REALLY CHASING WITH SUNRISE IN JUPITER?

S.I.J: Sometimes it feels like we’re all just floating in orbit around things we used to believe in, trying to remember what kept us grounded in the first place. Sunrise in Jupiter wasn’t born from ambition; it was born from that feeling. From a need to translate isolation into connection, silence into signal. Music became the only way to navigate the distance between who we are and who we’re becoming. Between the life we left behind and whatever this next world is.

This project was never about chasing fame or fitting into a scene. It was about building something that meant something to us first, and then maybe to others. I remember when I first met Will Poe, our guitarist, and he heard some of my early demos — he looked at me and said, “I’ve been waiting to play music like this all my life.” That moment said everything. I think a lot of people feel like they’re drifting right now — emotionally, spiritually, even physically. We wanted to build a signal strong enough to pull them back in. Not with answers, but with resonance.

THE TITLE ‘MISSION TO MARS VOL.1’ SUGGESTS AMBITION, DISTANCE, MAYBE EVEN DANGER. WHAT DOES MARS REPRESENT TO YOU, AND WHY GO THERE?

S.I.J: Mars, for us, isn’t about the planet — it’s about what it represents: the pull toward the unknown. It’s the place you go when Earth no longer feels like home, when the familiar becomes too small for what you're carrying. There’s danger in that, for sure. Distance, risk, loneliness. But there’s also a strange kind of hope.

We chose Mars because it’s the farthest frontier we can still imagine ourselves reaching. It’s exile and possibility in the same breath. The name isn’t just aesthetic — it’s emotional. It’s about chasing something real, even if it means losing comfort along the way. Mission to Mars is a leap, and Vol. 1 is just the ignition sequence.

Vol. 2 carries the next part of the arc — the moment where all that distance begins to turn into meaning. That’s where we step into themes of hope, redemption, and revelation. It’s the other side of the signal.

WHAT’S SOMETHING ABOUT SUNRISE IN JUPITER THAT PEOPLE MIGHT NOT PICK UP ON AT FIRST LISTEN — BUT BECOMES CLEARER THE DEEPER THEY GO?

S.I.J: The range. This record moves. Some tracks hit hard — big, intense, almost cinematic. Others lean more into that ballad-pop-rock space. It shifts, but intentionally. We never wanted to stay in one lane, because the emotions didn’t. The album was built to reflect that — different phases of the same journey.

There’s tension built into the structure. Especially in the bridges — we don’t treat them like transitions. We treat them like thresholds. Moments where the song shifts into a different orbit.

That’s part of our DNA. The deeper you go, the more you realize these aren’t just tracks — they’re journeys. There are patterns, echoes, signals threaded across the whole record. Repeated lines that mean something new the second or third time around. Bridges that become their own emotional landscapes. It’s designed to unfold with you.

IF SOMEONE LISTENS TO ‘MISSION TO MARS VOL.1’ ALL THE WAY THROUGH, WHAT’S THE ONE THING YOU HOPE THEY WALK AWAY WITH?

S.I.J: The songs weren’t crafted to guide anyone toward a specific feeling — they arrived on their own terms. I didn’t write them with an agenda. It felt more like they came through me, like I was just the antenna catching a signal meant to be shared. At times, it was like being possessed — in the best, most creative sense. I wrote them in isolation, but I always knew they were meant to be heard.

What I hope is that each person finds their own reflection in it. Their own meaning. Their own orbit. The only thing I ask is: turn it up loud. Let it hit you in your headphones. Let it pour through the speakers at a house party. Let it echo off the walls of a small car or a massive arena. This record was made to travel through space, through people, through time. However it finds you, I hope it stays with you.

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