OTHER JOE
BLESSING FROM THE HEART (BEDROOM SUCK)
Other Joe is the pseudonym of producer, mastering engineer, and label-head Joe Buchan, an individual with a penchant for free-wheeling experimentation and genre-crossing musical tastes.
Drawing upon a wide array of sounds that pay homage to his love of both the beautiful and the abrasive, Joe devours indiscriminately whatever sounds might cross his path, the result giving birth to the unique musical journey that is listening to an Other Joe record.
After a few years spent playing in bands and releasing small bodies of work under different monikers, Joe released what many listeners know as his breakout record, Alien Haze, a beautiful collection of recordings that oscillate from collages of field recording and found sound, sublime balearic-era saxophone symphonies, and introspective neo-classical psychedelia.
His latest work, blessing from th eheart (typo intentional), expands on Other Joe's love for blending field recording and acoustic instruments with electronic processing.
Beginning by reviewing the catalogue of creative notes he had archived since the release of Alien Haze in March 2019, Joe picked apart voice memos, Logic projects, iPhone videos and whatever else he could lay hands on.
Says Joe, "looking over it all at once, the musical ideas I had been attracted to over the past eight or nine months started to make a bit more sense - I could see that there were instruments I was liking, or chord progressions that I kept coming back to, structures and forms that I had found engrossing.
Sort of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that I had made without realising."