Releases

https://9128live.bandcamp.com/album/session-one

The inaugural 9128.live label release comes from the UK’s https://soundcloud.com/werkhouse and https://soundcloud.com/hilaryrobinson, featuring subtle, harmonic drones and manipulated piano, originally aired as part of the duo’s set for the CALMA (Madrid) takeover on 9128.live, April 2021.

Jo Johnson was a guitarist with punk band Huggy Bear in the 90s, inspired by and aligned with the riot grrrl and queercore movements. She organised underground techno parties with Bleep43 in the early 2000s and founded the crew’s label. Since 2012 she has explored experimental, minimalist music and her debut LP Weaving was released on Further Records in 2014.

After a classical training with composers including Kaija Saariaho, London-based composer, pianist and sometime vocalist Hilary Robinson is active across genres from contemporary classical concert music to experimental. Her music has been performed at festivals such as the UK’s 'Music We’d Like to Hear' and broadcast on BBC Radio.

The 9128 label aims to document significant live performances by artists that previously performed on the 9128.live platform. With recordings initially created for a singular collective listening moment, and often as part of a festival or takeover weekend, label recordings will re-present this music for further listening across various formats that best suit each release.

Jo Johnson & Hilary Robinson - Session One (9128-1) [Preview]

 Less Popular Than Cats

[PREMIERE] Jo Johnson - Track 3 - Less Popular Than Cats

What is the sound of feeling?

In physics, we conceive of sound as waves. Vibrations, undulations, physical manifestations: heard but not seen. Borne by the body, but interpreted in the brain.

Within ourselves, we perceive emotion as waves, too. Rolling in, rolling out: tidal, even. In moments of violet intensity, the depth of our feeling crashes upon us like surf, rip currents on a corporeal beach.

Worlds apart, but waves in kind. For musician and composer Jo Johnson, the veil between is diaphanous indeed. What you hear is what you feel. Listen and uncover.

Written and Produced by Jo Johnson (@werkhouse)
Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, NY
Artwork by Candace Price
Design by Gabriel Benzur
Words by Chris Zaldua

Worldwide Distribution: Space Cadets Limited

© Jo Johnson / Mysteries of the Deep
MOTDEP008, 2022
mysteriesofthedeep.net

The Wave Ahead

Orbit

Buy 'The Wave Ahead'

MOTDEP008 – Jo Johnson | Orbit

Taken from the compilation Partials III, out now on Frequency Domain.

frequencydomain.bandcamp.com/album/partials-iii

Partials III

Jo Johnson - Marked By Chaos

British musician Jo Johnson’s debut solo album for Further Records, Weaving, betokens an exciting presence in the world of minimalist composition. 

“Ancestral Footsteps” opens the LP with cascades of cyclical harp-like sounds, an homage to one of Johnson’s primary inspirations: Alice Coltrane. Channelling rigorous new age and mesmerizing Riley-esque/Reichian minimalism, the piece accrues heft and intensity, with occasional bursts of synthetic, tribal clapping until it fades out with cinematic flourish. The title track gradually alters simple guitar and keyboard phrases, along with a chiming motif that multiplies in a hall of mirrors. The disorientating arpeggios form moiré patterns against colossal bass notes. The mood lightens considerably with “Words Came After Music,” whose sweeping strings and drones could take you to whatever your idea of heaven is. Interestingly, the title of the piece is inspired by an anthropological theory Johnson stumbled across that musical ability predates language in humans. With its sombre, undulating synths and lustrous highs and lows, “In the Shadow of The Workhouse” plumbs profound emotional depths. Epic closer “Silver Threads” starts as an almost silent retreat in the vein of Laurie Spiegel's Appalachian Grove or Eno and Budd's The Pearl with the faint hum and buzz of telegraph wires, until four minutes in a stoic pulse and suspenseful chiming motif arise, buttressed by glowing synth sighs and the LP's only percussive thumps (think Incunabula era Autechre). 

While inspired by the "serious music" of Arvo Pärt, Wim Mertens and others, Johnson’s mandalas of tone mantras offer a playful, DIY sense of adventure, as you might expect from the former guitarist for incendiary punk group Huggy Bear and a long-term co-organizer of London’s Bleep43 techno club night and label. Weaving condenses Johnson's long love affair with free jazz, minimalism and electronic music and this unique ambient composition is invested with powerful emotional resonance.