WHITELANDS, the London based Shoegazers, are on the cusp of releasing their second album “Sunlight Echoes”, the follow up to “Nightbound Eyes Are Blind to the Day”, released back in 2024 on the legendary Sonic Cathedral label. RESOUND caught up with drummer Jagun Meseorisa to discuss the new album ahead of it’s release
RESOUND: Hey Jagun! Your second album comes out on Friday. How are you feeling?
Jagun Meseorisa: I’m super excited personally and I think I speak for the whole band when I say that. I think we’re all really proud of this album, and just really excited to kind of see how far it can go and what it can achieve. Because musically, I think we are, you know, we’re just super proud of it. I think of how hard we worked in terms of making it, in terms of how far out of our comfort zones we came out of it, and I think it’s just a beautiful piece of work, and it really shows our dynamic.
R: You’ve had four songs out so far, and certainly you can feel a progression from the first album, particularly the fourth single which came out, “Blankspace” which feels a much darker song. Obviously the first album you recorded in your own time mainly you and Etienne (vocals and guitar) with Michael (guitar) and Vanessa (bass) coming on board, so you had no pressure on you for that first album. What’s changed for second album? Have you felt more pressure?
JM: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think we were still kind of basking in the in the glory of the first album, and then Nat (Nat Cramp, head honcho of Sonic Cathedral) was like, yeah, by the way, we need to kind of get started on the second one. We were like, “Whoa, okay”. And that woke us up again and made us think “Oh, crap”. Around that time, there was just so many different things happening in our personal lives getting in the way of all of it. We were all still working back then, Etienne was still doing his Masters degree, which was also stressing him the hell out. So definitely very different from the first album. We just kind of needed to get it recorded so got a date set, April 17th I think it was. I had the added pressure as I had to leave for Florida, like two days afterwards. So, I literally recorded all my bits in about two days, pretty much all ten songs, though we had recorded a couple singles before that, but the majority of the album. And then I left, and they all kind of finished it without me. But yeah, it was like, a case that we needed to, crackdown in a short space of time and challenge ourselves to come out with the best thing possible. And because of the circumstances, how we wrote kind of changed. For the first album for the most part Etienne would write a song or have this idea for the rest of us to embellish it with our own personal tastes and stuff. But this time, there would be times when Etienne was away, for like three days to finish his Masters. So, there’s certain songs on the album where me, Michael and Vanessa, would have to set out and think how to build something And then Etienne would come back and write to it and add his own magic on top. It was, it was just a cool dynamic. It showed that we could write songs in more than one way, so much more collaborative for maybe the first album.
R: Do you still sort of have the traditional writing that you start off with, you know, maybe guitar, maybe it starts off like an acoustic or and then you build up from that? Or did you pick up hints from touring with Slowdive and how they wrote the last album, a lot of it was Neil (Halstead) messing around with electronics, and then they evolved into Slowdive songs. You personally also have your solo stuff as well, which is very different to what Whitelands do.
JM: Yeah, many things do influence writing and bring different means together, but you’re correct, in the sense that it is normally a traditional writing sense where it starts quite acoustic, you know, like I said, it’s normally just Etienne and his guitar, just with the idea and singing it, and then it’s how we build around it. That obviously for me is when I’m just hearing guitar and vocals, I’m like, okay, the other guitarists and the bass, they should kind of fit in quite seamlessly. But then for me, it’s like, how do I basically add my own influence. Can I keep Etienne’s original idea and, like, the original vibe he was trying to go for. How do I, how do I balance that? So that’s typically how the songwriting does go. But then as I mentioned just now, this new album kind of forced us to find different ways. Like some of it was me, Michael and Vanessa, just jamming, playing ideas together and just seeing what we can come up with. There is one song “Golden Days”, that song particularly, it’s my favourite song on the album, but it’s a song that came from the three of us just jamming, and we came up with an idea to present to Etienne. “Mirrors” is another that came to life like this. And he was able to bring himself into our ideas and our vision. And, I mean, it works seamlessly.
R: What are your influences as a group? And how did you come to the Shoegaze genre?
JM: I mean, our influences are really all over the place, because Etienne, he is the Shoegaze fan out of all of us. The reason we do Shoegaze is because he watched Slowdive’s KEXP session and that was that. And, you know we were a punk band before that! It’s on YouTube. It’s on Spotify, so it’s all still out there. And then, he just kind of came to us one day and was like, “Yeah, I want to make Shoegaze”. And I was like, “What the hell is that?”. I’d never heard of it before. But, I mean, it didn’t really change the way I was drumming anyway, because I come from, and you might be able to tell from watching me perform, but I come from a bit more of a hard rock, indie rock background, so like, like Paramore and Bloc Party, quite grungy such as Deftones and so on. Vanessa is also such a massive Deftones fan. And then Michael comes from a bit more of a jazzy kind of side of things, so we all kind of had this weird blend. And what you hear from us is basically that in the realm of Shoegaze. Literally, I only found this out, during the Slowdive tour where Etienne was like “Yeah, the Slowdive KEXP show that made me want to do Shoegaze. And I was like, damn, now we’re literally, you know, on our way to go play a show with them. How mental is that? Our journey is quite beautiful in the sense it’s very organic. And, you know, there’s never been a how the hell did they get there type thing.
