Articles · Photos · Promotional · Reviews · Tour · Miscellaneous

1997 October: Greenwich Village Halloween Parade Web Site Article

Freeworld Recordings presents Joi AMOEBA CLEANSING SYNDROME

In the short history of alternative Soul, no one release has been as highly anticipated, by both the artist and the public, than Joi's brilliant Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome. First recorded two years ago for now defunct EMI Records, the project was put on indefinite hold while Joi was expecting her first child. Later, EMI would ask Joi and producer Dallas Austin to create a few songs that had a more straight-up commercial appeal. "At first I was slightly displeased, but once I started writing again, it was smooth." Besides all of the mad record company drama that Joi experienced while awaiting the release of Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, her personal life went through its own change. "I did something I had never expected," teases Joi. "I fell in love." After hooking up with Gipp, a talented emcee from the Goodie MOB, the two moved in together in 1995. Yet, after Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome was once again rescheduled for an Autumn, '97 release, EMI closed it's doors. Well, for all the fans who have seen this beautiful soul siren on tour with The Goodie MOB, Fishbone, and De La Soul, and for all the music junkies who were lifted higher from the aural ecstasy of her debut disc The Pendulum Vibe and for the cultural critics who have silently prayed for a change to come -- the wait is over, Joi's Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome has finally arrived on Freeworld Recordings.

"On the new album I decided to just take the lid oft," laughs Joi when describing Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome. Sailing on an orchestral ocean of grooves created by producer and Freeworld co-president Dallas Austin, Joi still has the wild-child sass that made her voice an alluring instrument, yet the sister has added a touch more raunch to her repertoire of soul. Now a parent, Joi recently told writer Carol Cooper, "I used to treat my music as if it were my only child. Now I sort of treat it as an older child, one that can take care of itself while I care for my daughter, Keypsiia." Reminiscent of those funky hoo-doo queens Tina Turner and Betty Davis grinding in the '70's, Joi's voice is now piercing -- where there were once whispers there is now a gutbucket screech going across the sky.

With a video directed by Billy Woodruff, "Ghetto Superstar", is the stunning first single from Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome. Joi has created the perfect urban anthem to describe the B-boys chilling on the boulevard. Using a bouncy beat that burns like rubber on the ghetto streets. "That song perfectly describes both Gipp and my father," says Joi. "My father played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the '70's and I always remember people in our neighborhood bugging when he was around. The same is true about Gipp. That's how I describe a "Ghetto Superstar."

With Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, Joi walks that electric high-wire dividing the avant- garde of alternative, the gospel roots of soul, the freaky power of funk and the blaring guitars of rock. Collaborating with a crew of musical architects that includes Dallas Austin, Organized Noize and the illmatic Black Rockers Fishbone, Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome begins with the roaring track "Move On." Sounding like a lost Garage dance track from the crates of Larry Levan, "Move On" is a strobe light disco ball soundtrack that samples Anita Ward's disco classic "Ring My Bell." Remembering her childhood in her hometown of Nashville, Joi says "I loved that song when I was a little girl. When it comes on at parties now, I still lose my mind."

Having met at a poetry reading in Atlanta, Joi and Fishbone's front man, Angelo Moore, spent the evening talking and listening to each other's music. After introducing the group to Dallas Austin, Joi coyly asked if they would play on her next record. "They were fans of The Pendulum Vibe. So they said 'yeah," she smiles.

Joi recalls hearing funk guru George Clinton speak about singer Beffy Davis, but it was Fishbone member JB who first played her a few songs. In her remake of Davis' "If I'm Lucky (I Might Just Get Picked Up)," Joi's screams of desire manage to capture "whatever mood I'm in, be it frustrated or feeling good." "I think the older I get the more difficult it becomes to find the right words," she says. "Yet because I'm becoming less wordy I'm becoming more emotional."

Having grown up listening to her mother's favorite soul artists, Joi pays homage to the Black, bizarro rocker trio who called themselves LaBelle, with her faithful remake of the group's lustful "You Turn Me On," Yet, unlike other radio divas who try to be smooth as steel, Miss Joi is not afraid to get gutbucket with her vocals, while the funky band sounds like the aural equivalent of black velvet posters and weed pipes. "I feel I owe it to the artists like LaBelle to carry on their tradition in the way it deserves to be lauded."

"My Brother's Letter" is fashioned out of Joi's remembrance of Claude Austin, Dallas' older brother. "This song really set the tone for the album," she recalls. Lyrics like "out of her mind, out of her self-esteem, out of her misery", sit atop the throbbing bass line like a dull ache that still lingers inside Joi's memory after Claude's untimely death in 1995.

Experimenting with artful compositions and Beatlesque harmonies, the production team Organized Noize takes the conception of Black Music one step beyond. "The thing about Organized," says Joi "is they're growing as artists. They're not trying to sound like anyone else." On the beautiful "Dandelion Dust," the listener is taken into a multi-layered fun-house of trick mirrors and soothing voices.

Joi's divadom has grown to include more than music. After capturing the eye of photographer Steven Meisiel, she appeared in print advertisements for Calvin Klein's CK One fragrance. Her ever-changing styles bear a fast-moving contrast to the hole-plugged fashion statements of contemporary R&B singers and establish Joi not only as the look and sound for today, but for tomorrow as well. As her newly awakened spirit asks in "Move On," "Ain't you comin?/Wish that you were here/Here with us/In the stratosphere." With The Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, Joi and company have taken from roots of Black music, mining imagination and experience, to create a soundtrack for the future.