Live Review: Joni In The Moon

Saturday saw the live performance of Joni and Josh Hogan, the sibling duo that make up Joni In The Moon. The duo are becoming regulars on the Perth festival touring circuit bandwagon, performing recently at the Beaufort Street Festival, State Of The Art, the WAM Festival, Hidden Treasures and offBEAT, and on Saturday we saw why. Josh’s flawless and technical live programming paired with Joni’s beautiful voice and performance presence has created a sound that is lost in space, some kind of musical virtuality, fantastic enough to bring in enough of a crowd to be shoved and crammed shoulder to shoulder inside the Mojos venue.

Elements of Josh’s previous experience as a computer game soundtrack composer leak into the melodiousness and serenity of Joni’s vocal sound. It’s a calming experience at the same time as being totally exciting and stimulating. The cinematic aspect of the sound of Joni In The Moon made the whole live experience cinematic in itself – their music sounded like stories, stories somewhere along the lines of Mission Impossible, a much less corny version of a Nicholas Sparks movie and Ron Fricke’s Baraka. The pair opened their live gig with a preview of their video for latest single, War And Porn, that saw, for the entire four minute duration, Joni’s face become laced by a trail of string seemingly made up of newspaper articles.

Musically, the piece is every good component of their past releases rolled into one; it’s a new sound lost and found somewhere between Bjork, Flying Lotus and Tuung, with all the right elements of musical substance, rhythm, passion, quietness and loudness. The Moon implement vocal layering and synth with a myriad of other sounds to create something otherworldly – something almost unheard and almost totally original, and much more powerful than any of their previous releases. It also proves so much more powerful in its lyrical direction; the pair seem stronger, performing a socially and politically-oriented song that deals with the guilt of living in the first world and knowing about the brutal incidents outside that first world as a result of the saturation of violence and sex in the media. Its just another way we can see Joni In The Moon evolving their maturity as musicians, artists and as human beings.

Our favourite thing about Joni In The Moon is their lack of attention paid to anything in particular, no instrument (including voice) is favoured, and everything melds together to create one singular, fantastic sound. Live, Joni’s presence does take over the stage, however it’s hard to avoid giving your undying attention to the seduction that is her voice and the mirth that is her interaction with the crowd. While Joni In The Moon may be globally unheard and are currently enduring the struggle of trying to get their work ‘out there,’ they’ve certainly been heard by Perth, and we can only hope that the rest of the world will too. 

Originally published in X-Press Magazine