Joe Keery from Stranger Things has released a new single, Changes as a sample for his latest album launching in a few months.
If you haven’t already heard, Joe Keery releases music under the artist name Djo and is releasing more tunes.
Djo’s last album TWENTY TWENTY, had 12 tracks that created an experimental dreamy psychedelic rock atmosphere where he did all the instrumentals and vocals. Making music since his teens, the 30-year-old actor, spent two years with the Chicago psychedelic group, Post Animals, before he became a sensation due to fighting off Demogorgon’s and sporting the 80s look in Stranger Things.
Yesterday, he announced his new LP, DECIDE which will be out September 16th. Keery set up a hotline so fans could dial in (928)-8-DECIDE and get a little taste of an 8-bit snippet of the first single. Slipping into his goofy tone, Keery posted the album announcement on instagram with a clip of him dressed as a seedy salesman. In the clip, a slowed-down informercial is delivered about the hotline and the release of the new track.
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On Wednesday, he released the whole song to introduce his fans to his fourth record, Change. It’s profoundly a funk track, doused in psychedelic synths and modified vocals. You can hear the song orbit through an assortment of influences that Keery has demolished and reassembled. Recreating his own interpretations of hyper pop, psychedelia, new wave and symphonic 70s rock, he creates a euphoric melody through his own technical engagement in producing. Just as Tame Impalas pop-funk bangers achieve, it sounds like Keery’s own mission in the song, is to emulate a 70s-inspired atmosphere that Parliament Funkadelic and T. Rex, accomplished so well.
Keery collaborated with engineer and musician Adam Thein during the pandemic and recorded the tracks at Sound Factory in Los Angeles. We can expect the album to be a depiction of his experience in his late 20s. A press release added that the album “…take these introspections and melt[s] them into a warped reality with each layered synth pulling the listener’s emotional strings.” It’s a sonic reflection as he expresses his navigation through his own growth and relationships in a technology-centred world. The album will accompany these deep and personal concepts with mesmerizing pop hooks that are sprinkled in vibrant melodies and trippy guitar loops. Expressive lyrics will create visual prompts so listeners can be immersed into his experience fully.
Djo has been giving audiences a bit of a treat, by testing out some of the songs on the album at festivals such as Shaky Knees. He’ll be playing at Lollapalooza and See Hear Now as well.
Check out Change now and get ready for the full album to be released in September!
