Joy Orbison: still striving

In the cavernous space of EartH Hall, dry ice hangs like a mist in the air. The futuristic metallic mesh ceiling installation resembles a sci-fi film set as people filter onto the dancefloor. Skewed house and bass-heavy electro issue from the speakers, and below the lights, which dissolve from red to green and flash in time to the music, Sheffield DJ and bleep techno pioneer Winston Hazel is holding court in the DJ booth.

His club expertise and seamless selections are warming up the expectant crowd, who are rapidly filling the huge Hackney club. Around midnight, Joy Orbison steps onstage to hollers of approval, embracing Hazel and sharing a word, before taking to the decks himself as tonight's headliner.

The room is packed as he takes us on a whirlwind spin through his unmistakable sound. Dark-side bass blurts over skippy garage drums; Southern trap vocals low-ride on house beats; wavering AutoTune voices collide with granite-tough kicks; and enormous synth bass drives scuffed techno rhythms. The crowd jump, twirl, raise their arms aloft with palms out and gun fingers cocked in rapture.

The red light glow of a lamp above the DJ booth illuminates Joy Orbison’s face, and he’s grinning from ear to ear, loving this moment. Wearing a long-sleeved black graphic tee, he drops hits like the 2022 single ‘pinky ring’, inducing pandemonium, and plays a rougher, rawer, Reese-bass-powered mix of his popular song ‘Better’, Léa Sen’s voice rendered anew by the fresh arrangement. The acapella from First Choice’s disco cut ‘Let No Man Put Asunder’ works a dream over a 2-step beat, before Sammy Virji’s ‘Bogeyman’ obliterates the floor.

Mixing these disparate styles together is something Joy Orbison, real name Peter O’Grady, is adept at. His pinpoint musical combination draws in fans of all kinds of dance music, whether through his DJ sets or his laser-guided club productions. First coming to prominence in 2009 with the neon-lit, evergreen ‘Hyph Mngo’, he’s more popular now than ever, after a decade and a half spent steadily releasing singles like ‘Ellipsis’, ‘Big Room Tech House DJ Tool - TIP!’ or ‘pinky ring’, all which end up in the playlists of DJs across the board and become classics.

He’s both a festival headliner and the host of the Just For You club night at fabric, has held a Radio 1 residency, and even had his own radio station in Grand Theft Auto Online. Most importantly, he’s constantly reinventing himself, experimenting with fresh musical ingredients that never fail to hit the mark. In 2023, that manifested in his collab with Overmono and Kwengface, ‘Freedom 2’, foregrounding the drill MC’s rowdy flow over crisp garage beats and looming bass.

“It’s about sonically pushing things forward, trying to be creative with it,” O’Grady tells DJ Mag. “That, now more than ever, is important to me, I don’t want to do this if I’m not thinking about and prioritising that, you know? I always want to be adding to the conversation, I don’t want to be just a derivative artist.”

When we catch up with Joy Orbison, he’s still basking in the success of 2024’s ‘flight fm’, a tune that was literally everywhere last year. A mutation of moody electro, grime and 2-step with a malevolent buzzing synth at its centre, it became a sensation, played out by DJs like Skrillex and Four Tet, and bootlegged and re-edited by an army of SoundCloud bedroom producers into versions with all manner of different vocals on top. Made while travelling to Lost Village festival in the UK, O’Grady wasn’t sure initially whether to release it or not, doubtful whether it was going to connect with his audience.

Talking over video call one Friday afternoon from the driver’s seat of his car, getting out of the house because “the kids are at home and it’s mental as usual”, he’s smiley and engaged. As an artist who historically hasn’t done much press and has let his music speak for itself — at least until a flurry of activity in the last few years — he’s much more open and candid about his life and music than you might expect. Leaning into the camera, he remembers the pre-release jitters he had about ‘flight fm’.

“I was pretty convinced that it wasn’t going to land — no pun intended!” he grins, talking into a mic, AirPods in his ears and with his coat zipped up to its wool collar, a ring notable on the pinky finger of his right hand. “I really didn’t think it would. I remember being like, ‘Nah, I don’t think this is gonna work’. Luckily I had people around me who said, ‘Look, you’ve got nothing to lose, just put it out, we’re excited’. It did, amazingly, connect."

“I’m really surprised at some of the people who’ve been playing it, but it’s great. Great records should be beyond the scene. At the end of the day, ‘flight’ has like three notes in it, maybe not even three!” he laughs. “It’s not about being a virtuoso, which I definitely am not, but about sonic ideas, and what’s possible, and how impactful that can be.”

