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Familiar Science

by JOYFULTALK

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Deluxe 180gram vinyl edition pressed at Optimal (DE) comes in 350gsm jacket + 300gsm artworked inner both printed LE-UV on uncoated Arktika artboard + DL card.

    180gLP Art Print Edition includes two 9.5"x12" art prints of the original cover art paintings by Jay Crocker (mail-order exclusive/edition of 100).

    Save big on shipping when you order multiple albums from the Constellation label discography
    constellation.bandcamp.com/music

    Constellation LP shipping rates:
    USA: FREE SHIPPING
    Canada: $12 first item, $1 each additional
    International: $16 first item, $4 each additional

    Please be aware that VAT or other taxes/duties *may* be levied by your country on orders outside North America. This is random and out of our control.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Familiar Science via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 10 days
    edition of 100  9 remaining
    Purchasable with gift card

      $30 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Deluxe 180gram vinyl edition pressed at Optimal (DE) comes in 350gsm jacket + 300gsm artworked inner both printed LE-UV on uncoated Arktika artboard + DL card. Cover art by Jay Crocker.

    Save big on shipping when you order multiple albums from the Constellation label discography
    constellation.bandcamp.com/music

    Constellation LP shipping rates:
    USA: FREE SHIPPING
    Canada: $12 first item, $1 each additional
    International: $16 first item, $4 each additional

    Please be aware that VAT or other taxes/duties *may* be levied by your country on orders outside North America. This is random and out of our control.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Familiar Science via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $24 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Also part of a specially-priced 3-album bundle:
    constellation.bandcamp.com/album/cst-spring-2022-bundle

    CD comes in custom mini-gatefold artboard jacket. Cover art by Jay Crocker.

    Save big on shipping when you order multiple albums from the Constellation label discography
    constellation.bandcamp.com/music

    Constellation CD shipping rates:
    USA: FREE SHIPPING
    Canada: $2 first item, $0.50 each additional
    International: $8 first item, $1 each additional

    Please be aware that VAT or other taxes/duties *may* be levied by your country on orders outside North America. This is random and out of our control.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Familiar Science via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $14 USD or more 

     

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Body Stone 06:46
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Hagiography 05:31
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about

JOYFULTALK returns with its third album for Constellation; another vibrantly divergent stylistic take on the analog materiality and sensibility of electronic composer-producer Jay Crocker, whose previous two records forged trance-inducing polyrhythmic intricacy, each from a distinct angle and sound palette, each enlisting a single instrumental collaborator. Familiar Science rallies contributions from a larger cast of musicians into a looser, cosmic recombinant combo—still shot through with JOYFULTALK’s singular mixing desk kinetics, but this time deep-diving into gnarled and twisted, spliced and diced out-jazz. Crocker draws inspiration from 1980s M-Base music and Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic funk period, while his own prior history as an improv guitarist also resurfaces for the first time in many years—an element in this polyvalent artist’s chemistry set that hasn’t appeared prominently in his own music for over a decade.

Familiar Science finds Crocker folding time (as lockdown will do), immersed in his present-day kaleidoscope of solitary art and music practices in rural Nova Scotia, while channeling his former life as a bustling jazz collaborator in Calgary, Alberta. Building outwards from roiling resampled acoustic drums, Crocker extracted additional sonic and rhythmic textures, then formed the head of each song using dusted-off archival recordings and his own bass, keys and midi sequencing. Albertan percussionists Eric Hamelin (Ghostkeeper, Chad Vangaalen) and Chris Dadge (Lab Coast, Alvvays) provided improvised drum tracks to be chopped and harvested; Nova Scotia-based Nicola Miller (Ryan Driver, Doug Tielli) laid down resplendent excursions on saxophone and flute; Crocker’s own dexterous guitar appears on several cuts. Familiar Science also poignantly features samples from live recordings by the late Calgary saxophonist-iconoclast Dan Meichel, catalysing some of the album’s heaviest contortions.

Crocker weaves all these raw materials into exuberant compositions that blur the line between sizzling corporeal combo and sampledelic futurist jamz, variously conjuring (leftfield) Flying Lotus, (later) Tortoise, BADBADNOTGOOD and Squarepusher’s Music Is Rotted One Note. The rubbery hyper-compression of boom-bap opener “Body Stone” initiates the séance, and the album offers a panoply of skittering grooves and soaring melodic pathways thereafter, through quags of heady jazz alternately streaked with dayglo delirium and other more vaporous states of revelry. Crocker’s own wordless stacked vocals are the giddy secret sauce on several cuts, and his lead guitar work (in kinship with the lean progressions of Mary Halvorson or Jeff Parker) features on “Take It To The Grave”, “Stop Freaking Out!” and the album’s title track. More honeyed passages on songs like “Blissed For A Minute” and “Ballad In 9” center around Nicola Miller’s buoyant alto sax and flute.

Familiar Science is a rousing feast of noise-tinged polychrome electronic avant-jazz: richly harmolodic compositions teeming with intersecting textures and turbulences; exploratory, exhilarated and indeed joyful. Thanks for listening.

credits

released May 6, 2022

Jay Crocker • Guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, electronics and vocals
Eric Hamelin • Drums
Nicola Miller • Alto saxophone, flute
Dan Meichel • Tenor saxophone
Chris Dadge • Drums
Kyle Cunjak • Upright bass

Composed and produced by Jay Crocker
Mixed by Jay Crocker and Rick B
Mastering by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering
Cover art by Jay Crocker

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JOYFULTALK Crousetown, Nova Scotia

Constellation Records

micro-climate trance

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