Concert
JOY ANONYMOUS - PIFFY
- Rotonde
Extra information
19:30 doors open (Rotonde)20:00 PIFFY
21:00 Joy Anonymous
We are happy to announce that customers can once again enjoy a meal before going to the concert. Our restaurant will be open exclusively on concert days and will be serving a diverse selection of food between 6:30 PM and 9 PM.
When
Sun. 7 Apr, 2024Where
- Rotonde
Doors
19:30Organiser
Botanique“pure musical serotonin”
The last twelve months have been a whirlwind for Henry Counsell and Louis Curran, the men who make up Joy (Anonymous). Having established themselves during the Covid-19 era by playing impromptu meet-ups on London’s South Bank, they have graduated to bigger venues, travelled to far-flung locales and recorded their second album, Cult Classics, while maintaining the spontaneous energy and irrepressible joy that made their name. Their music revels in the euphoria of being alive and all the feelings, good or bad, that come with it. It invites us into a community, draws us close and promises the night of our lives.
Recorded over the course of a year, the blueprint for Cult Classics was laid down over a two-week span at Imogen Heap’s Round House in east London. Joy (Anonymous) invited friends old and new to visit - they’d record live instruments in jam sessions upstairs and then retreat to a second room to flip and loop and generally mess with the sounds, moulding them into sizzling dance tracks. “Loads of people were coming up to me like ‘I thought this was going to be a dance record?’” Louis says, remembering the quietly beautiful music they’d be recording. “I’d be like, don’t worry about that, just keep playing.” He’d send it back to people later and they’d be floored - “That was my bit and you’ve made it... jungle!”
It was an organic and creatively fulfilling approach, one that didn’t allow any of the music to get stale or stagnate. As they built the tracks from the sounds they’d collected, Joy (Anonymous) would weave the new songs into their famously improvised live sets, testing them, refining them, taking note of the audiences’ reactions. In a year punctuated by a lot of travel, they’d also incorporate the voices of people they met along the way - “Beazley’s Poem”, which opens the record, features the words of a man who was working security at a Fred Again show at New York’s Terminal Five. “He was basically doing the opposite of his job and being a hype man, climbing on the fence and ramping up the crowd - we ended up hanging out with him - like, who’s this legend?” Louis explains. “He just speaks really amazingly about his life, all these amazing thoughts and opinions - he started jumping on the mic when we were playing, preaching these amazing messages to the crowd, like that we all need to be nicer to each other. The first time we played the record in its entirety, he introduced us and that’s the recording we’ve used.”
Joy (Anonymous) remain dedicated to the spirit of spontaneity. They shut a street down with a surprise waterside party in New York. On a trip to Copenhagen they played an impromptu set in a cafe, which turned into a house party and a night-long good time. In Lithuania, they ended up playing in a decommissioned prison. It’s harder, perhaps, to keep that spirit alive now that they are operating more within the confines of the music industry but they will keep lugging their kit to wherever the party calls for as long as they can. “I think if we lose that, we’ve kind of lost what makes us us,” Henry says.
Piffy
Piffy is not a popstar. she’s the mother of bats and the daughter of beats, writes smooth melodies and bangs big kicks. the perfect music to dance and cry to at the same time.
there is no one like anyone. though she believes a piffer is someone that feels as hard and cares as much as she does. a piffer has the mind of a nerd and the eyes of a child, the ability to be an expressive introvert or an awkward entertainer with clumsy limbs that go places.
piffy is artist in residence at Trix (Antwerp) where she played the aftershow for Caroline Polachek in february ‘23. this was followed by a show in Het Bos (Antwerp) at an event of radio station We Are Various. After a break of a few months she is now writing with various artists and is planning a first release soon.
In 2022 she played at Sardien, Overlast Antwerp and Het Clubhuis (NL), a creative space that is part of Welcome to the Village festival in Leeuwarden.
Similar events
Extra information
19:30 doors open (Rotonde)20:00 PIFFY
21:00 Joy Anonymous
We are happy to announce that customers can once again enjoy a meal before going to the concert. Our restaurant will be open exclusively on concert days and will be serving a diverse selection of food between 6:30 PM and 9 PM.