While Joy Orbison has had a huge following in the UK for years, ‘flight fm’ took off worldwide, especially in the States. A bootleg re-edit of the track by Fred again.. , ‘flex fm (freddit)’, added the rap verses from Lil Yachty’s ‘Flex Up’, with superstar MCs Playboy Carti, Future and Yachty giving it a whole new appeal. Since its official release, it’s become one of his most popular tunes.

“It was really funny, ’cause I heard about it through Overmono, and then my manager sent me a video shot from like his leg, of Fred playing it, like a secret video of the track,” O’Grady says. “So I sort of knew about it, it was exciting. I love Playboy Carti, I love Yachty, I love Future, so it’s definitely not an abstract thing, it makes sense with what I’m into, which is really fun. But I would never have put the two together. The way Fred’s done it is really artful. When I started playing it, it felt really natural. But it was a surprise, I didn’t think about putting a rapper on it. I’m amazed that we got it out, to be honest, it took a lot of effort. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many lawyers CC’d in one email! But I’m glad we did.”

Hip-hop is a recurring influence for Joy Orbison, whether in his collaborations with Harlesden MC cityboymoe, in the rap snippets and metallic AutoTune warbles that pepper his DJ sets, or across some of the productions on his ‘still slipping vol.1’ mixtape. He views the modern manifestation of the sound, with its slower Southern USA style and electronic beats, as the most forward-thinking genre out there now.

“I’m very influenced by it,” he says. “I love the sort of stuff adjacent to what Playboy Carti is doing — that to me is the most punk music out there. It’s like punk on its head, ’cause it’s all about money and all these other things, but that’s where the punk music is being made now — by kids in Atlanta, and on SoundCloud. That’s where you’re gonna hear some crazy sonic ideas. I don’t think you’re hearing so much in house and techno, you hear it way more with kids who don’t give a fuck about house and techno, they’re just listening to hip- hop or whatever they think hip-hop is. Marrying those worlds on ‘flex fm’ was fun as well.”

Joy Orbison has a curiosity and openness to new sounds that keeps his beats one step ahead. Able to leapfrog between scenes and absorb the best parts into his distinctive compound, he synthesises garage, techno, grime, house, dubstep and many other styles into something singularly Joy Orbison. At a time when rigid genre means less and less to club audiences, his music feels more relevant than ever. It’s also why there’s a universality to his tunes. Classic tracks like DJ Zinc’s ‘138 Trek’, Mr Oizo’s ‘Flat Beat’ or Azzido Da Bass’s ‘Dooms Night (Timo Maas Remix)’ transcended the scenes they came from and became popular with all sides of dance music — and these kinds of tracks made a big impact on the music Joy Orbison makes today.

“I used to go to this record shop in Croydon called Swag that I now know was a big tech-house shop,” O’Grady recalls of his teenage years. “I didn’t know at that time, I only knew it as a garage spot. I remember one of the young guys in there was playing garage records and then playing ‘Flat Beat’, and I remember being like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ It was funny, ’cause it always intrigued me, even back then when I was probably about 16, maybe 15. But at the time I remember thinking, ‘Oh, there’s something in this’, the way the sounds can be so striking, that sonic ideas can be just as powerful as any chord structure. I don’t know if I’ve ever achieved that in my music yet, and ‘flight fm’ feels like one of the first ones where I’ve put that at the forefront.”

It’s as a DJ that Joy Orbison gets to express his passion for many forms of dance music. He loves playing out, and feels more freedom than he did in the past to try new things, divert from the script and mix tunes together that people might not expect. Though he wants to give the crowd what they desire, he feels like it’s also important to push boundaries and open people’s minds to other sounds.

“If people trust you, you’ve got to see what you can do with that, and that’s really exciting to me,” O’Grady says. “How far can I take this? My sets are definitely party sets. I’m not gonna make out like I’m playing experimental music every week, but I like to take chances and try and introduce people to things they didn’t really come looking for, and to highlight music that isn’t your obvious track of the moment, but putting it in a position that it can thrive. I’m playing so much bigger spaces than I’ve ever played before, much bigger rooms, and even when I’m doing some big thing like that, I want to have some moments where it’s a bit off-kilter, a bit weird, and try and shock people a bit, and then keep reminding them, ‘flight fm’ is coming up and stuff you’re gonna like as well.”

