Articles
Spotlight 17
Anneli Drecker

Albums
Aegri Somnia
Susan Alcorn
Damián Anache
A Sides and Makoto
Heather Woods Broderick
Atrium Carceri
Robert Crouch
Anneli Drecker
David Evans
Finland
Anne Garner
Tania Giannouli
Peter Gregson
Grönnert and Mondfish
Emily Hall
Hidden Orchestra
Hior Chronik
Hilde Marie Holsen
Inner8
Joyfultalk
Deborah Martin
Scott Miller
Monkey Plot
Kate Moore
Mr. Jones
Nicolay
NOW Ensemble
Numina + Zero Ohms
Oiseaux-Tempête
Kristoffer Oustad
Pete Oxley & Nicolas Meier
Peptalk
Qluster
Bruno Sanfilippo
Maria Schneider
Dirk Serries
Stratosphere
Robert Scott Thompson
Skydive Trio
Time Being
toy.bizarre / EMERGE
T_st & Dronelock
Kamasi Washington
Andrew Weathers
XaDu
Yen Pox
Young & Martin
ZOFO

EPs / Cassettes / DVDs / Mini-Albums / Singles
Alex Agore
Bird People / Waterflower
Kaison
Lullatone
Donna McKevitt
M. Mucci
Nattavaara Rocks
Zenwan

Joyfultalk: Muuixx
Drip Audio / Backward Music

Jesse Zubot's Vancouver-based Drip Audio upholds its reputation for adventurous music-making with its latest, a nine-track set from Canadian composer Jay Crocker (Ghostkeeper, No More Shapes) under the Joyfultalk name (the release also will be available on vinyl from Halifax's Backward Music imprint). Originally based in Calgary and now comfortably ensconced in Crousetown, Nova Scotia, Crocker used fourteen custom-built instruments at his home studio, the Prism Ship, to bring Muuixx to life. A number of albums in Drip Audio's catalogue evidence an avant-jazz spirit, but any ties to jazz are pretty much severed on Muuixx. Stylistically, the thirty-six-minute album inhabits a weird and playful world unto itself, and the fact that no clarification is provided as to what exactly those home-built instruments are merely adds to the enigmatic nature of the release.

The opener “Butterfly 12 Komokyo” makes good on the Hawaiian connection hinted at by the title when a string instrument cuts a jaunty path across what sounds like a crude drum machine pattern, though it would be inaccurate to delimit Joyfultalk by affixing a single genre or style to it. Electronic sounds of indeterminate origin also surface to overlay the base material with a droning, shoegaze-like film, a move that in turn transforms the material into something almost African-like.

With strings, snares, and other eruptive noises flailing in different directions, “Gym Class” plays as if it's in the throes of a controlled seizure. Melodies and rhythms inhabit the same physical space, yet collide with one another as if they've been pulled in from separate tracks. There's also “Crousetooth,” thirty-nine seconds of electronic experimentalism, and “If I Had Your Address in Chicago,” like some RZA homage gone wrong, strafes a burbling funk pulse and submerged voice sample (“If I'd had your address in Chicago, I would have written you before I came here”) with synthetic swizzle for six tripped-out minutes.

July-August 2015