Primary 1’s number up, no one can hold him down
Words Seb Burford
London’s Joe Flory, aka 21-year-old Primary 1, is an enigma. Take his debut single, ‘Hold Me Down’. It’s insanely catchy, but insanely hard to fix in a scene or other movement happening out there. It sounds like it’s been beamed in from a pop Never Neverland.
“I was born in Ipswich, my mum is from Norway but, from the age of seven till 17, I lived in Singapore because my dad was a teacher there,” explains Joe. “The music scene was non-existent - I didn’t go to clubs until I was 19. The radio was super-pop and, although I was really close to Malaysia and Thailand - you could take a bus there - I always wanted to come back here.”
Back in the UK studying film, Joe’s productions began taking shape in the form of dozens of homemade squelchy, Princely, and funky-like-a-Bad-Boy record-with-Ma$e-on-it demos. ‘Hold Me Down’ was enough for Atlantic to snap him up for an album, and pair him with super-producer Paul Epworth.
“We work on the stems I recorded at home and re-do the vocals,” Joe says. “I want the album to have a polished sound. The music I made at home is really dense with samples, so we’re going to streamline it a bit. I like the sound of samples - they sound like they have a history - but on the demos I also play guitar, piano, trumpet… It’s about the sounds they make, not the musicianship. I play them like I play the sampler. Same with the vocals. The first rule is that everything sounds good.”
Joe cites Norwegian graphic designer and electronic soundscape maestro Kim Hiorthøy as a hero and is soon heading out on tour with Metronomy. Meanwhile, he’s making his mark with, firstly, an Operator Please remix and, secondly, a Yuksek edit of ‘Hold Me Down’ that’s being hammered on the blogs and dancefloors, not least by Erol Alkan.
“It’s really strange,” says Joe. “Yuksek used to be a massive trance DJ, but he’s proved himself to be producer who can do any style he chooses. I like versions of dance music - like records by The Streets or Radiohead - where they’ll take lots of different influences and make them their own.”
