Single Focus: Joni In The Moon

Joni In The Moon - aka sibling duo Joni and Josh Hogan - launch their new single and video, War And Porn, at Mojo's Bar on Saturday1 August , with help from Mei Saraswati and Flower Drums. Joni brings us up to speed.

What’s new in your world? 

Well, I got a new haircut and a 10 year old! Mostly plugging away trying to get this new album out of me and into the studio. 

War And Porn is a big change in direction for you...

Our last album took a long time to happen because I was having a really difficult time being a single mum to two small children and I’d never recorded properly before, so a lot of the material from it was written six - seven years ago, and it took a while to actually be released. At the moment I’m more interested exploring issues that are more outside of myself, lyrically speaking. I got really tired of writing self-indulgent heartbreak songs when a lot of my thinking was taken up with bigger global concerns and it felt so much more important than feeling sorry for myself.     

There is definitely a more “future” sound happening for both Josh and I in turns of what turns us on sonically - more synthesized sounds and experimenting with structures and beats. I’m experimenting a lot more vocally and am feeling a lot more fearless in messing around with traditional pop song forms, so the sound is heavier themed with more technology and less organic sounds - less forest nymph, more frustrated, soul-vomming woman taking an axe to the engine of a military helicopter. 

Tell us about the video. Who did you work with on that? 

From the outset I knew I wanted something shot simply with some kind of media animation spewing out of my face representing the infiltration and then purging of shitty western news media that the song talks about. I really wanted to work with my good friend Steven Aaron Hughes on the animation and when I got together with director Poppy Van Oorde-Grainger, we consolidated the concept and she organized it into a really clear vision. We were time and budget limited, though we had help from some amazing creatives - Dave Le May shot it for us and brought along all his robot camera toys so it ended up being a really surreal experience and we got a stupidly high production value out of the shoot given the budget.

In a crowded marketplace, how important is a video presence in terms of developing an audience and making your voice heard?

For me, an interesting aesthetic has always been a really important aspect of all the music and artists I’m completely fanatical about - Kate Bush, Bjork, Radiohead, to name a few. A great music video can take music into another dimension, and in an increasingly online click-bait market, it’s trickier to hold the attention of your audience if you can’t give them something cool to look at. 

As wanky as it may sound, having a clear brand is really important, though it’s the part I find fun too because I have an art background, the look of things is something I tend to care about. The trick is trying to bring music and aesthetic together in a way that communicates the music on another level and is also authentic to the artist and their intentions.

Any major plans for the rest of the year?

We’re recording an album which we hope to release early next year and we’ll be kicking off a crowd fund really soon to help us make it happen - in the meantime we’ll be playing shows and nutting out a lot of new material live which is always scary and exciting.