JOY

One of Australia’s incredibly talented up and coming music makers, JOY. She’s talented across so many boards: She’s a singer, a songwriter and a flippin’ good producer. She put out her debut EP, ODE, earlier this year to some rave reviews. She happens to be in town in Brisbane today to play her first ever Bigsound tonight, so Howl And Echoes found themselves with the absolute privilege of sitting down with her for a good old fashioned chat.

How ya doin’ JOY.?

I’m good, I’m good.

Saw you were sick the other day, I hope you’re feeling a little bit better now?

Yeah, well I always get sick but I never lose my voice. Like I always get sick and and I just feel like shit and don’t lose it but this time I lost my voice really badly and it was just like air coming out. So I had to just drink heaps of stuff like garlic-honey-lemon water and shit.

Really pleasant stuff…

Yeah you just have to hold your nose the whole time.

So you were ok for last night then, saw you played a show in Bondi?

So I only got my voice back maybe 20 minutes before I went on, which was interesting because otherwise I just had no idea like, what am I going to do? All I’m doing in this show right now is singing and it’s just air, I just sounded like (indistinguishable raspy lyrics).

Holy shit, that’s coming up clutch. So it went well?

Yeah it was good. I don’t even really know how it went really but I think it was good? (Laughs)

So you pretty much finished up there and got into Brisbane maybe 10 minutes ago?

Yeah I flew in this morning really early. Had to go home and drop all my gear off and the band and then had to turn around and be like (sighs) ‘I have to go into the Valley now’.

No chance of a sleep before you back up tonight? Will you be good to go?

So I was planning on having maybe some kind of rest or a sleep at some point. We played at midnight last night and I had to get up at 4am to catch the flight here so by the time I got to bed it was maybe 2. Got on the plane and yeah. After this interview I have maybe three hours so I’m just going to knock myself out and sleep!

Really good idea. You mentioned you’re playing with a full band tonight. Where you’ve previously played mainly solo right?

Yeah so it’s a new setup again. I used to play solo and then I got a band and we kind of made it a bit more real live stuff, pretty much live arrangements of my stuff but we were like fuck, that doesn’t work. Nobody wants to see that and so then we were like, let’s actually make it sound like the record, so we just did production for like a week. We bought so much gear and just played around with a few different things and programmed it all which took forever and so now it’s an electronic show.

So how many members of the band do you have now?

There’s four with me but they’re all switching instruments and gadgets all the time.

Is it a difficult thing trying to teach other people such kind of personal songs of yours that you’ve written?

No not really. They’re all sort of classically-trained session musicians who can all play every instrument under the sun. The real annoying thing was programming it so a lot of it is running off of a computer and we kind of had to have everything patched in and have it automated so that it changes in between songs which was a nightmare. It sounds good though… I think. So it was worth it.

Are you still doing songwriting or is it now turning into a collaborative thing when they’re involved?

No they’re not really involved unless it’s a show, so I’ll do all the writing and production and then we just try and transfer it to a band.

Is that a hard thing, transferring it into a band?

Nah not really. They just learn the parts and then my musical director and I will just program it into the thing so that it’s all done. It’s just a little more technical than playing an instrument like, if you can play an instrument then you’ll be fine pressing buttons.

Just following along on your social media and you seem to be putting up photos of the MacBook at work making music. Are you sitting on a big old treasure trove of JOY. stuff you’re going to release?

(Laughs) Yeah, bangers.

Trap bangers. Is it just something you do for fun then?

To be honest, I made the last EP and then just kind of didn’t make anything for myself. I haven’t made a JOY. track in ages, I’ve just been doing shows but also working with some rappers making beats for them, so all of the stuff that I’m working on at the moment is just beats for people. It’s cool though, it’s actually a lot more fun than making your own shit but yeah, just doing beats for rappers and also some singers that I’ve worked with where I’m just getting heaps of random instrumentalists into sessions and jamming rather than writing for myself. I probably will start working on my stuff though. I’m actually going to America on Saturday. I don’t even think that’s for JOY. stuff though I think it’s mainly production. There’s a bunch of producers and artists and stuff so we’re just going to write and I guess if something comes out of it then I can use it.

So JOY. is really only one kind of project for you, it’s not ‘it’?

I kind of just want to have it all under the JOY. name but I don’t want it to be confusing or anything. If I’m just dropping random shit people will just be like ‘What are you doing?’. I think it’s kind of confusing because people see you’re doing a vocal feature and assume you’re a singer and then if you’re making beats now they start to get confused.

So what rappers are you working with at the moment?

There’s this guy JD (Jeriet Dwight) at the moment who is an up and comer. He’s really cool. I don’t know if I’m going to get shredded for saying this: I don’t really like Aussie hip hop but I work with a lot of Aussie hip hop guys. Which is actually really good, they’re really good, it just isn’t my favourite genre but this JD guy has got kind of a British twang going for him. Kind of like a mix of Skepta and… I don’t know, someone else…

We fucking love Skepta!

