Wednesday 18 October 2017

New Music: Introducing - Joji


Unless you’ve been living under a rock and have only just discovered the internet, the chances are that that you will have seen or come across George ‘Joji’ Miller already. Yes, he’s the guy responsible for the Filthy Frank TV series and irrespective of your views on the thing (for the record I didn’t like it at all) it was a huge online hit, pulling in millions of views. He also put out, under the name Pink Guy, a low-brow cringey ‘comedy’ album that ended up topping the iTunes chart. It was an offensive release that made me shake my head in disbelief and realise that no matter how interested I remain in popular youth culture as I get older, I just wasn’t in touch with what ‘the kids’ were into these days.

Yet Joji has also gone on record saying that he only started Filthy Frank and Pink Guy to draw attention to himself and that it all just got a little bit out of control so he had to roll with it. Underneath all the pink bodysuited You Tube weirdness (click here if you still have no idea) and meme frenzies was a serious musician just waiting to break out and today Joji delivered on his promise with Will He the first song from his forthcoming debut EP due at the start of November. 

Will He is a surprisingly downbeat piece of music featuring stripped back ghostly piano reminiscent of something you might expect to hear on a Nils Frahm or Aphex Twin ambient record, with slo-mo beats and languid woozy vocals. It’s difficult to comprehend that this is even the same man as Filthy Frank, such is the lonely late-night feel of this drowsy song, which is really rather (and I'm in shock to say this) beautiful. 

The video is mesmerising as well – and yes Breaking More Waves regulars will be very pleased to see that he’s wasted no time in getting into the bath, albeit a blood one.

Despite having been on-line for less than 24 hours this video has already had over 500,000 views, showing the power of You Tube in developing an artists profile. Let's hope he keeps things like this and doesn't start referencing Dumplings or scaring people for lols.

Joji - Will He (Video)

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