If you can imagine what the audio equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine might sound like, you might be able to find your way to same ballpark as Nova Scotian composer, musician and visual artist Jay Crocker, also known as JOYFULTALK. His latest single, “Part II – Pixelated Skin” comes from his upcoming album, A Separation of Being, from which arises the questions: “what’s ‘Part I’ getting at?” and “how deep is this rabbit hole going?.”
The new single comes two years after the release of JOYFULTALK’s second full-length album, Plurality Trip. A Separation of Being similarly engages in home-crafted instruments and Crocker’s hard-to-imagine-without-a-visual-aid “Planetary Music System,” his own absolute bonkers methodology of visualized composition. If you’d like to see what that looks like, you need go no further than the single’s artwork, unless you want to see the 5’x10′ geometric mural version in person, which was purchased by Nova Scotia’s provincial Art Bank. Smaller versions of the artwork will be made available as part of the album’s gatefold.
According to Crocker, the new work “channels Minimalism, Japanese environmental music, Maghrebian rhythmic modes and other numinous folkways,” which sounds about right, because rhythmically it doesn’t seem all that far off from “Africa” by Toto, and we all know how the internet worships that.
The icing on the cake, however, is a string arrangement, also written by Crocker, but performed by Polaris and Juno winner Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Destroyer). Together, the composition is sort of reminiscent of Jeff Brigg’s MIDI soundtrack to the original Sid Meier’s Civilization game.
Colour us confused, but intrigued.
JOYFULTALK will be releasing their third album, A Separation Of Being, in March 2020.
Tour Dates:
03.12.20 – Québec, QC @ Librairie Saint-Jean-Baptiste
03.14.20 – London, ON @ Private Show
03.15.20 – Guelph, ON @ Silence*
03.16.20 – Toronto, ON @ Burdock*
03.18.20 – Montréal, QC @ Ursa
03.19.20 – Ottawa, ON @ Cinqhole
05.23.20 – Fredericton, NB @ Flourish Festival
06.18.20 – Halifax, NS @ Everyseeker Festival
*with Joyful Joyful