Joe Yorke
Joe Yorke is a singer, songwriter and producer from Wigan, north-west England. He started playing guitar as a teenager and busked in Wigan and Manchester, singing songs by Oasis and Bob Marley alongside folk, punk and ska. It was listening to The Clash at school that first made him curious about the Jamaican records that had influenced them.
In 2006, when he was about 13, he went to Notting Hill Carnival and heard a sound system for the first time. A few years later, he moved to Moss Side and began finding his way into Manchester’s reggae scene.
Manchester and Conscious Youth
Yorke was around 18 when he moved to Manchester. He and his friends Matt and Beanie started Conscious Youth, a sound system that played UK steppers. He rarely sang on the mic in those days. He was also playing in Black Star Dub Collective, where he and multi-instrumentalist Eeyun Purkins began working together.
The two went to weekly jam sessions in Hulme and spent evenings recording after work. Purkins introduced Yorke to more roots reggae, and it was during sessions at Purkins’ home that he began to develop the high singing voice heard on his later records.
Yorke had been using falsetto for backing vocals when Purkins suggested he sing a whole lead in that register. They tried it on “Tonight”, recorded with The Eastonian Singers and The Co-Operators. The response to the song encouraged him to keep singing that way, and he later said he felt he had more control in falsetto than in his usual register.
Bristol and Rhythm Steady
After moving to Bristol, Yorke began releasing his own productions through Rhythm Steady. “Ride On” came out on seven-inch in 2020, followed by “Night and Day” in 2021. Around the same time, he was recording with the French sound system crew Stand High Patrol. They released “Quicksand” in 2021 and “Midnight Rock” in 2022.
Noise and Emptiness, the first LP on Rhythm Steady, followed in October 2022. Yorke produced the record, with Purkins playing kete drum and contributions from Guru Nile, Pupajim and Martin Melody. He sang on some of the tracks himself, with three dub versions appearing alongside the vocal recordings.
In 2023, he and The Co-Operators released A Distant Beat on Waggle Dance Records. They had been recording singles together for several years, and the album gave them more room to work with the rocksteady harmonies and roots rhythms they had developed on those sessions.
Purkins also wrote the lyrics for “End of the Day”, which Yorke recorded with the Swiss group The 18th Parallel. It’s a song about working and paying bills, sung in falsetto over an arrangement in which an analogue synth answers his vocal. Mr Topple picked up on that detail in Pauzeradio’s review. Yorke’s music also featured in Gav Pauze’s Summer Roots edition of the Unique Reggae Mix Show that year.
Also, Irie Ites released Yorke’s “Time” on a split seven-inch with Eek-A-Mouse. His “She Feels It” appeared on the other side, with both tracks voiced on the Ina Struggle riddim.
Hopeless and the Live Shows
Yorke returned to Rhythm Steady later in 2023 with Hopeless, an album that brought soul more to the fore. In 2024, he recorded “Just Another Day” with the Shaolin Rhythm Section for Roots One Records and played the Dub Corner at Dour Festival in Belgium.
That year, Yorke also joined Solo Banton on “Acting Like That”, a track from Banton’s album In This Time.
In an interview that summer, he recalled how hard he’d found it to project his voice when he first started singing on sound systems. By then he felt at home in those sessions. He liked that people could be listening and dancing without everybody having to face the stage.
In 2025, Yorke appeared on a bill with Da Break Sound System at Le Transbordeur in France and brought his live show to The Jam Jar in Bristol. That December, he and Big Chip put out their rocksteady version of “Walking in the Air” digitally. His live dates the following summer included the Gold Stage at Reggae Geel in Belgium.
Shallow Fantasies
“Don’t Rush Me Now” came out in September 2026 as the first single from Shallow Fantasies. Yorke wrote the song and co-produced it with Toby Davies. Sam Huelin’s lead guitar shares the foreground with Yorke’s vocal, with Ben McKone on drums.
Shallow Fantasies followed on Rhythm Steady on 13 November 2026. The album draws on the guitar music of 1980s Manchester, post-punk and vintage soul. On “Moonshine”, Yorke works again with Pupajim, who sang on Noise and Emptiness four years earlier.
Yorke came to reggae through punk records and learned his trade in Manchester, playing in a band and running a sound system with friends. The sessions with Eeyun Purkins helped him find his singing voice, and in Bristol he became a producer and label owner as well as a vocalist. The guitar music he grew up with comes back into his songwriting on Shallow Fantasies, released through the same label he built putting out his own roots and dub records.
