- MB is Joe's first proper release since 2010's Claptrap and Untitled, and we all know where they ended up: namely, in the DJ bags of everyone from Hessle compatriots Ben UFO and Pearson Sound through to grime visionaries like Champion and Terror Danjah, perplexing and galvanising dance floors across the UK in equal measure. The low-key North Londoner's releases may be few and far between, but their scarcity imbues each one with a singular significance.
"MB" is a disco edit, sure, but a curiously stiff one: its looped pizzicato violin and furtive Rhodes are as unsettling as they are propulsive. (A tiny, off-beat woodblock ensures that the groove stays metronomically straight.) Joe has tackled slower tempos before, but never has he ridden the groove so comfortably, allowing the filters and claps to do the talking.
"Studio Power On" strays into more familiar territory for Joe, collaging samples of what sounds like glass-smashing and wood being sawed into a loose, boxy beat that sits discreetly beyond categorisation. The whole thing is presided over by a bizarrely querulous synth line, a soft, flute-like sound that struggles to articulate itself. For the most part, we just sit in lip-biting stasis, riding those thick globules of sub bass, but at the eleventh hour a hazy pad fades in and the beat reconfigures itself into a sort of half-time house groove—just the kind of leftfield move you'd expect from Joe, but no less gratifying for it.
トラックリスト A MB
B Studio Power On