Premiere: Blush Juliet Unveil Debut Collection 'Introducing Blush Juliet'

The team of Archi Banal and Emmanuel Sarmiento took over local studio radio airwaves as Blush Juliet with their transcendently emotive singles 'Slide Into View' and 'Prom Night', and have today unveiled their debut collection which we're thrilled to premiere here, appropriately named Introducing Blush Juliet. Both of those previously released songs appear here alongside four fresh numbers, inviting listeners to succumb to the pair's intoxicating world of swirling guitar pop, slow motion fuzzy grunge and emotionally heavy, heart on their sleeves lyricism.

Blush Juliet are currently geographically separated – Banal is now based in London and Sarmiento lives in Tāmaki Makaurau – following one single live Aotearoa performance, which featured Nicole Gaffney and James Stuteley of Carb on Carb as members of their band. You can experience the new video for 'Exit Your Heart' created by artist Pippi Nola, and dive into a stream of Introducing Blush Juliet below. Banal opened up about how Blush Juliet draws on the duo's shared experiences of growing up Filipino in Aotearoa...

"This is such a special project for Emmanuel and I. It’s Eman’s first musical release and my first time playing guitar. It’s also the first time either of us have written songs for a full band.

Through meeting and forming Blush Juliet we realised we both had similar experiences growing up Filipino in NZ. I think if you tried to tell teenage us we’d be in a shoegaze/pop rock band with a full POC line up we wouldn’t have believed it.

Teenage nostalgia is a running theme in these songs, so it means a lot to have Carb on Carb in the band. Nicole and I started making music together over 10 years ago and we played a lot of all ages shows, which is how we were introduced to James. I think we all have this in common; growing up listening to music we felt didn’t fully represent us. It feels great to be able to reclaim that. This goes out to all the other emo POCs out there, we see you :)"

'Introducing Blush Juliet' is streamable via Spotify and Apple Music.