Janine Rainforth, singer and co-founder of Bristol post-punk outfit Maximum Joy, has announced her debut solo album, Soul Retrieval, coming in February. Rainforth formed Maximum Joy in 1981 with ex-Glaxo Babies member Tony Wrafter and released a handful of avant-pop/funk-punk singles (“Stretch” being the best-known) plus an album, 1982’s Adrian Sherwood-produced Station MXJY. But Rainforth abruptly left the music industry after a violent assault, which she said in 2019 was “rape and attempted murder” from someone within her close professional circle.

“The resulting impact on me and my life was extremely negative. I’ve since realised there was a lot of trauma,” Rainforth says in a new statement. “I spoke publicly for the first time about what had stopped my music career and why I had to leave Maximum Joy, the band I’d formed, in 2019 with a national newspaper. It was a pretty momentous moment for me, being in position to be able to finally speak out and has been part of the on-going process of the reclaiming and healing that’s been, in my view, miraculously for me, taking place in terms of my career in making music.”

This technically isn’t Rainforth’s first solo project; in 2014 she released an EP. The following year, she reformed Maximum Joy to perform at Simple Things Festival with a new line-up. Then, in 2019, she released P.E.A.C.E. under the name MXMJoY.

Opening up about Soul Retrieval, Rainforth says: “I made the album in my small, home studio in North East London. It’s a tiny space but in my view, it’s where the magic happens! I would find inspiration in unexpected places that would pop up or fuel inspiration — sometimes random, sometimes contemporaries. It could be a noise, a beat or a juxtaposition. I also found old diaries specifically from that period in 1982 that I hadn’t looked at in years. There were poems and writings specifically relating to the attack that have also informed some of the writing.”

Listen to the album’s title track below:

TRACKLIST:
01 “Soul Retrieval”
02 “Always With You”
03 “Alchemy”
04 “Strata is Shifting”
05 “Beauty”
06 “Evermore”
07 “Unrequited”
08 “Becoming Divine”
09 “Phoenix Is Risen”
10 “Wonderment”

Soul Retrieval is out 2/14 via London Field Recordings. Pre-order it here.