Purple’s spiritual leader goes full-on skweee on a new freebie mini-album.

Joker‘s 2011 debut album might have been something of a damp squib, but he’s managed to recover some of the fizz of old on more recent releases: April’s The Face Off EP showed him recapturing some of the vigour of ‘Digidesign’ or ‘Snake Eater’, with ‘Old Era’ in particular hitting like a Breakout brick to the noggin. His latest dispatch, however, is an altogether more playful affair.

Yesterday evening, the Bristolian snuck onto Dubstep Forum to announce a free mini-album of new material, titled Joker Drive. Joker billed the set as “very sonic sega inspired”, and that’s about the shape of things – from the opening Sega ident through to the track titles (‘Lava Lake’, ‘Special Stage’) it’s a throwback collection of SID chip tomfoolery. Cheery electro-funk is the dominant mode, although a couple of tracks (‘In The Bar’, ‘Pink Metropolis’) flirt with dubstep swing.

Click below to stream/download the collection. [via Self-Titled Mag]