This week Candy chats with producer, artist, multi-instrumentalist and sometimes rapper Joelistics (aka Joel Ma). Growing up in Australia with Chinese, Malaysian and Scottish roots Joel is known for his experimental and eclectic artistic style expressed through his music, writing and theatre. Joel makes art not for the Australian mainstream but for the underground, the resistance.
His most recent album titled Joelistics Presents Film School is a nod to his heritage. It is a collaborative album that samples ancestral sounds of his past including some Canto-pop records found during his most recent trip to Malaysia. When he’s not experimenting with his synthesizers, Joel can be found loving up his lockdown born baby daughter Lua.
In the past, Joel has collaborated with noted artists such as Tim Rogers, Emma Donovan, Ecca Vandal, Hermitude, Wil Wagner, Parvyn Singh and Madonna. On his most recent album, some collaborators include Francesca Mountford, Mindy Meng wang, Elle Shimada, Hayley Cramer, Thomas Mitchell and Emily Chen.
Discussion Points
Defining masculinity for oneself as an Asian man
The need for Asian representation in Australia
Imagining a future as people of Diasporas
‘Classic Australian racism’ in the music industry
Biography
Producer, artist, multi-instrumentalist and sometimes rapper, Joelistics (JoelMa) is recognised as a unique voice in the Australian music scene. In 2002 he founded seminal alt-rap group TZU, who built a solid reputation around their electric live performances and inventiveness in the studio across four albums, Position Correction (2004), Smiling At Strangers (2005) Computer Love ( 2008 ) and Millions of Moments (2012). Along the way, they picked up nominations for the Australian Music Prize, a J Award and an APRA Award.
Under the moniker Joelistics’ his anticipated debut album Voyager arrived in 2011 and was nominated for an Age Music award. Written whilst travelling with a laptop between China, Mongolia and Europe, it opened up a new lane in Australian hip-hop. The Age wrote,“Joelistics’ love of beat poetry takes his narratives and vistas to a level as vivid as any great Australian poet.” His second album Blue Volume was one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Top 20 albums of 2014. Rolling Stone described it as “a celebration and mourning of the current state of the world, voiced by a smart, incisive writer.”
In 2014, he co-wrote a piece of musical theatre In Between Two with James Mangohig exploring his mixed-race identity and family narrative interlaced with searing hip-hop premiering at Darwin Festival (2014) and enjoying seasons at Carriage Works for Sydney Festival (2015), Adelaide’s entertainment centre for OzAsia Festival (2017) and Arts Centre Melbourne for Melbourne Festival (2017).
In 2015, Joel focused on producing and co-writing for other artists notably with internationally acclaimed group Haiku Hands co-writing and providing production for their debut album and at the same time worked closely with Mo’ju including providing production for the celebrated track Native Tongue which was nominated for an Aria award, an Age award and won the Triple J best film clip award (2018). In 2019 Joelistics collaborated with Mo’Ju again on the joint album Ghost Town under the name Mojo Juju x Joelistics, earning him the inaugural Music Victoria award for best producer.
He has written for and collaborated with noted artists such as Tim Rogers, Emma Donovan, Ecca Vandal, Hermitude, Wil Wagner, Parvyn Singh and even Madonna amongst others.
In 2021, Joelistics is set to release an album of production based work and collaborative tracks under the name Joelistics Presents Film School. The album is a departure for Joelistics as a vocalist and instead concentrates on his production of beats and synths, 70’s Asian pop samples, psych-rock journey music and studio improvisations also ambitiously exploring experimental compositions for strings, guzheng (Chinese harp) synthesizers, samplers and drum machines.
In 2018, Joelistics starred in the ABC young adult science fiction show Nowhere Boys playing the main villain Zeb in Season 4.
Currently, Joel operates a music studio in Brunswick, Victoria called Oven’s Door studios.
Links
Website - joelma.com.au
Instagram - @joelistics
Facebook - facebook.com/joelistics
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