Midnight Juggernauts are celebrating 10 years in music with two new releases: an EP, entitled Aerials, and “Freefalling”, a single with a music video.
Over the last 10 years in the music business, Midnight Juggernauts have remained steadfastly and defiantly independent doing their music on their terms. This formula has paid off for the band, as they’ve crisscrossed the seas over the years from Russia to Columbia to China to Turkey to the U.S., and various places in between. They’ve also been invited to many of the large international music festivals including Glastonbury, Exit, Coachella, Fuji Rock, and Benicassim.
Although they’ve recently been geographically separated, they have gotten back together on impulse to record a series of adventures EPs, with Aerials being the first. According to a press release, Aerials is reflecting “the world from a vertical perspective above and below, explored in the music as well as accompanying video clip and live show production.” Midnight Juggernauts tested out their electronic dancefloor-esque show, lighting, and installations at the 2014 Vivid Festival.
Much like The Stone Foxes, Midnight Juggernauts are pairing their album, “Aerials”, with an important social issue as a means of raising awareness. The band chose to make the Aerials EP available immediately in exchange for a donation amount of the buyer’s choosing to the Aboriginal Benefits Foundation, specifically to benefit their healthcare initiative as nearly one-third of Aboriginal people die before their 45th birthday. The band has a personal interest that stems from strong cultural relationships fostered between family members and various outback indigenous communities over the decades, according to a press release.
“Freefalling” is the lead single from Aerials. And, no, it’s not a cover of the well-known Tom Petty track – that’s “Free Fallin’“. This is “Freefalling”, which Exclaim.ca describes as having “hypnotic, tightly-wound synth blips” that set the tone for “the band’s pop-friendly approach to electronica, as thudding dance passages are overlaid with airy, melodic vocals on all four tracks.”
The video for “Freefalling” is a globe-hopping planet-spinning adventure with the Midnight Juggernauts that is made possible by the magic of CGI. After beginning at the Sydney Opera House in their native Australia, the band members ‘travel’ to some well-known landmarks and locations like: The Hollywood Sign, the Great Wall of China, the Eifel Tower, Stonehenge, and the Taj Mahal.
A release provided with the video includes the following description and explanation of “Freefalling”.
“The video is an ode to Google Earth, the band’s long-standing favourite computer program. As cartographic enthusiasts they’ve spent vast amounts of hours over the years excessively exploring its virtual environments. Last year they noticed its crowd sourced 3D modelling project, which allowed the public to recreate the world’s buildings in 3D form, had come to a close. Millions of these CG SketchUp models are now being replaced by auto-generated 3D mesh buildings through photogrammetry technologies. To farewell these previous crowd sourced 3D creations, the band wished to have a final celebratory song and dance through some of their favourite sites across the virtual globe. A technological last rites before the new dawn.”
Check it out: