Mainframe

Joker's The Mainframe is a conceptual piece produced as a cohesive body of work rather than a collection of standalone DJ weapons. The sophomore LP from the man who spawned the electronic music sub-genre purple, which has since been galvanized internationally by artists such as Flume, Ganz, and Djemba Djemba, all of whom draw inspiration from the 26-year-old Liam McLean. The Mainframe is a listening album as much as a dancefloor album and it hints at what a Joker-produced mainstream artist album would sound like, with moments like "Wise Enough (feat. Zak Abel)," "Lucy (feat. Sam Frank)," and "Love (feat. Rochelle [winner of X Factor]) (available on the CD edition with instrumental versions; double LP includes only instrumental versions). Since his 2011 full-length debut, The Vision, Joker has released a slew of productions to set the scene for this release, including the Masato Nakamura-inspired digital collection Joker Drive, Let It Be Known/Minors with Swindle as 040, and, perhaps the biggest insight into The Mainframe, the track "Digital Mainframe," all in 2014. The Mainframe is designed to play like a digital dream, with each track bleeding into the next and pulling the listener deeper into the imagination of the Bristolian futurist - reminiscent of the way that Robin Wright is pulled into an acid trip world in the Ari Folman flick, The Congress (2013). Joker describes this intention: "I want everybody to listen to it once from start to finish, in their whip, in their yard, in their studio, going for a run, whatever... that's how I intended to bring people into my world. After that, pull it apart however you want, put specific tracks in your playlist that suit your mood, your lifestyle, cool, but... take it in as a whole and you'll be able to get more from the individual pieces."