Joe And Will Ask? July 5, 2009

Whether it’s the creative use of punctuation in their name, their splendid remix work or the genre-hopping scope of their original productions, it’s clear that something about Joe and Will Ask? has caught the imagination of the electronic underground. The combination of Joe Ashworth, whose puppy dog looks bear a glancing resemblance to teen-flick star Michael Cera, and Will Green, who looks like he’d be more at home on a catwalk runway. Oh, wait… He’s already been there and done that. Before Joe and Will ascend forever into the dizzy heights of electronic stardom, we thought we’d bring them down to earth for a second to join us for a pint in Sheffield’s favourite indie boozer, Bungalows and Bears.

So firstly and perhaps most importantly, what is the origin of the question mark in your name? How did that come about?

J: Well it used to be an actual question…

W: We didn’t want to come up with one of those cringeworthy sort of names that we’d end up regretting so we just thought ‘Joe and Will’ then ‘Ask’, as in  “Joe and Will ask what is electro?” And for some reason it stuck.

J: At the time electro was all like Le Tigre and stuff and we thought “What the hell?” That’s where it started and now we always seem to have these really awkward conversations with people. And we never even play much electro. It’s kind of ambiguous.

W: Actually you’re the first people for a while who’ve spelt our name right with ‘and’ instead of the ‘and’ symbol and put the question mark on the end.

J: You know what? You’d be surprised. Even Beatport got it wrong.

 

How did you guys meet then?

W: Joe was living with my best friend in London, and I moved there a year later. At that time I was living in Tooting in South London and they lived in Camden so I just spent six days a week at their flat really. We used to go to Koko every Friday.

J: We used to go jump around to the Kaiser Chiefs.

W: Yeah, mosh to Kaiser Chiefs.

 

Speaking of production, how did the La Roux remix come about? That’s been hugely popular lately.

J: Well we kind of noticed them very early on and I sent an email to them just asking if they’d like a remix done of one of their tracks. We didn’t hear back from them for ages until their management got in touch saying that they needed another remix doing and asking if we’d do it.

 

Well it definitely sounds very spiffy.

W: Spiffy? Is that what the kids are saying on the street these days? 

 

Well I’m from the countryside really so it’s not really street-slang

W: Like, country lane slang?

 

You’ve been involved with the Kitsune crew then, how was that? Is there actually a Kitsune maison? Like, in the woods full of kids in skinny jeans, like a hipster Playboy mansion with loads of really cool DJs?

W: Well we just bought out one single with them, but it was a good step for us.

J: Y’know we just bought out one 12” with them and then I think we’ll bring out the next one on our own and then after that I think, like, Ministry of Sound.

 

Seriously?

W: Nah, some blog wrote something about it last week…not much to it.

 

 

joeandwillask.com