Dusk — Leo Faulkner’s Solo Project Before Sleep Token

What Was Dusk?

Before Sleep Token existed, before the masks and the mythology and the worship of an ancient deity, Leo Faulkner was already making music. One of his earliest known solo endeavours was a project called Dusk — an atmospheric, emotionally direct body of work that, in retrospect, reads as a clear creative precursor to everything Sleep Token would become.

Dusk was not a band. It was a solo project — Faulkner writing, performing, and recording on his own terms, outside the framework of collaboration or genre expectation. Where Sleep Token would eventually wrap its emotional core in elaborate mythology and visual concealment, Dusk presented something rawer and more exposed. There were no masks, no fictional deities, no Roman numeral stage names. There was just a young musician from Bristol working through ideas about melody, atmosphere, and emotional vulnerability.

The project occupies a fascinating position in the Leo Faulkner timeline. It sits between the earliest bedroom recordings — material associated with the Monkeyl0rd22 YouTube era — and the more polished ambient work of Blacklit Canopy, the collaborative project with Gemma Matthews. Together, these three phases form a clear creative arc: experimentation, refinement, and eventually the fully realised vision of Sleep Token.

For anyone trying to understand where Sleep Token came from — not just biographically but artistically — Dusk is essential context. It reveals the foundation upon which everything else was built.

Dusk’s Musical Style and Sound

Dusk occupied a space that was atmospheric, melancholic, and unafraid of stillness. The production was darker and moodier than straightforward acoustic singer-songwriter material, but it stopped short of the genre-blending ambition that would define Sleep Token. If Sleep Token is a cathedral, Dusk was a chapel — smaller in scale but built from the same emotional materials.

The vocal performances on Dusk recordings showcase an artist already in possession of a distinctive voice. The same mid-range warmth that characterises Vessel’s softer moments on Sleep Token records is audible here, though presented without the layered production and genre shifts. The singing tends toward the intimate end of the spectrum — hushed, confessional, delivered with a controlled vulnerability that would become one of Sleep Token’s defining emotional signatures.

Musically, Dusk drew on atmospheric post-rock and dark ambient influences. Guitar textures were washy and reverb-heavy, creating expansive sonic landscapes that prioritised mood over technical complexity. Piano appeared as a compositional tool, suggesting that Faulkner’s multi-instrumental skills were already developing during this period. The arrangements were patient — songs that took their time building, that earned their emotional climaxes through restraint rather than bombast.

This patience is significant. One of Sleep Token’s most acclaimed qualities is the band’s willingness to let songs breathe, to use negative space as deliberately as any note or chord. That instinct did not appear fully formed with Sleep Token’s first EP in 2016. It was cultivated earlier, in projects like Dusk, where a young songwriter was learning that what you choose not to play can be as powerful as what you do.

Lyrically, Dusk explored territory that will feel familiar to Sleep Token listeners: heartbreak, longing, existential questioning, and the particular kind of sadness that comes from feeling things too deeply. The words were more straightforward than Sleep Token’s mythology-filtered lyrics — there was no Sleep deity to channel emotions through — but the emotional DNA is unmistakable. This was a songwriter drawn to melancholy, compelled to document inner experience with unflinching honesty.

How Dusk Connects to Sleep Token

The connections between Dusk and Sleep Token operate on multiple levels, and understanding them enriches the experience of both projects.

Vocal Continuity

The most immediately striking connection is the voice itself. The human voice is essentially a fingerprint — shaped by the physical dimensions of the vocal cords, throat, and sinus cavities in ways that are unique to each individual. When listeners hear Dusk recordings alongside early Sleep Token material, the recognition is often instant. The same timbre, the same vibrato characteristics, the same instinct for when to pull back and when to let the voice open up fully. The transition from Dusk’s vocal performances to Vessel’s early work on the One EP is not a leap — it is a natural, traceable evolution.

Listen to “The Offering” from Sundowning — a song that traces directly back to Dusk’s intimate vocal style and atmospheric patience:

Thematic Continuity

Sleep Token’s lyrics deal in devotion, loss, obsessive love, and the search for meaning in emotional pain. These themes did not materialise out of nowhere in 2016. They were present in Dusk, expressed more directly but drawing from the same emotional well. What changed was the framework: Sleep Token gave Faulkner a mythology through which to process these themes, adding layers of metaphor and ritual that gave the raw emotions a grander context. But the emotions themselves — the sincerity, the willingness to be devastatingly honest about how love and loss feel — were there from the beginning.

The Timeline

Perhaps the most telling connection is chronological. Dusk’s activity wound down in the period directly preceding Sleep Token’s emergence. There was no dramatic announcement of the project ending. It simply went quiet. And then, in late 2016, Sleep Token appeared with “Thread the Needle” — a fully formed artistic statement that, despite its apparent novelty, carried the unmistakable imprint of everything Dusk had been working toward.

The gap between the two projects is narrow enough to suggest a direct transition. One vision reached its natural limits; another, more ambitious vision took its place. The songwriter did not change. The scope of the ambition did.

