How did you come up with the cinematic feel of The Incredible True Story?

When I met [animation voice actor] Steve Blum [who provides the voice of Kai], I had the concept and the idea in my head. Anyone else could of done it but not the way he did it. I played him three songs and on a handshake he agreed to do it. He left my house and I wrote the script in one sitting in one night. We went to his house a couple days later [and] recorded it. Then I went on tour and placed everything. After tour, I went to Hawaii to finish the album—I figured what better way to close up an album about paradise then to go there. I had never been there, so we rented out a 17-acre house. We set up a PA system and recorded, and it was really amazing. Then we got back and really honed in, focused on the sonics of everything. Bobby Campbell—Campbell like the soup—is my engineer. His ear for sound design is amazing. We watched Interstellar, we watched Alien, we watched so many different things to create this thing.

Could you describe what the experience of listening to the album is like?

You hear the pilot to your left, Thomas, and you hear Kai, his partner, to the right—it's like you’re sitting in the middle of them in this space craft. You hear the engine and the ambience of space—how there is no oxygen and how that would sound. You hear typing from keyboards when they're typing in coordinates, and all these different little nuances. Then you hear Thalia—the ship's AI component—though both ears because she's a surrounding voice from the whole deck. The best way to describe this album is an audio-cinematic experience that mainly takes place in sonic form. I wanted to create a movie, very similar to War of the Worlds. You know, Tom Cruise and shit? Well, that’s a remake—the original was a radio show like way back in the day, and people all across America tuned in and thought that there truly was an alien invasion; they only had the radio and they didn't know it was fake because it sounded so real.