Joyfultalk - Plurality Trip - VINYL LP

Free-thinking Nova Scotia composer, musician and visual artist Jay Crocker (aka JOYFULTALK) channels Minimalism, Japanese environmental music, Maghrebian rhythmic modes and other numinous folkways to create his most focused, vibrant work to date. Based on a monumental, kaleidoscopic graphic score, A Separation Of Being is translated from two-dimensional page to trans-dimensional aural life using an array of homemade instruments, crowned with a majestic string arrangement written by Crocker and performed by Polaris and Juno winner Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Destroyer). Visual scores often provoke ideas of openness, interpretation, improv and fluidity. JOYFULTALK's third album, and second for Constellation, is an altogether different beast. This three-part suite is airtight; interlocking arcs of polyrhythmic deep groove and new minimalism roll out in spellbinding propulsion, the music gathering it's warmth from the strings and it's peculiarities from Crocker's bespoke instrumentation and analog clockworks. The separation of being here is not division or rupture, but buoyant freedom through conduction of circulatory energies, marked by flowing melodic rondos of gyrating strings and sonic pointillism. A Separation Of Being is a systems music feast for the heart and mind. And lest we forget the eyes Crocker began developing 'The Planetary Music System', his particular methodology for visualized composition, in 2012. The score for A Separation Of Being is the pinnacle of his system to date. Impressive in scale and scope, this stunning 5'x10' mural (acquired by Nova Scotia's provincial Art Bank in 2019) features geometric multi-directional cycles of brightly-coloured, finely-detailed sound notation. Album packaging on CD and audiophile 180g LP features details on the outer jacket cover art, and a reproduction of the full score on the inside gatefold, and as an exquisite 12In

Following several visits to the city over the years, Osama (Sam) Shalabi moved to Cairo in 2011, arriving at an apartment one block from Tahrir Square, in the midst of Egypt's 'Arab Spring'. Shalabi describes the Big Mango, his 2013 phenomenal work for his Land of Kush big-band, as Incha love letter to CairoInch framed by Inchthe beautiful, surreal madness of the city... as joyous, horrific, historical events were unfoldingInch.

JOYFULTALK returns with another vibrantly divergent stylistic take on the analog materiality and sensibility of electronic composer-producer Jay Crocker. Familiar Science rallies contributions from a quintet of musicians into a 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, Ornette Coleman's harmolodic funk, and more recent touchstones like The Comet Is Coming, later Tortoise, or Squarepusher's Music Is Rotted One Note. 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. Crocker lays down stacked wordless vocals on several tracks to complete the picture, weaving all these raw materials into exuberant compositions that blur the line between sizzling corporeal combo and sampledelic futurist jamz. Familiar Science is a buoyant, delirious feast of noise-tinged polychrome electronic avant-jazz that takes Crocker's composition and production acumen in an unexpected, highly accomplished, exuberantly satisfying new direction. JOYFTULTALK keeps revealing brilliant new facets and Familiar Science finds the project at it's most intricately kaleidoscopic.