Musical Evolution

Tracing the progression from Dusk through Blacklit Canopy to Sleep Token reveals a consistent creative trajectory. With Dusk, Faulkner established his core artistic identity: atmospheric, emotionally intense, built around a voice that could shift between vulnerability and power. With Blacklit Canopy, he expanded his palette through collaboration, learning how ambient textures and electronic elements could serve emotional storytelling. With Sleep Token, he synthesised everything — the solo songwriter’s emotional directness, the ambient project’s textural sophistication, plus the heavy music chops acquired through years of absorbing metal, progressive rock, and beyond.

Each project was a necessary step in the evolution. Remove any one of them and Sleep Token, as it exists, would likely sound different.

Where to Listen to Dusk

Accessing Dusk recordings in 2026 requires some effort. Unlike Sleep Token’s catalogue, which is available on every major streaming platform, Dusk material has largely retreated from public availability. This is consistent with the broader pattern of Faulkner’s pre-Sleep Token digital footprint being progressively cleaned up — whether by deliberate choice or simply through the natural decay of old online platforms.

While original Dusk recordings are scarce, you can hear how this early work evolved into Sleep Token’s debut album Sundowning:

Some Dusk material has been archived by dedicated fans and researchers. Music forums, fan communities on Reddit, and archival sites have preserved recordings that might otherwise have disappeared entirely. The quality and completeness of these archives varies, and their long-term availability is not guaranteed.

The Monkeyl0rd22 YouTube account, which predates Dusk and represents an even earlier phase of Faulkner’s musical development, has been similarly documented by fan archivists. These recordings are rawer and more amateur than Dusk material but provide additional context for understanding the creative trajectory.

For listeners approaching Dusk as a way to understand Sleep Token’s origins, the most productive approach is to listen for the vocal and thematic threads that connect the two projects rather than expecting a direct sonic comparison. Dusk sounds like what it is: a developing artist’s solo work, created with limited resources but genuine artistic intent. Its value lies not in production polish but in the window it provides into the formative years of one of modern rock’s most compelling creative voices.

Dusk vs Blacklit Canopy — How They Differ

Fans exploring Leo Faulkner’s pre-Sleep Token work sometimes conflate Dusk and Blacklit Canopy, but the two projects were distinct in important ways.

Solo vs Collaboration

Dusk was a solo endeavour — Faulkner writing, performing, and producing alone. Blacklit Canopy was a collaboration with Gemma Matthews, which fundamentally changed the creative dynamic. Collaboration introduces compromise, unexpected ideas, and creative friction that pushes artists in directions they might not explore alone. The ambient, textural qualities that defined Blacklit Canopy likely emerged from this collaborative chemistry rather than from a single creative vision.

Emotional Directness vs Atmosphere

Dusk leaned into emotional directness. The songs were more conventional in structure — verse, chorus, bridge — and the lyrics addressed their subjects without heavy abstraction. Blacklit Canopy, by contrast, prioritised atmosphere and immersion. Its music asked listeners to surrender to a sonic environment rather than follow a narrative. If Dusk was a confessional letter, Blacklit Canopy was a landscape painting.

What Each Contributed to Sleep Token

Sleep Token draws from both. The emotional honesty and vocal intensity of Dusk is present in Sleep Token’s most direct, devastating moments — the vocal break in “The Offering,” the pleading delivery of “Alkaline.” The atmospheric patience and textural sophistication of Blacklit Canopy echoes through Sleep Token’s ambient passages, the electronic textures of This Place Will Become Your Tomb, the willingness to let a song exist in quiet space before the heaviness arrives.

Understanding both predecessors makes Sleep Token’s unique blend feel less like a genre experiment and more like a natural synthesis — the inevitable result of a songwriter who had spent years developing two complementary creative muscles.

For a comprehensive overview of every project in Faulkner’s musical timeline, see our complete guide to Leo Faulkner’s bands and projects.

Dusk Solo Project FAQ

Was Dusk a band or a solo project?

Dusk was Leo Faulkner’s solo musical project, not a band. He wrote, performed, and recorded the material independently. This distinguishes it from Blacklit Canopy, which was a collaborative duo with Gemma Matthews, and from Sleep Token, which operates as a full band with multiple members.

Can you still listen to Dusk music?

Dusk recordings have limited availability online as of 2026. Much of the original material has been removed from public platforms. Some recordings have been preserved by fan archivists and can be found through dedicated Sleep Token communities on Reddit and music forums, though availability is not guaranteed.

Is Leo Faulkner’s Dusk project related to Sleep Token?

Yes, directly. Dusk was Leo Faulkner’s solo project before he created Sleep Token. The vocal style, emotional themes, and songwriting approach heard in Dusk recordings are clear precursors to Sleep Token’s sound. The two projects share a songwriter, a vocal fingerprint, and a thematic preoccupation with love, loss, and emotional intensity.

When was Dusk active?

Dusk was active in the early-to-mid 2010s, prior to Sleep Token’s formation in 2016. The project followed Faulkner’s earliest online recordings (the Monkeyl0rd22 era) and overlapped chronologically with Blacklit Canopy. Its activity wound down shortly before Sleep Token’s first single, “Thread the Needle,” appeared in September 2016.