Pop: One and one is one: Joi simplify the maths

They blend hip hop beats with Asian rhythms and have deigned to make a fourth album. Kula Shaker beware. By Jane Cornwell

EVEN JOI admit that four albums in 10 years isn't exactly prolific. But the Bengali duo have always been fussy: developing a new musical style takes time. Their ongoing search lends an Eastern feel to breakbeat workouts, experimental techno numbers and mystical instrumentals, which Joi perform as either a live band, complete with vocalists and dancers, or as a sound system. Their sound-system sets are one-offs: DATs are mixed with vinyl and online samples; tablas, flutes, bongos and sitar drones are played in live.

Where this freewheeling East/West aesthetic ends up is anyone's guess; clubbers have been mesmerised for up to seven hours at a stretch. Tapes are not for sale. You want to hear Joi, you go to the gig. Except, that is, when they deem otherwise.

"We choose when we release our music," insist Joi's Farook and Haroon Shamsher, "like we choose to mould a record which represents us." So, after three low-key releases, constant club residencies (in hipper-than- thou venues such as Brixton's Dog Star) and much biding of time, the duo chose to sign with Peter Gabriel's hands-off Real World label last year.

Taking its title from a metaphysical Bengali poem, their forthcoming opus, One And One Is One, fuses breakbeats and hip hop with traditional Asian forms. As with their live work, the album has been crafted to take the listener on a journey. It is, they say, a "complete Joi experience".

Well, that's what 30-year-old Farook says. His brother, Haroon, the elder by three years, hasn't turned up for the interview in a coffee shop off Brick Lane. The staff have put on Joi's new CD as compensation. The Shamshers are familiar faces here, continuing to derive inspiration from the East-End Bengali community.

For them, the recent influx of creatives to the nearby Truman Brewery offices - where fellow-Asian muso Talvin Singh is based - is but a bonus. Joi have been mixing Eastern and Western cultures for as long as they can remember.

"Our dad ran a traditional music shop just around the corner from here," says Farook. "Twenty years ago he'd have jamming sessions and record in a back room with Baul artists and different people. Then he'd sell the tapes directly on to the street." The young brothers manipulated sequencers and echo chambers for their father in between playing tablas and flutes. "We still have the same crossover vibe. It's a natural fusion of growing up listening to people such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and being influenced by reggae, hip hop and soul."

In 1983, they mixed these elements together and began Djing at clubs as the Joi Bangla Sound System, before becoming the more dance-oriented Joi six years later. Bolstered by Arts Council funding and aiming to promote Bengali youth culture, Joi Bangla events were open to young and old alike. "We used to scratch and rap and mess about," remembers Farook. "We'd mix traditional music with James Brown riffs and get these funky soul breakbeats. Asian parents couldn't quite come to grips with it, but that's changing. Second-generation kids will be different."

Much respect is due to pioneers such as Talvin Singh, Cornershop and Asian Dub Foundation. "They've given Asian youth an identity and culture within their own culture, which is why Joi Bangla was set up." Joi, however, have eschewed any bandwagon jumping, choosing to wait until now to release their album. "This sudden interest in Asian music is an honourable thing, but being part of a trend means you can get lost. Ultimately, Haroon and I are artists. We express ourselves in our own way."

Farook's magnanimity extends, albeit temporarily, to those arch-appropriators of Eastern mysticism, Kula Shaker. "As long as they don't do anything blasphemous. If they start thinking that sound is theirs, then it's not right."

Similarly, Madonna's musical forays into the East are all well and good, but the time has come for a bona fide equivalent. "Why can't we have a beautiful Asian woman as a megastar? Her voice and spirituality could be 10 times more powerful than anything Madonna and the rest can do." Joi's spirituality is born, not made. "Sufi music and sitar ragas are pure psychedelia," says Farook.

Joi are intent on preserving tradition by transforming it. "We're about politics, race, religion, and music all-in-one," he says. "It's taken us a long time to form this music. We've been choosy. We hope people will choose to listen to us."

`One And One Is One' is out on Real World, Mon