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.
