 Lyrics for the songs on the "Happy Machine" album were penned in response to events that unfolded over the 2 years prior to its publication, including the Gezi Park protests, The Pirate Bay trial, and the European refugee crisis, and featured numerous collaborating artists from around the globe and lyrics in English, Spanish, Punjabi, and Italian.The album title is an allusion to the makeshift distillation apparatus used to distill rakija, a regionally popular variety of moonshine.The drink is also mentioned in the song "No Escape (From Balkan)", and a blueprint for the distillation contraption is also featured on the album cover (in protest of new EU regulations requiring a permit even for small scale spirit production intended for domestic use).