Conversations is an interview series in which we discuss a specific component of an artists’ work.

In this edition, we chat with Ryan Hover of the Fort Collins, Colorado “creative collective” Candy Claws about his love for Jurassic Park, his obsession with the Mesozoic period, and their new dinosaur-inspired record.

Your upcoming full-length focuses on the Mesozoic period. What sparked your interest in this particular period of time?

The spark? Jurassic Park, of course. Everyone’s always loved dinosaurs, but that book/movie made them a scientific reality to me and you and everyone else lucky to be a kid when it came out. Before that, dinos existed as more of a fantasy, cool creatures who lived somewhere in the vague past, but Crichton connected that past, and connected the biology, and the ecology, and made the past tangible. Suddenly, those millions of years were inhabited. On all our albums so far, we’ve looked back into time. The sea was the origin of life, which spread onto land, and the Mesozoic Era was, so far, the crowning achievement of life’s ridiculous struggle. It simply made sense as the next time period for us to explore.

To date, your records have explored the past. Have you ever thought about exploring the present or the future?

I think we’d like to explore space sometime, although that would also mean exploring the past since anything we see in the sky is just a glimpse of, say, the sun eight minutes ago, or a young galaxy 13 billion years ago. As for the future, we’re currently working behind closed doors with some very important people on actually creating the future. I can say no more at this time.

Your new album, Ceres & Calypso In The Deep Time, progresses through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Tell us about the similarities and differences between the three.

The Triassic was a time of recovery from the Permian Extinction. It was hot and dry, and saw the rise of pre-dinos and the earliest dinos. The gigantic reptiles came later, in the Jurassic, when vegetation was lush enough to sustain their size. Pangaea began to break up in the Jurassic, and our more famous dinos appeared, like Brachiosaurus, Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus. Ironically, Jurassic Park’s superstar, the T-Rex, didn’t evolve until the Cretaceous, along with the Triceratops, the duck-billed Hadrosaurs, and the first flowering plants. Throughout the Era, mammals were a literally-tiny minority, small ground rodents who would become ancestors to every furry beast to roam the Earth once the large lizards were taken care of by our friendly meteor in the Yucatan.

Your past album concepts have also been based on the natural world. Do you get your artistic inspiration through research and information? What are your thoughts on incorporating science into art?

My favorite kinds of art are actually from mid-century science books, like the Golden Guides from the 50s. I’ve grown up with access to my grandparents’ library of beautifully-illustrated encyclopedias, children’s books, and science treasuries, so art and science have always coexisted for me. Our inspiration comes more from personal experiences with nature—visiting the ocean, hiking in the mountains, reading Jurassic Park four times in a row one time on vacation—and the research comes later after we’ve decided on a direction for an album. We try to make music that’s enjoyable without knowing anything about the subject matter, but we also like to reward further scrutiny. There’s always something more to discover by reading lyrics, liner notes, interviews, or even just asking us. Our ambition is to make pop songs that stand on their own, but also reveal more the closer you listen and read.

So it sounds like your past albums came from tangible experiences in nature, whereas this one is an imagined experience based on Jurassic Park and researching the Mesozoic Era. Was it harder to put yourself into that space, or did it free up your imagination?

We’ve always felt pretty free to do whatever we want. This time we just felt it would be awesome to do dinosaurs.

What is the single most interesting thing you discovered while researching the Mesozoic period?

The entirety of human history could repeat over 800 times during the span of the Mesozoic Era.

Where does the title of your new record come from? Who are Ceres and Calypso?

Ceres is a time-traveling white seal who takes Calypso, the girl, on a journey through the Mesozoic. They’re a couple of names I’ve been saving for a while because I thought they sounded cool. Ceres was a Roman god of growing plants, and is also the smallest identified dwarf planet in the solar system. Calypso was a nymph in Greek mythology, and is also one of my favorite styles of music. In the liner notes we’ve dropped hints and clues about their story, but the album overall is mostly impressionistic rather than narrative.

Will Ceres and Calypso appear in future works? Have they appeared in previous works?

This is the first time they appear, although as they’re time travelers, like the Doctor, we can easily include them in any future projects. I’ve grown fond of them, so yes, they’ll probably appear again. And they won’t even regenerate into unrecognizable bodies, unlike the Doctor.

From what point of view did you write the lyrics?

Credit for all the lyrics goes to our friend Jenn Morea, a poet in Chicago. We corresponded for a few months about what the lyrics should be like, and decided they would be from Ceres and Calypso’s point of view, mostly about their excitements and fears as they explore the wilds of the past.

Is there anything else you want to share with us about your new album?

Here are the few fragments of clues to C&C’s story, which will be included in the liner notes:

Recovered excerpts from “BLOOD ARK” excavated alongside ZEPHYROSAURUS type specimen MCZ 4392 in Lower Cretaceous Cloverly Formation by Hans-Dieter Sues, 1980:

Ceres was a forgotten beast. She was the only one of her kind, a small seal composed of bones and snow. She had an invisible cloak and she had a secret appearance. Her white fur was translucent and illusory. Beware her inaudible sigh! Ceres was associated with time travel and caverns. -p. 5

Rolling inward in wild white billows, the waves devoured the front end of the ship, and the wind tore away the sails and the mast, flinging them high into the flashing sky. Calypso clutched wildly for the railing, and all around her the dark green feeling danced and flew. -p. 47

In a time before time, Ceres and Calypso began wandering the depths of the world. -p. 202

Two additional fragments of manuscript were discovered in the same dig as those of “Blood Ark” and the Sues Zephyrosaurus, preserved in strata a few hundred million years older. They are written in the hand of a child still learning cursive:

I’m climbing to be your one in a million.

Across the Valley of the Sun / I close my eyes / Is she still there?—Followed by “Bridge climber (you can hardly see me).”

Ceres & Calypso In The Deep Time is out now via Twosyllable Records. Listen to “Transitional Bird (Clever Girl),” the lead-off single below: