Now or Never: What Island Moons' Dreambell Is Really About
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
If you are an artist sitting on something, an album half-finished, a painting facing the wall, a first draft in a drawer - this story is for you. Because it ends with a vinyl record in the pair of hands of someone who had everything standing between him and his art and decided, the time is now. Not someday. Now.
That person is Brandon Harwood, better known as Island Moons. The record is Dreambell. And the truth about it all is that, the right time is always right now.
Over two nights (a double album release show in Raleigh and another in Durham),
I watched Brandon do what very few artists can, disappear completely into the music. Guitar in hand, his whole face changed when he played. He smiled so big it was almost hard to look away. The set moved through Dreambell like a psychedelic indie rock dream, with strong basslines and heavy reverb. The stage was filled by someone who had waited a long time to finally be here, and you could feel it. I also got to interview Brandon, and talking with him was refreshing. He is as knowledgeable about music as he is passionate about it, and you get the sense that every decision on this record was intentional.
How One Song Became Ten
Brandon's first album didn't initially start as an album; it all started with one song. A single formed in 2018 called "Jupiter on a Key Ring".
For three years, he sat on it. Then in 2021, he discovered Lower Oceans Recording Studio in upstate New York, and Brandon knew he had found the perfect place to record his single. The owner, Tim Barr, uses analog recording equipment and records live without a click track - just musicians playing together the way musicians always have. So the plan was simple: go up, record the song, then come home.
But then a mentor offered advice that stuck. "You gotta plant your flag," he said. Don't release a single into a void. Give your listeners a place to go. Release an EP.
So the single became an EP, and the recording sessions were booked.
The band (a New York drummer and bassist brought in for the sessions) moved fast. They were days ahead of schedule, the songs fell into place with ease. Before long, the drummer and bassist packed up and drove back home to the city, leaving behind a studio, a producer, extra time, and a songwriter with a spiral-bound notebook full of songs he'd been scribbling in his hotel room.
The producer looked at the notebook, looked at the studio, and said, "Why not record these acoustically?"
And just like that, what had started as a single was now ten songs. Five fully arranged with drums, bass, keys, and harmonies, and five raw acoustic songs. As Brandon was leaving, Tim said something that changed his perspective, You've got enough songs here for an album.
He had his album. Now he just had to let it exist.
The Long Middle
Then life did what it does. Brandon became a dad. He left New York - "kicking and screaming," he admits - and landed in North Carolina, a place he hadn't chosen so much as arrived at. The songs sat for a bit, waiting. He wrestled with the order they should be arranged and the flow of the album. Whether to alternate through the acoustic and produced songs like the Beatles did on the White Album in a restless contrast. Or to divide the sounds cleanly, the way Bob Dylan did on Bringing It All Back Home - explosive electric on the front side, intimate acoustic on the back.
He kept thinking. He kept trusting the process.
What held him through this long middle was something he describes as a "sense of purpose", he talks about it not as a choice he made but a current the flows through him - "It almost guides me," he says. "It's like it has its own life force." He describes himself as a lightning rod, a transmission vessel - not the source of the songs, but the being they move through. Like when a character takes over a page and guides the authors hand.
The title fell into place in the same way, not forced but found. Dreambell surfaced when he noticed the words dream and bell scattered throughout his lyrics. He describes it as the opposite of an alarm bell - not a sudden shock, but a steady comfort.
Once the title was there, the concept followed. Side A: Dream - the fully produced songs with a full color album cover. Side B: Bell - the acoustic songs with a black and white album cover. The cover photo of him appears twice: once right-side up, once upside down. Flip the record, flip the world. When he explained this to me, I found the concept intriguing, and after listening to the songs, I realized just how well it immerses you in the music.
You can listen to Dream as its own EP. You can listen to Bell as its own EP. Or you can listen to Dreambell and experience the entire world.
The songs were ready. The question was whether he'd let them go.
Holding the Vinyl
The vinyl was pressed at Pour House Pressing in Raleigh - a place he would've never found if he stayed in New York, discovered because a record store employee in Carrboro mentioned it offhand. That's the thing about this record, North Carolina turned out to be exactly where this story needed to happen.
I wasn't in the room when Brandon held that record for the first time. But hearing him describe it during our interview, you can feel it.
Standing in the pressing plant with his finished album in hand - after five years, after everything - he found himself fixating on the font color. Regretting small choices. Hearing a voice that said, this isn't good enough. You should have done it differently.
He knows that hollow voice now. It's the same voice that tells every artist to wait a little longer, perfect a little more, protect the work from the world - until the work never sees the light of day. Resistance; the fire-breathing dragon that every creative person has to slay, not once, but every single time they try to put something real into the world.
He slept on it and took a step back. And steadily, that hollow voice calmed.
"I just feel so proud," he says now. "It means I fulfilled a lifelong dream. It means I contributed a physical piece of art and music to the world." and "It means a lot to me that I followed through. That I didn't give up. And that I didn't let my demons win."
Go Make Your Thing
This is what five years actually looks like. Not a straight line, a spiral. A single that becomes an EP that becomes an album. A city you grieve turns out not to be where your story was set. Things fall into place.
Island Moons made it through the tunnel. He held the record. He battled the voice that told him he wasn't good enough.
To the person with the project sitting in a drawer, a notebook, a folder, a voice memo on your phone - That hollow voice telling you you're not enough, it's lying to you. It has always been lying to you. Your only way out is through.
Plant your flag. Press your record. Get out of the tunnel.
Dreambell is out now.
Go find it. Flip it over. Listen to both worlds.
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