10 September 2025
Newsdesk
Joy Orbison continues his journey into the boldest areas of electronic music with his latest single “play it again”. Released today via XL Recordings, “play it again” sees the London-based innovator taking inspiration from his love of 80s New Wave and 90s electronica, rebooting them for 2025, and landing in a liminal musical space between headphone introspection and dancefloor abandon.
Featuring a manipulated, mantra-like vocal, the single sees Joy Orbison (aka Peter O’Grady) pushing further into the personal, human dimension of his sound, one he first fully realised on 2021’s acclaimed debut longform record still slipping vol. 1 and more recently explored with “Bastard”, his 2025 collaboration with underground rap icon Joe James.
Speaking about “play it again” via Instagram, Joy Orbison says:
“‘play it again’ started in London, but it really began to take shape while I was out in San Francisco. That trip ended up being quite a memorable one. I got pulled in to Portola to fill in for another artist and I ended up playing to a lot more people than I expected. My music’s far from Stockhausen but it still surprises me when I get to play to so many people in big spaces like that. I spent the rest of the trip chipping away on ‘play it again’, I recorded some synths at Empire Studios in San Fran, and I think the drums came together on the flight home, elbow deep in those mini bottles of wine and newly procured sleeping aids.
This track is going to be part of something bigger but I got impatient waiting for that to come together (my fault). I just really wanted to have this one out there. This is where my heads at right now and there’s a lot more to come”
Debuted over the summer to some of Europe’s more adventurous dancefloors, “play it again” is the latest in a run of Joy Orbison releases that continue to sidestep expectations, as he continues to work on the hotly anticipated follow-up to still slipping vol.1.
