Joe Armon-Jones & Maxwell Owin – Archetype 2LP Aquarii

Archetype is an exorcism of South London’s underground spirit. It’s a sound-world which draws on its ancestral echoes as equally as it captures the pulse of a city on the edge of evolution. The twelve-track collaborative record is the product of two magnetised forces who should almost repel: producer, composer and keyboard player Joe Armon-Jones, and producer/DJ Maxwell Owin. At the fore of the scene south of the river, they draw on different instincts, different disciplines, different strengths – and converge them to make something which is both challenging and startlingly fresh. Guest features on the record include Lex Amor, Shabaka Hutchings, Fatima, Rocks FOE, O the Ghost, Mala, Maysia Osu & YUIS.

Archetype is caught somewhere between the club and the bedroom, both communal and intimate – something common to Joe’s world of jazz, soul and improvisation and Maxwell’s, of the sprawling sounds of hardcore continuum, from jungle to dubstep and drill. The duo were entranced by the philosophies that bind these subcultural worlds together. Following their 2017 debut project Idiom, the duo has gone from strength to strength having produced, written and collaborated with the likes of Ezra Collective, Greentea Peng, Nubya Garcia, Oscar Jerome and Moses Boyd. The Archetype soundscape spans almost six years, its beginning indistinct from Idiom’s end, but it required a suspension of reality that only lockdown could bring for the project to take on a shape of its own.