Image via Josh Renaut
Joy Orbison has always been a bit of a reluctant king when it comes to crafting dance floor bangers.
Heâs originally earned the title with 2009âs âHyph Mngo,â which made him a fixture of UK dance culture overnight, followed by the stuttering two-step of âSicko Cell,â the gurgling, piano-laced drive of âEllipsis,â and, most recently, last yearâs âflight fm,â which I watched erupt an entire room at a Club Rhonda party in Los Angeles at 2 a.m. (One of his contemporaries, James Blake, was behind the decks that night â someone who, Joy tells me, actually recorded a full vocal take for the track at one point).
And yet, Joy O, real name Peter OâGrady, has always sidestepped the narrative of him as some prophet of late-night euphoria. Case in point: As we talk dance music â a genre where drums are historically the focal point â heâs telling me how kicks can actually be, sometimes, kinda annoying.
âYouâre missing so much by just focusing on them,â he says over Zoom, speaking from the downstairs of his family home outside London with a soft, charming demeanor. âWhatâs quite nice with a sample or having a rhythm thatâs not focused on the kickâŠyouâre not getting slapped in the head by it all the time.â
Itâs a sentiment that speaks to his whole production approach: always leaning toward texture, space, and tension â whatâs left out, not just what hits hardest. And itâs part of what made his 2021 full-length debut, Still Slipping Vol. 1, such a departure from expectations. The record wove together voice notes from friends and family with downtempo loops and club-adjacent sketches that never really resolved into bangers but were always interesting. It was intimate and deeply rooted in the rhythms of daily life, not necessarily dance floors.
That same spirit shows up in âbastard,â his recent single with Essex rapper Joe James, a track so skeletal it barely has drums at all. Instead, OâGrady lets Joe drift across a stuttering, atmospheric bed built on a Jai Paul sample: âThere would be a point in my career where I wouldnât have done thatâŠbut to me and to Joe, [creating a track with no drums] was the most exciting thing,â he says. âWhen I made that record, I was like, this is where my head is at. For me, that record is almost a bit like a Griselda record, but from a dance music angle.â
As he begins work on his follow up to Still Slipping, our conversation drifts more toward hip-hop than dance music. Between âbastardâ and a recent Fred again.. edit of âflight fmâ â which layers verses from Lil Yachty, Future, and Playboi Carti over his instrumental â it became clear he wasnât just dabbling in hip-hop; he was trying to engage in it.
In fact, thatâs exactly how I pitched this interview to his publicist: âI want to talk to Joy Orbison about rap music.â
It turns out hip-hop was one of his earliest musical touchpoints. Growing up in and around South London, OâGrady spent his teenage years listening to Tim Westwoodâs Radio 1 Rap Show, tuning in for guest mixes by Philly DJ Cash Money that blended 50 Cent, Dipset, The Neptunes, and other 2000s rap stalwarts. Sometimes heâd catch those broadcasts riding shotgun in the car of his uncle, drum and bass legend Ray Keith, who often had hip-hop on the stereo, he says. Whatâs more, his first forays into DJing came not through club records, but through cheap 12â rap singles from the local Virgin Megastore, which heâd beat juggle at house parties long before he found his footing as a producer.
All of this informs why OâGrady has never quite fit the box of being just a UK bass music producer (though, again, heâs very good at that). Through our conversation, I learn that he always has an ear to the ground â whether itâs the grime of his teenage years, the latest Griselda tape or the goth music of Northampton, his wifeâs hometown and the birthplace of Bauhausâ Peter Murphy, who OâGrady reveals heâs currently working with. Heâs not chasing trends so much as following instincts, constantly searching for sounds that feel new, unfamiliar, or just true to what heâs feeling at the moment. That curiosity, more than any one genre or scene, is what ties his work together. â Reed Jackson