Despite having just one official release and another two tracks online, 2forJoy is already building a reputation as a bewitching artist full of drama and mystique. She is the antithesis of modern pop, harking back to a time when trip-hop and dark brooding sounds emanating from Bristol began to bristle and bubble out into the musical consciousness. Her background is not one that you’d hear trotted out on your TV on a Saturday evening by contestants desperate to change their lives and become everything SyCo want them to be. Louis Walsh would have a stroke if Ruth Ivo ever pitched up on X-Factor.
“It’s basically just me and my own stories”
Not that she would. She was brought up on the likes of Lou Reed, The Police and The Stranglers and has a background in performance art. Not the end-up-with-a-job-on-Eastenders stage school kind of performance art though. Along with her ex-partner, she co-founded the notorious Trash City, a legendary area of Glastonbury famous for bringing a seedier side to the festival that had not been seen before, where art and sculpture met music. It was immensely popular during its short run.
She also worked for long time as a cabaret performer which included a stint singing the Blues on a trapeze in the burlesque clubs of London before an epiphany found its way to her. ”it took me about a year or so to figure out that I was actually quite scared of heights”, she laughs when we meet for a coffee, ”but that I loved singing and that it was the singing part that I really looked forward to”. She had been in a band before but it was never more than for fun, the end of Trash City though provided the opportunity for her to start a process of evaluation that led to the birth, or evolution, of 2forJoy.
”I think I’ve just been exploring different aesthetics and different, not so much personas, but stories through all these different projects. Then funnily enough 2forJoy ended up being almost what was left over after I’d stripped everything back. It’s basically just me and my own stories and the things that I’ve always been interested in”.
The stories aren’t fiction though. It has been well documented that “Michaela”, a haunting and heart-wrenching tale of addiction and loss, is very much a true story from Ruth’s life. Her honesty is disarming, both in the song and in conversation. She wrote “Michaela” as a kind of exorcism for her memories and 2forJoy is, she says, the most honest thing she has done. ”I don’t really write fictional songs”.
Nor is she in a hurry, preferring instead to let things find and take a natural path, which explains why thus far she has only shared a demo (“Choke”), a cover (of Tom Waits’ “Green Grass”) and one single. ”I could see that the project was evolving at its own pace I just didn’t want to rush anything, I just wanted to let it be its own thing because I could feel that it was going in the right direction and wanted to give it space to breathe”.
”He’s like a sonic horse-whisperer”
Part of the process has been to find a kindred spirit in her producer, Paul Ressel who also performs as part of Vuvuvultures. It was the fact that he makes his own instruments that drew Ruth to Paul, but after originally meeting while Trash City was still going; it was Paul who reached out once it had folded. His timing was impeccable and, despite being nervous about sharing her own music in a rough, unfinished form, Ruth sent him a few tracks and he liked what he heard. The pair clicked, sharing as they do very similar references and influences, ”our tastes really dovetail”, and she is a big fan of his intelligent approach to production, ”he’s like a sonic horse-whisperer, he understands how to get the best out of your voice. When we recorded in the studio he always turns the lights down, because he knows that I started singing on stage”.
Production is not the only area where she works with a like-minded soul. The visuals too are immensely important to Ruth and for her videos so far she has collaborated with her friend, videographer and director Annick Wolfers. “I wanted the music and the visuals to be an immersive experience. It just seemed natural to me that if I was going to make this music, I should also create my own videos”. Her relationship with Annick is a symbiotic creative one Ruth says, ”She is one of the first people that I always send new 2forJoy tracks to for feedback”. Ruth confesses to being a perfectionist and always has a clear vision for the videos, but that doesn’t mean she won’t accept good fortune when it comes her way. ”The snow storm (in the video for “Choke”) was an actual complete fluke! We didn’t know that we were going to shoot in a blizzard until we were literally shooting in a blizzard”. Not that she didn’t pay for it. ”I got stage 1 hypothermia. It was pretty intense, I got very ill afterwards. But it was amazing, amazing to shoot in a blizzard”.
The video for “Choke” was always going to be a dream sequence, and that world of imagination and dressing up is one that has been with her since childhood. ”I was always like that as a child. Just in the dressing up box, living out dark twisted tales at the bottom of the garden and writing stories. Yeah I was a bit of a Wednesday Adams”. It’s something she hasn’t entirely lost and there is an almost gothic style apparent amongst the sparse electronics and delicate intensity of her sound.
As with her own writing, and the Blues records she still loves so much, honesty in music and the industry is of paramount importance to Ruth. As 2forJoy gains more attention and plans start to come to fruition, she is already looking ahead with a single and an EP pencilled in for the spring and a tour looking likely in the Summer. Glastonbury is on the cards too which is particularly exciting for her as it will be her first time back since Trash City folded, bringing things almost full circle. ”It’s really nice to be asked back as an artist”, she says.
She is itching to get back on stage and sing though as, with her background in performance and cabaret, it is still her main love. ”We were in the studio for a year and a half, so I was crawling up the walls”, she admits. Just don’t expect to see her on The X-Factor.
Read More: “Face-to-face with the memory” – 2forJoy discusses “Michaela” video / Listen: 2forJoy – “Michaela”
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