Familiar Science, by JOYFULTALK

JOYFULTALK | "Familiar Science"

Familiar Science

by JOYFULTALK

supported by

watercoolerdictator This album somehow manages to be maddening and brilliant at the same time. Step this way for some freaky jazzy exuberance.

more...

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$9 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.

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 10 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
Subscription

Subscribe now to receive all the new music Constellation Records releases, including 7 back-catalog items, delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android. You’ll also get access to subscriber-only exclusives. Learn more.

Subscribe Now $65 USD/year or more

1.	Body Stone 06:46	buy track
2.	Take It To The Grave 07:03 video	buy track
3.	Particle Riot 04:18	buy track
4.	Familiar Science 04:04 video	buy track
5.	Ballad In 9 05:31 video	buy track
6.	Blissed For A Minute 03:30	buy track
7.	Hagiography 05:31	buy track
8.	Stop Freaking Out! 04:18	buy track

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

license

about

JOYFULTALK Crousetown, Nova Scotia

Constellation Records

micro-climate trance

shows

Aug 31

Larmer Tree Gardens

Sixpenny Handley, UK

contact / help

Contact JOYFULTALK

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like JOYFULTALK, you may also like:

Say Laura
by Eric Chenaux

supported by 323 fans who also own “Familiar Science”

Chenaux's guitar work is sensational. Meandering and looping, without ever losing direction. It's easy to get lost in this record, but it's a record worth getting lost in. sentient meat
go to album
Crease
by Kee Avil

supported by 321 fans who also own “Familiar Science”

A fascinating album, fragile vocals and exciting arrangements. I love musical independence, which is something special. HansPeter Muff
go to album
Retrospective
by Joni Void

supported by 320 fans who also own “Familiar Science”
go to album
Lilith
by Exquisite Corpse

Moody and weird experimental pop from Melbourne follows the intuitive logic of the surrealist game from which the group takes their name. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 8, 2020
go to album
Revisionist
by William Ryan Fritch

featured on Bandcamp Radio Jan 27, 2015
go to album
Emptied Animal
by William Ryan Fritch

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 15, 2014
go to album
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More
by Esmerine

supported by 320 fans who also own “Familiar Science”
go to album