R: It’s great that circumstance has allowed you to push yourselves beyond what you did with the first album, finding a different way of working and a different mindset. Looking at some of the song titles, “Golden Daze” and “Heat of the Summer” for example, they feel very positive. And yet the world at the moment just seems an absolute bin fire. Did you find that the atmosphere of what’s going on in the world challenged you, in some ways, has it guided how you’ve written and the directions you’ve gone in?
JM: Yeah, 100% I think, but if anything, it’s decompressed us. It’s kind of made us more outspoken about certain things that we’re literally seeing in the world. And I mean, you can see it in some of the songs that we’ve already released. Like when you dig down into the songs, these are all songs that will be literally calling out the injustices that we are literally seeing on a day to day basis. But I mean, obviously in terms of individually and personally, it has obviously, definitely affected us. I think it’s just obviously what we do with that, and how we turn it into an art form, and how we express ourselves, particularly, you know, Etienne, who’s the one songwriting. So, yeah, I mean it definitely does both. It definitely restricts us in some ways, but I think musically, I think if anything it makes us more outspoken.
R: All power to you. Following on from that obviously, you’re off to South by Southwest in March. How do you feel about that? Because, you know, for an event like that, it should be something which is really positive for any band, something to look forward to. Yet you watch the news of what’s going on in America right now. How are you balancing that as a band.
JM: Obviously, when you hear South by Southwest, it’s like, it’s so exciting! It’s the stuff that all bands, including us, dream of. So, on that side, we’re like, quite excited about it, but then the other side we’re also terrified. We kind of don’t know how it’s going to go. We don’t know what’s going to happen. And I think that’s obviously, that’s where the fear really kicks in. It feels America is on such a shaky, like platform right now, especially in somewhere like Texas. I can’t really speak for the other guys right now, but for me, it’s more like, I kind of just have to have faith that it’s going to be fine. At the end day, like we’re going to go regardless. It’s not going to be stopping me from going. You know, we’re being very cautious right now, planning and stuff, because we just don’t know.
R: It all feels very uncertain, I just hope there’s better days ahead. Getting back onto music, you’ve got the headline tour coming up in February. Is this your first proper headline tour that you’ve done?
JM: Yeah, even like tours in general, we’ve never actually done a headline tour. The support for Slowdive was the first kind of tour we did where it was a couple of weeks, and we did a little mini tour a few months before that with Lorielle meets the Obsolete. But again, like both, both times we were just supporting acts. So yeah, we are very excited. Part of, at least for me, I feel like it’s about time and I sense that I’m kind of ready to see, to test ourselves and actually handle the pressure of headlining, because that will tell us a lot for the future in terms of what we can handle if we do it again, the kind of venues we want to play. Because I think we’ve been quite safe with the venues, not crazy, massive venues. But obviously, if we can sell these out, which, so far, I think it’s looking okay, and it gives us a good idea of maybe we can look to something bigger in the future. So it’s a great chance to get a gist of the different cities. I think that’s why Slowdive was good, because it took us a bunch of places we’ve never been before and it kind of gave us an idea of how these certain crowds would react to us.
R: I guess it’s quite a different dynamic being a headliner. When you’re there as a support band, you are having to convert people but this time around people are there because they want to see you and the fact that you’re selling out these gigs in advance, that’s fantastic,
JM: Thank you. I think, yeah, that kind of pressure that you talk about, I mean, that’s, that’s the stuff that gets me going. The bigger the crowd, the bigger the pressure, the more I’m like, let’s do it. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m, I’m super excited. I can’t, I genuinely can’t wait at all.
R: How challenging is it though for bands to head out and play now, that must also influence what you can take on, I guess you’re sort of self-financed for doing this?
JM: Yeah, I mean, we are we also, I mean, we’ve been quite lucky last year with grant funding and stuff. The last year, we got two, one sorted out the album, the other one’s sorting out this tour. So, we’ve kind of been quite lucky with that. And it is quite self-funded, because, bless Nat, but there’s only so much he can give to us and vice versa. So, yeah, we’re doing a lot of the work, basically.
R: Touching on Nat there, he’s been a massive advocate for Shoegaze as a whole and finding new young bands exploring the genre. Has he tied you down to a ten album deal now?
JM: We love and respect Nat so much, we’re so grateful – none of this really happens without him. I mean, the ten album deal hasn’t been signed yet, but you know, we’re with him and we’ll ride that ship as far as it can take it
R: The second album is obviously out on the 30th, what else you doing this year? What’s your plans? You’ve got the tour. You’ve got South by Southwest. Where are you taking it?
JM: Good question because the first few months have been so packed big, there’s not really much sorted out for the rest of the year. I think either way, I’m quite happy, because, you know we’ll get this done and then if other festivals that want us, or the chance to support other bands or head out on our own, then we’ll see.
R: I am sure whatever you get up to, 2026 is going to be a great year for Whitelands. Any final words?
JM: The album’s out on the 30th January, please everyone give it a listen. Thank you so much for the support that people have been showing us over the years. And hopefully see you guys on the tour.
R: Thanks Jagun!
JM: Thank you!
Whitelands tour the UK in February 2026. Tickets from all the usual outlets.
The new album “Sunlight Echoes” can be found at your local record shop or online via Bandcamp https://whitelands.bandcamp.com/
Whitelands (IG: @whitelandsband)
Words and live photos by Geoff Shaw (IG: @gsmusicphotos)