hallucinations feels like a waking dream – vivid, strange, and impossibly alive. dublin-based songwriter john butler, better known as stray planets, spins another world entirely on this new single, the first glimpse of his upcoming ep are you real, cristobal leedy?

the track shimmers with psych-pop surrealism, mixing kaleidoscopic synths, woozy guitars, and the unmistakable voice of dara kiely (of gilla band), who channels both chaos and control in equal measure. butler’s production – alongside long-time collaborator rián trench – moves like liquid light, shifting from warmth to distortion to pure colour. it’s cinematic, feverish, and oddly human.

inspired by the story of a woman at the mercy of a faulty ai, hallucinations captures that tension between beauty and distortion – the fear of being remade by something you can’t understand. but even as it unravels, the song glows with melody and meaning.

this is stray planets at his finest: witty, ambitious, and deeply emotional beneath the abstraction. a technicolour trip through sound and self, hallucinations doesn’t just play – it hypnotises.

thank u for making this stray planets 🌕