Yeah he’s really cool. I just like working with people who do different shit I guess. I spend a lot of time with vocalists just making them sing random things into a microphone and then just chopping it up and sampling it.

You’ve worked with a fair few people this year. Was there any collaboration you had where it was like ‘fuck yes, this is the biggest highlight’ kind of thing?

So I’m with Universal Publishing and I’m pretty much in their studio every day of the week and there’s so many people signed with them like Horrorshow and there’s Ruby Frost, she’s from New Zealand and is kind of pop I guess. I had a really good session the other day though. It’s always fun when you actually know the people before you go into the session, so this one I did with Slumberjack, who I’ve known for a while. So it was just really fun because you’re just in there making something random and you don’t really care.

That’s real bangers right there.

(Laughs) Yeah we actually made something really cool which was unexpected. Some sessions if you don’t click with the person it can be a really awkward day.

What happens when you’re in a room and it’s like that?

I’m kind of a really chill person so if I don’t get along with someone I’m probably not going to be up in their face about it, I’ll just do my thing. It’s fine though, everyone I’ve worked with so far has been fine it’s just that some people you click better with than others, which obviously makes the music better.

What can we expect from you in the next year? Obviously heaps of bangers, maybe some bangers but with three z’s on the end?

(Laughs) I don’t really know, I’m still kind of thinking about what I want to release. It would be cool to do another EP and maybe start writing an album. An album is going to take me forever because I need it to be perfect. I also want to do a lot more production for other people as well so maybe even just dropping an EP with me not singing on it. I feel like people come to see me sing though so it might be weird. I want to try different things and see how it goes. So I guess you can expect a bunch of random stuff that’s not really professional and some shows, some travelling.

A lot of relatively unknown acts playing Bigsound this year. What would you tell them as someone who’s established herself?

I’ve never actually played Bigsound before so I can’t really give them any advice.

Oh, not specifically Bigsound, more like, you know music in general?

(Laughs) Oh, I thought you meant just for Bigsound.

Yeah, Bigsound life hacks from JOY.

(Laughs) Have all the drinks and eat all the food. I don’t know. I feel like I was in their position not even that long ago so, I don’t really know what happened. Just keep doing your thing. I feel like being really antisocial and locking yourself in your room does pay off. In high school I didn’t really go to parties or anything. Probably because I wasn’t allowed to go but it worked out well I guess.

Thanks mum and dad.

Yeah thanks for being so strict. I guess just muck around with what you’re doing and it also helps if you can produce your own stuff so I would recommend playing around with software and stuff. Even if you’re not going to record your own album, it’s still cool to know how to do those things. I just learned everything from sitting at home on my laptop just pressing buttons.

Well it worked for Kanye. We’ll leave you to it JOY. Thank you so much for the chat today, go get some rest and all the best. Have fun in America!

Thanks, catch you later!

 

It’s been all eyes on Brisbane’s Olivia McCarthy over the last 12 months. Working under the moniker JOY., she’s performed countless shows, dropped superb track after superb track, performed Peking Duk‘s Like A Version and also graduated high school. Not bad, right?

It was the 2014 release of Captured that really caught everyone’s attention. From there, she dropped her mini EP titled Stone, and sung her way into the hearts and ears of many. Now, this year is shaping up to be her biggest yet, with performances at Field Day and Laneway as well as a national tour with Flamingo already under her belt. She will also be supporting George Maple and Tkay Maidza in the coming months, as she continues her rapid rise to the top. We got to chat with the lovely artist recently, about a recent twitter war with her ex-manager, her secret love of Chris Brown and what we can still expect!

There’s been a bit of drama happening over in your camp lately! Can you explain in your own words what’s been happening, to clear any confusion?

There was some copyright claims filed for some of my YouTube videos. It was really frustrating because it was by my old manager. It was kind of frustrating but now I’m ready to just move on and keep making music.

Even though that’s totally awful, what I thought was really interesting was the response you got from your fans on Twitter! Everyone seemed to really rally together and get behind you! 

It was insane! It was really crazy that people were so passionate about it. I was like, “Okay, this is a big deal,” but they were more into it than I was! They really went all out. It was amazing! Of course my family would be totally behind this but it was so surprising to see people I’ve never met so passionate about making everything good for me. Reading through the comments I was just like, “What is happening?!” It was so incredible.

Your music is often described as pop, but it’s a different kind of pop isn’t it? Do you have any secret mainstream pop loves we don’t know about?

I actually do listen to a bit of pop. I like listening to it. The way that pop is done, it’s actually the hardest genre to write, it has to be so structured and everything has to be so on point. That’s kind of drilled into my head when I’m writing now, like the correct way to write it structure wise and chord wise and all that stuff. I listen to a lot of stuff… I wouldn’t say it’s “pop” pop, but I listen to Chris Brown and Justin Bieber.

