Joe Unknown

Of all the things Britain excels at, sessioning a rave from Thursday to Monday lands slap bang at the top of the list. Just ask newcomer Joe Unknown. He charged around the UK’s straight-through-scene, finding hearts in muddied fields and darkened rooms, before landing on his hyper-alive sound. As he boasts on the single “Ride”, “I like to participate in life’s little edge.”

Born in Reading and raised in Four Marks, in east Hampshire, his early years were spent how most creative teens in small towns spend them: searching for fun, and a world beyond the same four streets. Here was a place where, if you wanted to see your friends, “nine times out of ten, it’d be in a field.” But that’s also how music came along, via countryside raves in said fields. 

Slightly left-field sounds had been around Joe forever. In the car, the surreal humor and avant-garde psychedelia of Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band leaned from the speakers. “Everything you need to know about why I am the way I am comes from that. I grew up on Naked Gun films, Ace Ventura and Bonzo Dog, mixed with the Mick Hucknall and Motown my mum played” he says. But raving was something entirely his own: it became home. 

When Joe left college, to keep his mum happy, he begged the owner of a record shop in Southampton to give him a job. Trip2Records, a small room with a desk, a pair of turntables and a huuuuuuge PA system, became home. “We’d stand in there and mix records,” explains Joe. Stuff like: DJ Fresh. DJ Zinc’s Bingo Sessions. Mampi Swift’s “The One” and Adam F’s “The Pit” (Feat Method Man). 

Centering around the rave scene helped Joe bubble up and begin realizing his dream of becoming a performer. “A guy kept coming into the shop who was an MC and he had a show at The Coronet in Elephant and Castle. I ended up driving him there,” he says. “I’d been to loads of raves in fields, but never gone into an actual rave. I remember walking in and feeling like I had found my crowd.” One night after another, Joe eventually found himself MCing at events. 

“I was a white kid from Hampshire, drinking everyone’s rider and performing for hours,” he says. A breakthrough moment arrived via a show in Belgium with Trigga and Shadow Demon. “I went from playing to 50 people, to suddenly turning up to a warehouse in Belgium with 10,000 people, asking me to go on all night. I’d be playing these huge raves with LTJ Bukem and DJ Hype – people who didn’t know me – but the UK promoters would see me on the posters.” 

Off the back of these European raves and tours across nightclubs in the UK Joe eventually came to the conclusion he wanted to release music under his name. Thus: Joe Unknown was born. “Things have come full circle. Where I am now, I feel like how I felt when I walked into The Coronet all those years ago,” says Joe about this new era. “I’ve found my purpose again.” 

Kicking off with last year’s tearaway single “Ride”, Joe Unknown leans into human behavior and how people act in certain situations. “Some of the music’s relatable and describes the average person in a relationship or going through everyday things,” he says. But there’s also another side, inspired by his love of film – from the early Naked Gun stuff and toward Tarantino’s big screen cinema – described as “dark, psychotic, very inspired by film”. Follow-up single “Silent” is one of these tracks. “Just when you think you know about me, I’ll switch,” Joe explains. 

Speaking on his love of film and how it influences his songwriting process, Joe says: “I remember watching ‘Lock Stock’ when I was really young. The way the music fit to film gave everything a whole new life. I’m very easily distracted and find it hard to concentrate on stuff, but as soon as I watch a film, all of my senses are consumed. My sight, hearing, everything. A good film is priceless to me. It’s my biggest inspiration in life, and everything I do when it comes to writing. I create a small thing in my head first and go from there.” 

Underpinned by his love of rave music and the experiences that happen throughout the nights and the days after, it’s music that lands in a world of heating bill fuck-overs, hungover tuesdays and grabbing life by the balls to have another go around, aka, the stuff we all find ourselves rocketing through from time to time, told with an incredibly detailed, amped-up lyrical focus.

“Where I live in Camberley at the moment, I come out my flat and turn left and there’s big houses; I turn right there’s Wetherspoons and a Greggs. But it’s interesting. All these millionaires still go to Greggs for a cheese and bean melt.” 

His upcoming project is all about stretching toward a level of longevity that lasts longer than the weekend. Featuring tales of crews finding solace in one another (“Gang”) and relationships turning from dreams to nightmares (“Dreams”, twined together with news report samples and overheard conversations, it’s an insight into contemporary Britain that’s ready to go off as much as it’s there to help cushion the comedown. Think of it like the next best in British storytelling. 

“I’m not competing for a top ten spot. That doesn’t mean anything to me. What means something to me is: Mike Skinner did three sold out nights at Brixton Academy, off an album he put out in 2001. I listen to Joy Division like they put out a tune yesterday. I listen to Talking Heads like they released an album yesterday. Why would you want to be a trend? I don’t get it, I’m not interested. I grew up on the album and the album is everything to me.