He’s found a more enlightened attitude in club and festival crowds of late, particularly in the States. At Portola festival in San Francisco recently, he was surprised to find the tent he was playing in was rammed, with people spilling out the sides. He reckons there’s a level of passion in US clubbers that you don’t always get elsewhere. “It’s really shifted in the States,” he emphasises. “American crowds, they really care, they don’t take things for granted, because I don’t think it’s easy to live in America to be honest, I think it’s hard there at the moment. You feel that when you DJ, you can see the genuine enthusiasm.”

Asked about his favourite recent club experiences, he mentions the new club Open Ground in Wuppertal, Germany. Another place that was appreciative of his music recently was Istanbul. Playing a more experimental set than usual, he found that the crowd was along for the ride. “The set I played, I really tried to do something a bit different — I thought, I’m gonna do what I want to do tonight’, and people were so receptive to it.”

Perhaps the reason for such receptive crowds is the direction of Joy Orbison’s recent music. While the certified bangers have continued, in 2021, he released ‘still slipping vol.1’ — what he described as a mixtape, and his first long-form release. While previous EPs, like the superb ‘81b’, had moved in a more adventurous and wide-ranging direction, tapping into leftfield dubstep and techno, ‘still slipping’ felt like a step forwards.

From the aquatic deep house song ‘better’ featuring the mellifluous vocals of Léa Sen, to James Massiah’s spoken word on the dreamlike garage of ‘swag’, and the moody, smouldering halftime drum & bass of ‘bernard?’, with its panoramic bleeps, gorgeous synth pads and bass undertow, this was novel territory. Made during a time of Covid restrictions, Joy Orbison felt uninhibited to stretch out musically.

It was a bold move that paid off. “I never really tried anything like that before,” O’Grady says. “I think the idea existed before Covid, it just allowed me some time to focus on it. It was showing maybe a different side of myself. That was really interesting. When you do something like ‘still slipping’, it can quite easily alienate people a bit, but it felt quite personal to people. That maybe isn’t something I’m necessarily known for either. Basically, it seemed to connect — that was a great feeling.”

One of the most characterful aspects of the record are the WhatsApp voice notes and recordings of O’Grady’s family members that crop up throughout. They add an additional human quality that felt especially poignant during the atomisation of lockdown, and continues to resonate now. In fact, these kinds of vocal snippets are a recurring feature in Joy Orbison’s work: think of his classic track ‘Ellipsis’, for instance, and instead of the lush piano chords or the unfurling bassline, you probably remember the vocal snippet from a Source Direct interview, where the words “we just used to like, do our own thing” become like a hook for the track.

Similarly, the voice notes on ‘still slipping’ feel a bit like hooks of their own, a navigation Joy Orbison has felt comfortable dipping his toe into the genre, after growing up with it. “Anyone who really knows drum & bass knows that even within the scene, there’s technical levels [of expertise],” he says. “Especially in the old days. You don’t get a look in if you can’t produce to a certain calibre. That sort of hierarchy was quite off-putting for me. So doing it on the album, I was really sensitive to how it sounded. I put a lot of effort into it sonically too, ’cause if you do it, you’ve got to come correct.”

Ultimately, ‘still slipping’, and several of the releases around it, have put Joy Orbison in the enviable position where he can essentially do what he likes, diving between the dancefloor and more experimental fare — and fans will follow. “At the end of the day I’m making fairly traditional music. It’s not Stockhausen,” O’Grady reasons. “But I think within that you can they were very much in my head.” Moving to live in South London a little later on, in school he’d swap d&b tape packs with other kids whose older brothers were putting them onto garage.

“I was like, ‘I’ve got this DJ Hype tape, gimme that Dreem Team tape or Masterstepz tape’. That stuff had a big influence on me, 'cause drum & bass seemed mind-blowing, then I was hearing garage tapes and thinking, ‘Oh wow, there’s some of that in this’. So that feels like the start of it for me, the essence of what I do is probably in the swapping of those tapes. I never really lost the feeling from the first time I heard a Zed Bias record or an El-B record.”

As he got older, he was going to Croydon record shops Big Apple and Swag, where he’d pick up garage, grime, house and techno records, and going to see bands. He started DJing and making grime on Fruity Loops. Initially, he wasn’t sure about dubstep, and only started to get into it when he heard DJs like Oneman and Ben UFO play it in sets with other sounds. When he made the tune ‘Hyph Mngo’ on his friend’s laptop, he was thinking more about the soulful d&b of dBridge and Calibre, but the tune, released in 2009 on Hot Flush, enacted a sea change in UK dance music.

