Off the back of new EP Streets Don’t Walk They Talk, Joel Jackson reveals to Joe Bill his beginnings, his skills and why The Slopes is the perfect fall guy

You may know The Slopes (@theslopes_) as that guy who gets spotted around Thanet releasing social-media videos looking very pleased with himself. Well, we met his alter ego, Joel Jackson, who has totally wowed us with his music across the past three years.

Part of the quartet of the Jackson siblings – who have their fingerprints on ventures like sci-fi music events group Sector 9 (Ollie) – as well as one half of electronic music purveyors My Nu Leng (Tommy), Joel has carved out his own niche with a sound like no one else’s and a character that we fell in love with. It is important to stress this… The Slopes is a character!

“The guy I make it all with, George Hemming, we just started filming things that I thought were funny,” says Joel. “I’m not a very cocky person because I don’t like having all eyes on me and I don’t like being on camera very much. But I thought if I just lean into it completely the other way and sort of over-embellish all that, maybe I’ll be able to tolerate it... because then I’ll be able to say ‘Don’t worry, it’s all a joke’.”

So The Slopes character is a bit of a defence mechanism?

“I sort of thought I’d act like it, and then sort of get away with it. The image just came from that, maybe almost like an insecurity. I was like ‘Well, I’d rather go that way than be exactly who I am and maybe not get the response I like.”

The creation of The Slopes character doesn’t always work in Joel’s favour – but it certainly grabs people’s attention.

“Yeah, some people think it’s real. And say it to my face,” he explains. “My girlfriend now, the first night we met, said ‘You’re really arrogant, aren’t you!’. And I had it a few times when people commented on my stuff. I remember doing a video on my story and people ask me why I’m so up myself, and I just say ‘Probably because I’m the best’. I always find it funny when people think it’s real.”

Having two brothers involved in the music industry, it was probably not too large a leap to think that Joel might follow in those steps, but it was his mum and some forced guitar lessons that set him on the path.

“Before then, I wasn’t interested,” he says. “And I had no interest in writing music until I was about 17 – that’s when I started messing around with it. My brother was a huge influence for that. But it started out at completely different ends of the spectrum music-wise. I started out doing folksy sort of guitar and indie rock. And now it’s a lot more piano-synth, electronic.”

Having put his first track Glass out on Spotify back in 2017, it actually wasn’t until the release of the funky Mushroom Tune in 2021 that The Slopes started to catch fire. And Joel attributes his current move towards 10,000 monthly listeners and more than half a million plays of collaboration drum & bass track Wasted Time down to that moment.

“Not in terms of the number of streams, but I would say it [Mushroom Tune] caught the right attention,” he says. “It was the first time I’d ever done that sort of high-pitch vocal. And I think people thought ‘Oh, he can sing a bit’. And then I started getting offers. And that’s where Wasted Time came from. They [Gentlemens Club] contacted me – they’re really nice boys but didn’t really know who they were. They wrote this and offered it to me first.”

Latest EP Streets Don’t Walk They Talk, released in late July, has been a slight departure once again with a range of singing styles. The raspiness of Intro and First Day of My Life and the pacy rap-like vocals on Changes just serve to show off the flexibility and genre-blending skills that Joel can wield.

“There was definitely progression in the ability to sing within my first EP. I couldn’t really sing, but I had that crossover with spoken word,” says Joel. “And it was more just that I listened to so much different music, that I know that if I like that, then I will do that style and then that style – that’s just how it sort of came about.”

You can tell there is a more complete sound – like production has gone up a level since his early releases. The atmospherics are through the duration of the EP and the instrumental-led Jupiter and He Can Tune lend a whole new side to Joel’s work. Finally, the encapsulating Girl in Hackney is a small work of genius with its stirring memoir about drugs and the intoxication of infatuation.

“There’s a definite change in the mood,” says Joel. “The last EP was sad and the whole concept was ‘It gets better’. This is sort of coming out of that, but it has still got that moodiness, the instrumentals have really got that sort of atmosphere.

“And it’s still very heavily set in lyrics, that’s what I really appreciate – I really like poetry. I think this is what I want to make from now on, whereas I was still unsure in the past.”

In 2021, the It Gets Better Mate EP was about “breaking up” – the new EP has moved on.

“There’s a tune on there called First Day of My Life that at first listen probably sounds like it’s about a girl, but it is actually about Covid and saying goodbye to that sh*tty year we all had. But other than that, it’s just about all the stuff around me… day-to-day life.”

While Joel admits that, even though it’s “less fun”, the majority of the EP was produced on laptop, his live show makes use of his ability on guitar, synth and piano.

The 23-year-old will be releasing more work over the coming months, while live shows are a little more tricky to come by right now.

“I’m not particularly ‘out there’, but when people can’t fit you into one box, or into a line-up, it’s actually tough to get shows,” he says. “So I’m meeting a bit of resistance there.”

Trust us, you should book Joel, because he’s likely to bring his odd mate The Slopes along.