Nite Vibes is the new album release from Joey Joesph, the alliterative name behind the release that will get your Friday or Saturday night off to a cracking start. This was originally just “disco-inspired vignettes conceived in down time during serving shifts in back rooms of restaurants” and then ‘Believe in the Moonlight’ was written and suddenly the album had direction at the hands of Joesph’s “extra-dimensional, pop star alter-ego”. Joyzine have the honour of bringing you the fever before Saturday night with a full album stream below.
Opening track ‘Are You Dreaming?’ is a short overture to whet the appetite (with Plant J’s national anthem the track ‘Unspeakable Evil’) and it could have opened Blade Runner but just as you feel calmed by this the title track sashays in full of frosty guitar chops and disco promise, plus a flash of gold and silver sequins. No time to rest as everything is dialled up another notch by the propulsion of stand-out track ‘Believe in the Moonlight’ with its syncopation and rumble-tumble of drums. ‘Star’ sounds like Prince filtered through Billy Joel and ‘Killer on the Road’ is Prince at his most coquettish. ‘All My Love’ and ‘My Magic Crystal’ are huge-shouldered rock opera pomp and the closing track ‘Dreams of Mother Moon’ sees Joesph leaving Earth’s atmosphere, no doubt on his way to get another planet’s population up and grooving to Nite Vibes.
It’s a shame that Disco became a dirty word towards the end of the 1970s (when everything from rock acts to the phone directory were given a 4-on-the-floor backbeat and excessive strings) because it undermined some of the amazing tracks and innovations that it created; and that fun but edgy disco is what we have here. Joesph opens up a world full of illuminated dancefloors, possibly as an occupant of the same interplanetary craft the Carpenters introduced us to. He has tapped into big-synths and epic, galaxy-sized anthems, and his Milky-Way thin voice is laser-clear and easily cuts through kaleidoscopic arpeggios and acres of synthesisers that measure 11 out of 10 on the Moroder-scale.
Joey Joesph socials: Instagram | Bandcamp | YouTube
Review by Paul F Cook
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