With its lush synth chords, a cut up vocal sample, a kind of two-step rhythm and an epic drop, it felt like a new, more kaleidoscopic phase for dubstep, and it spawned countless artists and tunes that were eager to replicate its success. Now considered a classic, it has given rise to remixes from artists like High Contrast and DJ Friction. To this writer’s ears, it’s more like a broken beat record than anything else. “I was having this conversation last week, I do really see [the broken beat connection],” O’ Grady says. “A lot of people in that scene at the time — I used to talk to Seiji who was in Bugz In The Attic, they really connected to it, it made sense to them.”

‘Hyph Mngo’ thrust Joy Orbison into the spotlight immediately — something he wasn’t really ready for. His early club hit represented only part of what he was into, and everything he made after that was scrutinised, all while he was still learning to produce and refine his sound. It’s understandable why he may have been reticent to do interviews for a while.

“When I made ‘Hyph Mngo’, I knew nothing about making music. I honestly was right at the start,” he admits. “I’d been making bits and pieces but at a very low level. That was a huge leap for me, so it was almost like I had to learn in the public eye after that. If I’m totally honest, I don’t think it’s until recently and ‘still slipping’ where I actually felt like, ‘OK, I’m getting to grips with this’. I really didn’t feel confident about what I was making for a long time.”

As a result, Joy Orbison didn’t flood the market with EPs, but instead put out select tunes on labels like Aus and his own Doldrums imprint, collaborating with artists like Boddika and Pearson Sound. When a new track did arrive, like the murky grime bass, 4/4 drums and vocal hooks of ‘Big Room Tech House Dj Tool - TIP!’ or the evocative ‘Ellipsis’, it always felt like an event. Along with graphic designer Will Bankhead, he launched the excellent Hinge Finger label, which became a home for some of Joy Orbison’s more leftfield material, and that of his contemporaries. 2018’s ‘81b’ EP, home to the morphing metallic dubstep of ‘Seed’, felt like the beginning of a new chapter, and he signed to XL for ‘still slipping’ and the huge singles that have come after.

As well as production work for MCs and vocalists like Loyle Carner and Arlo Parks, Joy Orbison has found plenty of time to collaborate with other likeminded dance producers, especially Overmono, releasing several EPs with the duo. Kindred spirits in their blending of techno, garage and beyond, he feels that they, Blawan, Floating Points and Fold keep him on his A-game.

“That’s our circle, we feed off each other a little bit,” he says. “Blawan sends me something and I think, ‘Fuck me, this is the future’, and I’m always talking to Overmono and I really bounce off it. I think it’s a similar ethos. We’re coming at it from a similar angle, wanting to push something, using these influences we have. Pushing ourselves as well. I really recognise that from the drum & bass days, it keeps it like sonic warfare. It’s just excitement, there’s a hunger to want to do things.”

Beyond his musical circle, Joy Orbison is always looking for innovation and freshness, artists unafraid to do something new. He admires Arca, as “she’s definitely looking forward, at the future, trying to offer something and to push people a bit”. The fabric club night that Joy Orbison runs, Just For You, is dedicated to mixing established names with upcoming artists he sees as pushing the envelope, because “there’s loads of amazing producers that for whatever reason are not viewed in the way that other people are. Just putting people on the same stage sometimes is really fun, and is saying, ‘I think this is as good as this’.”

In 2025, there’s plenty afoot. While he’s cagey about the details, it sounds like there’s another longer form record on the way. “I never want to do the same thing again,” he says. “Now that I’ve got this good feeling around what I do, I feel like, ‘Well, let’s try this, and let’s try that’. Thinking, ‘What can I add to this story?’ and keep people guessing a bit. It takes time, I’m not desperate to put out a record every week. I love keeping that conversation going, but you’ve got to respect people’s engagement, not abuse it. I try to give it time and make sure it’s worth hearing.”

It seems likely there will be more vocal collaborations, but perhaps not in the form his fans expect. He feels like there’s plenty more mileage and ideas in combining his beats with different voices. “In an ideal world, I would love to be able to be a singer,” O’Grady says, “but I love working with people’s vocals. It allows you to write in a way that you get to make the best choices. When you do juxtapose something or put it in a new light, it’s quite a special thing, especially in dance music. That is something I want to really test, and people will see that with the next music I’m doing.”

Having achieved so much already, Joy Orbison is still striving to be the best he can be. Ask him about his ambitions though, and he’s typically modest. “I’m 38 now, and to have even got this far and still be doing it... if I can still talk about this in four or five years, that’s amazing,” he concludes. “I don’t feel like I’ve got to the point where I have to compromise. So that’s an ambition, to be able to keep reaching people that are open to this kind of thing.”