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JOYFULTALK
Familiar Science
Constellation - 2022
Michael Panontin
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To the many silver linings that the dark cloud of the pandemic brought us, like bike lanes, work/life balance and, for some anyway, science literacy, you can add JOYFULTALK's Familiar Science. It was during all those COVID lockdowns that Jay Crocker, the man behind JOYFULTALK, was reacquainted with his love of jazz music.
The transplanted Nova Scotian (by way of Alberta) was first exposed to it as a trumpeter back in the eighth grade. "I had a really amazing teacher. He worked us hard and he didn't put up with shit," he recalled, "but he got the music sounding and feeling like something I hadn't been a part of before. I think it was then that I first started to know what it felt like to play music that was creating a feeling."
Fast forward to 2020 and those feelings all started to come back. "The pandemic hit... all my shit cancelled...I started really missing the feeling I would have playing improvised music with my friends in Calgary." One of those friends, a fellow named Eric Hamelin, sent Crocker a few drum set improvisations for him to work with. "I started cutting them up and collaging them into forms. I wrote heads over these forms and played over them with different instruments trying to make them feel alive and not sequenced."
Crocker also dug up some old recordings of a big band he was in, from which he "chopped out" a few snippets of saxophone and wrote music around it. Add to that alto saxophonist Nicole Miller, whom Crocker credits with "getting me back playing and practicing jazz again" and the intoxicating electro/jazz mix of Familiar Science starts to make sense.
The woozy, unsettling opening track, 'Body Stone', sort of sets the scene, prepping the unsuspecting listener for what is to come. From there, Familiar Science's sonic shelling kicks in at full force with riveting tracks like 'Take It to the Grave' and 'Particle Riot', the former a pairing of low-end bass and jazz guitar and the latter a percussive-heavy free jazz workout that sounds exactly as its name suggests. Even better is the title track, a futuristic funkfest of percussion and synthesizer that sounds like a chance meeting of Parliament and Sun Ra (with a whole lot of acid).
A warning, though, for the easily agitated: Familiar Science is a challenging listen that will shock the hell out of traditional jazz listeners and even beguile those of a more experimental bent. But for those who do ultimately 'get it', the thrills are plenty. Crocker himself is already on to his next projects, a couple of large-scale scores, one for 16-voice choir and another for 30-piece wind ensemble, so keep your ears peeled.
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