Live @ Oslo London 16th November / Låpsley support
Rising multi-disciplinary musician Joe Winter is pleased to announce a brand new single, ‘Laughing for the West’, released 21st October. Winter’s distinctive baritone vocals are layered over emotive sonics to beautiful effect. This single marks the arrival of an important new voice.
Joe explains: “Laughing for the West is a lament on the experience of being a citizen of ‘the west’, as well as an individual navigating their own emotional landscape. The song is about complicity. You’re an emotional landscape within a political one. You have interpersonal relationships — romantic, sexual, familial, and platonic — that feel entirely human and unpolitical. Yet you feel like your origin’s contentious past and present bleed into your consciousness in a way that’s hard to distill.”
Joe Winter channels a diversity of influences to produce music adhering to no genre in particular. Their creative process passes beyond the music itself, into film, which they self-direct to deepen and clarify the music’s meaning, for both themselves and their listeners. They co-directed the music video, working closely with the artist Kjetil Berge. The artwork was created by acclaimed film director Rollo Jackson, whose credits include Stormzy, Hot Chip, Overmono et al.
Due to a lack of musical training growing up, they sought community through London charities including the Amy Winehouse Foundation, Roundhouse and Brixton’s Raw Sounds. Studying art at Goldsmiths opened them up to new ways of thinking critically about work, whilst cultivating new skills and forging creative relationships, in turn broadening the ways by which they self-express.
Their interdisciplinarity connects the worlds of art, photography, film, fashion and dance, as well as music; having worked across these spheres in various capacities — from music videos and fashion films, to performing at arts festivals in Haiti and Norway.
They have recorded and collaborated with Oliver Sim (Joe contributed backing vocals to their recent album ‘Hideous Bastard’) Jamie xx, Låpsley, Infinite Coles, and Bok Bok. January 2023 will see the release of their self-produced debut EP; in time I will glow, in the dark I am grown.