Lockdown should be the worst environment for a rising live band to emerge from, but Junodream have been flourishing in recent months. They were recently named Radio 1 Future Artists Tune of the Week and Jack Saunders has consistently championed the band, highlighting them in both the Next Wave and Future Artists segments, while other key airplay has included John Kennedy at Radio X plus BBC Introducing. Meanwhile, they’ve just sold-out their headline show at London Omeara and streaming support has constantly grown, culminating in two big cover moments: Hot New Bands at Spotify and Indie Britain at TIDAL.
Junodream now crown their recent achievements with the release of their brand new mixtape ‘Travel Guide’. The band’s most ambitious body of work to date, the mixtape is released alongside the new single ‘White Sunday’.
The ‘Travel Guide’ mixtape is informed by new ideas and sounds. Set to a wider hybrid of influences from synth-pop to punk and even prog, Junodream take us back to 2000 and the potential for a bright new future that was promised by the new millennium. The benefits of an increasingly digital world are countered by the claustrophobia of 24/7 rolling news and the constant demands of progressively more polarising social media. On a more personal level, it also looks at how perceptions change during the transition from childhood to adulthood, and the realisation that seemingly innocent events often had a darker undercurrent.
Junodream commented, “Everything now feels charged with a doomsday atmosphere, like Y2K twenty years on. We wanted to capture that anxiety: climate change, advertising, destructive tourism and paranoia. it’s a soundtrack to the end of the world. We’re also at that point where childhood innocence has almost completely evaporated, so being a bit cynical with nostalgia is really revealing. There’s a darker layer you can never be aware of as a kid.”
These themes are prevalent throughout the previous singles ‘Let Me Breathe Again’, ‘Eden Burns’ and ‘Travel Guide’. In contrast to the wilder sounds that preceded it, the new single ‘White Sunday’ is a beautiful cinematic ballad that feels akin to an unlikely merger between Radiohead and George Harrison.
The band added, “‘White Sunday’ tells the story of a guest who is struggling to deal with a hangover at a family wedding. His inner turmoil is ramped by the purity of the wedding as he realises his own life is lacking any emotional fulfillment. Riddled with shame and anxiety, he just falls apart.”
The ‘Travel Guide’ mixtape is completed by two new pieces of music. The expansive instrumental ‘NY2000’ establishes the mood of a world on the cusp of change, while the interlude ‘Niugnep’ captures the anxiety and confusion as those hopes spin off into very different realities.
After recently playing the virtual Great Escape, Junodream are set to make up for lost time with a mixture of festivals and headline shows throughout the remainder of the year.
