Using his MC name "Joelistics", Ma signed with Sydney-based Australian hip hop label Elefant Traks for the release of his first solo album Voyager.
Released in 2011, Ma collaborated with Ella Thompson (Oz Soul Collective, Axolotl), Dustin Mclean (Moon Zero studios) and Natalie Pa'apa'a (Blue King Brown) for the recording of the album.
I stumbled across the beat [for "Sooner or Later"] in my last few days before I returned to Australia, and the verses about travelling tumbled out while I was in transit from Thailand back to Oz.
[6]Ma's second solo album Blue Volume was released in mid-2014, again on the Elefant Traks label, and the musician explained in a June 2014 interview that while Voyager was "a largely positive record", the follow-up is "about breaking up and being quite caught up in the frustrations of certain things, certain emotions and the loss of identity."
Ma further explains that the Australian social climate had changed after he returned from travelling in Germany and Spain, and he proceeded to channel feelings of frustration and anger into the creation of Blue Volume, an album that he describes as "uncomfortable".
[12] Ma's Australian "Blue Volume Tour" occurs during October and November 2014, starting in Sydney and finishing in Brisbane.
[14] Prior to the commencement of the October–November 2014 Blue Volume Australian tour, an article from Ma was published on the Tone Deaf website on 9 October 2014.