Jo Johnson

Jo Johnson creates meditative electronic and electro-acoustic music with intense emotion. Her releases include Weaving (Further Records), The Wave Ahead (Mysteries of the Deep) and The Serpentine Path (Going In).

In the 90s, Jo Johnson spent three intense years as guitarist with Huggy Bear – the band were inspired by and aligned with the riot grrrl and queercore punk movements and toured the UK with Bikini Kill. In the early 2000s she organised underground techno parties with Bleep43 and later founded the crew’s record label, releasing music by Detroit’s DJ Stingray and ERP (Gerard Hanson). In the 2010s she began exploring meditative, minimalist music influenced in large part by the work of women artists – Alice Coltrane, Midori Takada, Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveros and Bjork – as well Don Cherry, Drexciya, Autechre and Robert Hood. Bleep43 has also evolved – their immersive “horizontal” London events create a space for deep(er) listening and space travel, with artists like Sarah Davachi, Rrose, Bana Haffar, Polypores, Jonathan Fitoussi, the Transcendence Orchestra and Hoch Ma Toch.

Jo’s debut album, Weaving, was released on Further Records in 2014 and has been called a modern classic. Since then she has released a solo live album, The Serpentine Path, on Going In, an EP, The Wave Ahead, on Mysteries of the Deep and has self-released two EPs on Bandcamp. She has tracks on compilations including Partials II and III on Frequency Domain, Less Popular than Cats on Verdant and Tenements on Apartment.

Jo regularly plays live in the Freerotation festival yurt and has played at Cafe Oto with The Transcendence Orchestra, Parallel festival (Barcelona) alongside Rrose and Donato Dozzy, the Pickle Factory with Jane Fitz and The Purcell Room with Anthony Child (Surgeon).

She began collaborating remotely with pianist and composer Hilary Robinson during the pandemic and together they released Session One, a live album of manipulated piano and synthesis, on 9128.live (a sub-label of A Strangely Isolated Place) and performed at Daylight Music with Xenia Pestova Bennett and Karlheinz Essl, and Sarah Angliss.

Bleep43 / Resident Advisor