Jorkes' music has always been built from frictions that shouldn't, on paper, fit so smoothly. It arrives at a quiet certainty about when to loosen the screws and when to tighten them again. In Jorkes' hands, acid grins and ’80s synth-pop aches. The result is a dancefloor language that’s playful on the surface and emotionally complex beneath it. On Saturday, March 7, Jorkes brings that sensibility to Control Club, alongside nd_baumecker, Vio PRG, and New Disorder.
Greece-born, Jorkes’ career story is anchored in Stuttgart, where Romantica is both their residency and testing ground. There’s also Vienna, where they built a life that folds love, labor, and nightlife into a single rhythm. There’s the radio ether of Radio 80000, a monthly show with Daniel Rajcsanyi. And then there’s Freeride Millenium, the label Jorkes co-runs with Rajcsanyi, a living archive of the duo’s taste, politics, humor, and desires.
If you hear a Jorkes set described as “feel-good,” that’s true, but it doesn't tell the whole story. What feels good is not just the buoyancy, it’s the way the music makes space for people to soften. Their selections often carry cheeky hooks, grooves that flirt with pads that glow, and vocal phrase drops filled with warmth. It’s empathy-forward dance music, where queerness isn’t a badge to be pinned on later. Instead, it’s embedded in the way a Jorkes set treats pleasure as something shared rather than won.
The original music itself has tracked Jorkes’ growth from promising to unmistakable. The Sweet Dreams EP pulled together disco sheen, house swing, and vocoder-tinted tenderness. From there, the Permanent Vacation release Super Fun Lover sharpened the same instincts with more snap. Sodomy, released on Freeride Millenium, then returned to home base as a record that treats sex as a site of vulnerability, power, laughter, and care.
Jorkes's mixes tell their story in real-time. The XLR8R podcast catches them drifting through house and disco. The Ransom Note 'Wednesday Alternative' mix leans into that smile-inducing quality even more openly. RA Podcast frames Jorkes in their most emotionally precise mode. And the live recording for Bassiani’s Podcast captures the pressure of a serious room. What’s consistent across all four is the refusal to chase status. The fantasy in these mixes is domestic and tender: train rides, bicycle tours, a bathtub, the ocean, the woods, the idea that a track can become a memory before it even plays.
Underneath the releases and mixes, Jorkes’ work is ultimately rooted in community. Freeride Millenium’s charity efforts, their sustained relationship with queer nightlife spaces, and the way they speak about solidarity all point to a set of values that shape the music’s social necessity.
Even the project’s aesthetics, the recurring photography and artwork threaded throughout, feels like a place where people build selves, friendships, and survival strategies one night at a time.
But Jorkes’ best trick is letting the dancefloor hold contradictions. They let a hook be funny and sincere at the same time. They let desire be soft and sharp. Jorkes offers pleasure as a form of attention. On March 7, that attention arrives in Bucharest as the collective sense that the night can be both bold and kind.
