MONTREAL’S Constellation Records, home of such outrock greats as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band and Do Make Say Think, have been running a neat little thing for a while now, whereby they commission a new audiovisual single from an artist from the roster, and release it every Thursday.
The series, entitled Corona Borealis, is a set of 16 releases running into next year. The releases are available via Bandcamp and Vimeo exclusively, with 100% of proceeds going to artists – a boon in these virus-straitened times.
Here at Backseat Mafia we’re absolutely delighted to be able to premiere the latest in the series today: “NEW BIOLOGY”, by JOYFULTALK. We’ve embedded the full 28-minute journey for you below for you to lose your mind in.
JOYFULTALK is the audiovisual project of Jay Crocker, who hails from way out on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. He adores the glitch, the shear and flow of electronica primitivism let rip (he builds his own instruments), creating what he calls “micro-climate trance music”.
It’s psychogeographical IDM, if you like, both wholly informed by and absolutely steeped in the endless treelines and riverine landscape of his native Lunenburg County; the iteration; the sameness within the difference, and the difference within the sameness.
We can only get onomatopoeic henceforth about the deeply clustered world “NEW BIOLOGY” opens up: it clatters and entrances, opening and closing vistas of deep hiss, entrancing bells, micro- and polyrhythms, which in one passage flow, the next stutter, jam, glitch, flow again. And the accompanying video? Well … don’t get lost in there … we’ll need to send a search party. Those woods go on for miles.
Jay says: “’NEW BIOLOGY’ is an extended, improvised piece with a focus on the exploration of ‘free’ electronics.
“For the past decade my practice has been working towards the construction of a portable electronic music system completely based on the principles of immediacy. I have tried to design a system where I can explore improvisations without ever being ‘cornered’ by the system itself; a system that can be played and manipulated as easily as a guitar, saxophone, drums, etc.
“I wanted to be able to play in time, or with the absence of time, to perform manipulations of stored sounds, or constant recycling and reimagining of new sounds, with no dead ends and only the limitation of creativity as an obstacle.
“The visual aspect of the piece works along the same lines of improvisation. It is a meditation in smudging, painting, glitching and pulsing analogue and digital strains into endless video streams of trans-configured consciousness.
“‘NEW BIOLOGY’ follows a loose narrative of moving from this physical manifestation of being to another; bypassing linear time to be recast as something new.”
Constellation Records’ Corona Borealis series has already dropped tracks from Fly Pan Am, Jessica Moss, and more; catch up with the series here and bookmark it for forthcoming weeks’ releases.
Follow JOYFULTALK on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; and Constellation Records on those same socials, here, here and here, respectively.
