Above & Beyond’s Jono Grant and Darren Tate announce new JODA synthwave project

Above & Beyond’s Jono Grant has teamed up with producer Darren Tate to launch a new synthwave project, JODA.

The duo had already worked on a couple of tracks in the past, 2013’s Let The Light Shine In and Nocturnal Creatures, while Tate’s musical background include his collaboration with Judge Jules and Amanda O’Riordan, Angelic, as well as under the Jurgen Vries pseudonym.

In 2019, Tate signed to Above & Beyond’s Anjunabeats label to release under his DT8 Project guise, brining him back into the trio’s radar – getting involved in the recent soundtrack for The Last Glaciers documentary.

This, in turn, led to the creation of JODA, with the duo working in Tate’s studio in suburban north London, and Above & Beyond’s south London HQ.

The debut single from JODA is the retro-sounding We Find Ourselves, which features Grant on vocals.

“Darren had the idea of using the ARP Odyssey for the bass sound,” explains Grant, “and it sounds very retro.

“We were listening to stuff like the Drive soundtrack by Kavinsky. So the tempo of the track actually comes from that style of music. We wouldn’t have ended up at 110 BPM if it wasn’t for listening to that kind of music.”

JODA are planning more releases across the remainder of this year. We Find Ourselves is out now on Anjunabeats.