We chat to Ezra Collective member Joe Armon-Jones on being a prolific figure of the new London jazz wave.
Release-wise, the past two years have been quiet for Joe; his hit rate of one or more albums per year is unique insofar as the quality rarely wavers, but all we’ve had from him in 2021 is the (admittedly brilliant) single ‘Fix It’.
His sophomore album Turn to Clear View was released in September of 2019, the same year as Ezra Collective’s You Can’t Steal My Joy. Joe’s solo debut Starting Today came a year before, with Ezra’s EPs Juan Pablo: The Philosopher the year before that and Chapter 7 dropped in 2016. Lockdown must have been a world of change from the recording, gigging, writing, recording, and gigging again.
ArrayAsked how it feels to be a forefront component of a new jazz wave in London and the UK at large, Joe replies, “It’s definitely special but t’s been going for a while. It’s not new. I don’t consider myself at the forefront so much, there are other guys who’d take that title: Shabaka [Hutchings] is more that kind of figure, the generation above me…”
Joe is 26, Shabaka is 36, “…but it’s been weird not seeing all those guys at this time.” With jazz being such a collaborative form, I wondered how the enforced distance the pandemic required affected his approach, but for Joe, it’s been nice having no commitments, no deadlines, just allowing him to focus on the music.
“It’s still possible, I’m just making music, writing,” he explains. “You can still get people together and make music. I’m working on a project with my housemate, Maxwell Owin, working with my own band, doing lots of things.”
“There are no gigs, so that’s the main difference… It’s been nice having no commitments, no deadlines, just allowing me to focus on the music… so it’s good, really good.”
ArrayWhat’s the difference between writing and recording with his own band and with Ezra Collective? “With Ezra,” Joe answers, “we write together and once we’re finished, we record in one day, two days. But with my band we’ll write and record it in the same kind of time, but then I’m producing and mastering it for a year! It’s a long process.”
Joe’s sound contains his blend of P-Funk, Herbie Hancock and dub-infected noise. The latter is unusually prominent for the jazz players across Joe’s work, most prominently in a dub reworking of two tracks off Starting Today, and I asked whether dub was always a part of Joe’s musical life.
London has a very special relationship with dub music, other musicians tend to ignore it and dismiss it as easy…
“I didn’t grow up with it, you know,” Joe replied, “it was never around me when I was young, but I discovered it when I came to London around 2011. London has a very special relationship with dub music, other musicians tend to ignore it and dismiss it as easy, in the same way as people do with jazz, people think they can play it, but they aren’t willing to put the effort in, put the ten, eleven, years in to do it.”
Joe’s life before London was murky. Asked where he moved to London from, he replied, “Way out in the middle of nowhere, man,” and little else. He came to London to study jazz and, honestly, why would you leave?
Joe’s musical inspirations come just from digging through records and listening to whatever is there. “What music do I listen to, to get inspired?” he muses, “I’ve been listening to a lot of wax… stuff that has already come out – I’m not fussed about keeping up to date with releases and all that.”
He begins to list records he presumably is looking at around his flat, “this thing by Clifford Walker, heard of him? this pretty crazy movie soundtrack, this album called Journey to the Centre of the Earth.”
His nonchalance belies the grand nature of his music and what inspires it; belies the swirling vocals and soaring horns surrounding the deft keys; belies his work rate and ambition. With there being no gigs, expect many releases in the coming months and years from Joe as he moves effortlessly from strength to strength.