That’s pretty pop!

It’s pretty pop, yeah. I love that stuff, that’s like all I have on my iPod.

Now, you have just wrapped up the Flamingo tour – how was that?

It was awesome! It was the first proper tour I had been on. I did a couple of shows which we called a mini-tour last year, but this was the first proper support tour where we went to a different state and played night after night after night. It was super fun, they’re the best guys ever! We spent most of the time just hanging out. It was really good to see how different cities reacted and what your fan base is around the country. I’ve only really played the East Coast until then so it was awesome to get over to Perth and Adelaide and see how things are over there.

Did Perth and Adelaide know you as well as you would have been known over this side?

Well, I mean I’ve done more shows in Sydney than I have anywhere so it was the best crowd. Brisbane was good, it was just kind of like high school fans. Perth was really awesome though, they have this crazy club scene so I did more of a DJ/singing set thing, and that was really fun. It made me want to start getting into DJ sets more. Adelaide was really fun too though, we played in this lane that they had turned into a bar and a stage. Everyone was very free spirited!

Back to what you said about the DJ set, so that’s something to consider in the future? I’m still yet to see you perform, so I take it you have a live set up?

Yeah, so I have my full live set up and I try to incorporate more live instruments. I have all my pre-produced tracks on my laptop and I trigger different parts of them with synths and stuff. I have keys and sometimes a guitar, and I sing. I also sometimes do a bit of drumming. That’s my live show. I guess my set is downtempo, so DJ sets are really fun because you can just play Chris Brown and Akon. You get a really good response from the crowd when you’re DJing, I think people get really into it. When you’re playing live, people are more likely to just take it in instead of getting into it. People are afraid to dance or they just sway and watch you. DJ sets are super fun because people don’t care and you can drop disgusting R&B and people lose it!

Well, now you’ve got shows with George Maple and Tkay Maidza who are both very different and probably have very different crowds – will you modify your set to suit those crowds? Maybe some bangers in the Tkay set?

That’s what I was thinking! I make a lot of EDM stuff as a joke… Not even as a side project, I just do that instead of making demos because I get bored, but I’m probably going to try and make my Tkay set more upbeat. I’m opening though so I guess my set eases people into UV Boi and then into Tkay. Everyone is saying not to change my set but I’ll probably try and chuck a few sneaky things in there. I kind of make my set up on the spot and see how people are responding. If people are looking super bored, you can just be like, “Here’s something I’ve never played live before woo!” and just do it.

Speaking of bangers, I wanted to talk to you about the Peking Duk Live A Version from last year. That was one of my favourites from last year and it had a lot to do with your vocals – how crazy was that for you? 

That was amazing. It was the best thing ever. I guess that’s where everything started kicking off for me. I’d been hanging around, but as soon as that took off, all the JOY. stuff just took off as well. It was super awesome and they’re the best guys. We hadn’t even rehearsed it that much, we just kind of went in and YOLO’d.

Didn’t Kylie Minogue contact you afterwards?

Yeah, and I lost my shit. I had to go to school the next day, and I was just sitting in class when she tweeted me. I just wanted to stand up and walk out, I was just like, “What the fuck?”

“I’m done. I’m out.”

*laughs* Yeah! “Goodbye forever, I don’t need school!”

Well I guess that’s fair when Kylie Minogue tweets you! Looking forward now, what else are you going to be up to this year?

I’m doing a LOT of touring. After this Tkay one there are a few more which haven’t been announced yet. I want to get a new single out around May I guess, and then follow that with a proper sized EP. It just kind of depends. There aren’t any set dates and stuff because you never know what will happen between now and then. It’s hard to set a date that it’s going out when it’s not close to being finished, but it would be ideal to have an EP coming. There are also a thousand collabs with people that have to be scheduled in with everything else, so there is a lot of music coming out too.

At the end of last year, you were featured on more than a few End of Year lists as one to watch – was that exciting for you or does it just heap the pressure on and you’re like “Well, fuck”?

The first couple of ones, I thought it was awesome. But then there was 12 or something, and I was like, “Oh no…” It was kind of like that weird thing because I don’t know if this will be my year, or if next year will be. I wanted this year to be the year preparing for 2016. It’s still super awesome to see that that many people believe in what you’re doing but now I actually have to do well! It’s still cool though.

Okay so this is like the year laying out the work for next year?

I guess so. You can never tell what’s going to happen, but that’s kind of like what I thought would happen but it depends!

Tkay Maidza w/ UV Boi and JOY. tour dates:

Friday, 17 April – Goodgod Small Club, Sydney
Saturday 18 April – Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane
Friday April 24 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne