Joe Morris is one of dance music’s good guys. The kind of person we all have to rely to keep things alive and kicking. One-third of Leeds-based Clandestino who are part-radio hosts, part-promoters, part-label bosses and producers, Joe has been a supporter of all kinds of mind-bending, life-changing club music for years. We’d known about their influential monthly radio show and mix series for a little while, but it was back in 2016 after the release of our second release on International Feel called Paralysed that we were really drawn into the same orbit. Appealing to our collective melodic, yet hardened dance music sensibilities, that release inspired us to collaborate on a track together called Wonder which was the lead track on Clandestino’s first label sampler. All the while, Joe and his wife Caroline were dancing away to Balearic Gabba Soundsystem on a visit to Berlin about the same time where we first met in person, taking in the sights of the clubnight we used to run at a small club called Farbfernseher (RIP).
As well as his long-standing collaboration with Clandestino, Joe had been plotting his first full length solo record for a long while and it was a real honour to be asked to work together again on a track for it. Exotic Language is the sum of his eclectic, kaleidoscopic musical palette. A record which moves from detailed downtempo to dreamy house music. On Perfume, we wanted to capture the feeling of the otherworldly, melancholy instrumental and set it to something achingly romantic. The vocals were part-Sade, part Cocteau Twins in inspiration, lyrically, pretty abstract and almost surreal but with lots of stimulating visual imagery to get lost in….“there’s a rosebed in your garden, breathe it in, fill your mind”