Factory of Dreams: Talking About Reality Through Fiction

Impeccable melodies, soaring vocals and sci-fi thought-provoking lyrics make up the Factory of Dreams music, a Progressive Metal project of Portuguese multi-instrumentalist Hugo Flores and Swedish singer Jessica Lehto.


They have released only two albums to date, both of them masterpieces. There is not one average song in them, all of them are powerful and inspiring, especially Weight of the World and Slow Motion World.

The project started in 2007, when Hugo Flores found out about Jessica Lehto through Myspace. Both are best known for their other projects, Hugo for his eclectic work on Project Creation, and Jessica for her Gothic project Once There Was.

The Factory of Dreams’ first album, Poles (2008) was also produced through the web, with Hugo Flores sending her melodies and lyrics, as she sent him back the vocals and her own ideas.

Melodies play an important part in the Factory of Dreams music. To Hugo Flores “melody is what people remember and what music is made of mostly, so the challenge for me was to be able to focus more on melody and on production than complex material.” [1]

Being a great science fiction fan, Hugo Flores composed the albums with complex themes: Poles is about “the human mind, how we are capable of the best and the worst things” and “how nature is a living breathing entity, how it connects with us, and also about our emotions”, and their second album A Strange Utopia (2009) is a full story about a world in conflict and the fight between good and evil.

Despite the science fiction background, there’s also some social critique in the lyrics. “Sci-fi can bring up great ideas, social problems and do that in a very profound and imaginative way,” Hugo Flores commented, “Imagination is one of the best things that we have and simply talking about common subjects isn't my thing, so, I prefer to imagine possible scenarios and then bringing common themes to the set.” [1]

Though the web has been instrumental in the work and promotion of Factory of Dreams, Hugo and Jessica warned about the downsides of file sharing and piracy, which is damaging many bands like theirs and small record labels.

Jessica candidly declared: “If you do like the band you should buy the CD and support their music, it’s that easy. There are so many hours of work behind the tracks. I don’t only record vocals, I write my own music as well, and somehow I’m not too bothered if people download it since I anyway am just trying to reach out to as many as possible with my music at this point.

“But if things were to become more serious I don’t think I’d be too happy if people kept downloading. And in the end I always really appreciate it when people ask me about buying my music, even now when it’s just at a demo stage. That’s a very kind and sweet way of supporting a musician. When I myself find music I like I always buy it.

“[...]To sum things up, internet, myspace, mp3s, I’m cool with it, we do lots and lots of promotion over the net and I think I couldn’t live well without it now since my music relies a lot on it, but to everyone out there, please, keep buying the albums. If you do so, more music will come out and less labels/bands will close their doors.” [2]

Visit their Myspace page to listen to their music and check ways of buying their CD’s. For US residents, the tracks are also for sale on Amazon.com here and here. Below is their video for Sonic Sensations.




Factory of Dreams @ Myspace