Over the last few years, Joy Warmann has taken the time to embed herself in the UK music industry. Currently, if she’s not at a gig or festival, she’s working as a European Project Manager at Secretly Group or building a community and monthly jam night with Imaginary Millions.

At Secretly Group, she oversees artists such as Jamila Woods, Faye Webster, Japanese Breakfast, serpentwithfeet and more. Within the community, at Imaginary Millions, she’s able to dig deeper into the grassroots of performers’ careers and ultimately tries to shine a spotlight on everyone’s creativity.

Beyond work, Joy’s spent time presenting radio shows, trying to master the drums, editing her own music blog, curating music events, writing analytically about the industry, and just generally being a music nerd.

Our recent chat with Joy discusses her favourite campaigns and talks about the overlaps between visual creativity and music.

I work with a creative community called Imaginary Millions, and we’ve just launched the Imaginary Millions Community Fund. The purpose of the fund is firstly, to invest in creativity but just as importantly, to expand the community network of the creatives who apply. Applications are now open until March 28th and we are currently accepting donations.

I'M LOVING

Creatively at the moment, I’m loving The London Jazz scene.

What a time to be in it! Amazing jam nights and communities springing up across the city (s/o Orii Jam, Patterns, Nouteka, Fireball) and some of the most amazing musicians and collectives I’ve seen/heard in a minute. It’s an honour to be experiencing it as it’s happening.

FAVOURITE VIDEO

My all-time favourite music video is System of a Down Chop Suey.

There are so many videos I wanted to choose for this but I remember so clearly watching this video on tv for the first time, I’d heard of System beforehand but never seen them. This video clicked it all into place for me – super freaky but just so so good.

BEST ARTWORK

I’ve always loved the album art for A Tribe Called Quest Midnight Marauders.

One of my favourite hip hop albums of all time.

RECENT CAMPAIGN

The most recent campaign I’ve enjoyed working on has been the upcoming Toro y Moi album MAHAL.

I’ve been a fan of Toro’s for years and years so to now be working on his campaign, on an album loaded with hits and one that’ll be deeply embedded in his story – it’s a proud moment. Lots of exciting and different elements in this campaign too so as well as being something new, it’s a reference point I’m sure I’ll call back to many times in the future.

COLLAB

I’ve always been excited about fashion/streetwear/sneaker brands collaborating with artists and the music world but the most recent collab that made me check my bank account was seeing Thundercat model the lookbook for Hypland’s Inuyasha collab. Big fan of Thundercat, anime and Hypland in general so this was nice to see. Waiting for Hypland to do a Yasuke collab with Thundercat and Flying Lotus *fingers crossed*

CREATIVE VIDEO

The new video from our latest signing Wesley Joseph for his track Cold Summer is mega.

Very very excited to have him on the roster and this video makes a big statement for what’s to come. Exciting scenes… 

GO FOLLOW

The one artist you should follow on Instagram is azadi.mp3 – giving you quality self-produced and original music (in a world where it’s so rare and hard to achieve right now).

azadi.mp3 is someone you’re going to want to keep your eyes on from right now. New music on the horizon, second season of We Are Lady Parts confirmed, and a wealth of other creative moments on the way.

ICONIC

The most iconic music photograph is any picture of Fela being joyful and expressing himself (of which there are many), but I remember seeing this photo somewhere and immediately thinking “man, I wish I could hear what this sounded like”.

Any photo that makes you want to be in the room when it happened – iconic.