A group of young musicians from Queenstown's Wakatipu High School are using their newfound freedom during lockdown to record an album, Bandemic.
"We have a group chat with a lot of the musicians from Wakatipu High School and we were discussing what [the album] could be called, we were coming up with a lot of puns... we had Quaranteens, but everyone settled on Bandemic and thought it was fitting," student Greta Balfour, 17, told The AM Show on Wednesday.
"It's a big change being in quarantine. I was one of those kids that was involved in every extracurricular activity I could be. So going into quarantine and having that on hold, it does get a bit boring at times, but we're doing our best."
As the band can't physically meet to record during New Zealand's Alert Level 4 lockdown, the album will feature a compilation of solo singles, recorded by students during isolation.
"A lot of these students who are putting in a solo song are in bands - at the moment we obviously can't meet to create anything - so it's new territory for a lot of them. But they're all really excited to try it out and put a single together," Greta said.
The students have decided to stay away from collaborative technology, instead trying to capture the essence of "being in your own bubble" with individually recorded singles.
"The technology is there, we just wanted to focus on the idea of being isolated as a teenager in quarantine," she explained.
Watch the video above.
