JOYFULTALK | "Familiar Science"

Following two laser-focused, trance inducing albums, JOYFULTALK returns with a series of gnarled excavations that see composer Jay Crocker transmuting musical forms from a forgotten era into startling new expressions of modern existence. The pieces on Familiar Science are twisted, throbbing, touched and very much lived-in: smudged iterations of contemporary jazz. Combining influences from late 80s M-base music, Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic funk years and Crocker’s own histories as an outré improviser, the album features eight enthralling cuts, each held together by stunning musicianship and daring compositional choices.

Starting from flipped drum samples and expanding outwards, Crocker built the album piece by piece, collecting and reflecting little sonic clusters along the way. Forming the head of a given composition from a blend of dusted archival material, spliced-up off-sessions and his own bass, keys and midi sequencing, he then sought out responsive contributions from longtime collaborators, Albertan percussionists Eric Hamelin (Ghostkeeper, No More Shapes, Chad Vangaalen) and Chris Dadge (Bug Incision, Lab Coast) as well as Nova Scotia-based saxophonist/flautist Nicola Miller (Ryan Driver, Doug Tielli) and in-demand bassist Kyle Cunjak (Olympic Symphonium, David Myles). With the live contributions in hand, Crocker set to enmeshing the materials further, building pieces that blur the line between a spirited combo feel and sampler jamz from realms beyond. One vital thread that flows through the collection is the reconstituted percussion of Eric Hamelin, who sent Crocker a series of virtuosic, improvised drum sessions to be cut up and harvested. The ghostly boom-bap bone rattle of opener ‘Body Stone’ (which sounds like a cut from Squarepusher’s revisionist jazz classic Music Is Rotted One Note via the cinematic mind of John Carpenter) initiates the rhythmic seance. Persisting from there, Familiar Science offers up oblique rhythmic pathways throughout, leading to quags of heady jazz, streaks of Black Dice-like delirium and elevated states of revelry.

With a few careers’ worth of material, genres and experiences in his rearview, Crocker can’t help but bring a kaleidoscopic mind to a given project. In that sense, Familiar Science finds the composer folding time: diving further into his present-tense, rurally-isolated solo practice in Nova Scotia, and revisiting his former life as a bustling jazz collaborator in Calgary, Alberta. Not only does the album feature a series of archival samples from live sets by late Calgarian saxophonist Dan Meichel (Musk Cup, Jazz Snob Eat Shit), songs like ‘Take It To The Grave’, ‘Stop Freaking Out!’ and the album’s titular track feature Crocker’s skewed guitar work, something that hasn’t appeared prominently in his own music for the better part of a decade. It’s a welcomed voice amidst the compositional mélange, cutting through with an angular playfulness; a close approximation might be the lean progressions of Mary Halvorson, though Crocker’s lurking melodic gestures feel uniquely his own. While these pieces act as catalysts for some of Familiar’s heaviest contortions, the album’s more honeyed moments, ‘Blissed For A Minute’ and ‘Ballad In 9’, center around Miller’s absolutely spellbinding alto and flute work.

If this all sounds like a lot, it is: Familiar Science is a multifarious feat of imagination and (re)combination. It’s a credit to Crocker’s compositional character that music containing so many intersecting textures and rhythms feels so focused and effectual. As each composition unfolds, the music reveals new phenomena and ways of moving through sound. It pulls you into sneaky wormholes, heaves you up into rarefied ethers. It drags you into the ditches: spun off the road, headlights busted. The umami of earth, freshly disturbed. And through all this, as the collection works to a close, a kind of serenity shines through. Joy, even.