When you went to school with Bondax and Aquilo you could be forgiven for being intimidated by their rather long collective shadow and staying out of the whole music thing altogether. For London-based artist Junk Son (AKA John Dunk), though, that was never going to be an option. The musician founded his five-piece group while studying composition/classical music at Goldsmiths College and dropped his excellent breakthrough track, “True”, late last year.

Since then, he’s gone from strength to strength, releasing the late night electro-soul piece “Fool” – a technically experimental number that, in his own words, incorporates “rhythmic aspects of trip-hop without using a loop,” and “is sampled from single hits, rather than a pre-made drum track.” It’s that innovative and thoughtful process which is typical of the Junk Son we’ve seen so far and we’re pretty excited to see where he goes next. For now, however, we’ve got an exclusive premiere of “Fool” performed live to keep you satiated as well as a one-on-one chat with Dunk about his name, working in a band, and why being dubbed a Lynch-Byrne hybrid is pretty much the ultimate compliment.

Talk to us about the name Junk Son…where does that come from?

Its a combination of a pretty bad play on words using my name, and the title of a song written by a good friend. I tried to find a link for it but it appears to have disappeared into the internet ether

You self-produce – how did you learn those skills? Training or practice?

I’d say practice.. but it doesn’t really feel like I have to be working towards or for something. As long as I’ve been doing it, for me making music has been a totally therapeutic process.

Who influences you musically?

My friends, people who I’ve worked with. I’m especially influenced by producers and musicians who are working in the same area as me; everyone is doing their own thing and developing that at the same time. Ross From Friends, A House In the Trees and squareglass are all doing great things at the moment.

You work with a band but are also a solo artist? How does that work artistically?

I think that the most interesting music is often created through collaboration, so artistically it’s great; I feel very lucky that I can produce a track and then have each individual parts made 100X better by the guys in the band. I think as a solo producer it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and go a bit mental, like you are your own worst critic, so collaborating with Amy (vocalist) and the rest of the band has stopped me from getting in that mindset. As a result the development of the live show has been mirrored in the produced tracks, and they’ll definitely keep informing each other.

You’ve got some big live shows coming up – what can we expect?

I’m super excited to be supporting The Invisible on a couple of upcoming dates, we’ve all been big fans for a long time, so it’s mad. There’s a few more upbeat tracks in this set, but most of all anyone who comes to see us should mostly expect red-hot duelling guitars.

What’s next in the works for you?

There’s lots coming over the next few months; an EP in May as well as some collaborations. A full length LP will be out towards the end of this year too. We have our first show outside of the UK next month, after that we’ll hopefully keep playing live as much as possible.

Why do you make music? What do you want your music to do for people?

I don’t really what else I could do to be honest, making music in some form or another has been the only thing I could see myself doing for a while now. Hopefully I can carry on into the future.

If you had to describe your own sound in a sentence, how would you?

I find that question hard to answer but someone once wrote on soundcloud that its like David Lynch meeting David Byrne which I thought was a pretty nice thing to say.

Where would you like to be in 5 years?

Not sure exactly but hopefully I’ll be working on some good music!