JOYFULTALK is the project of musician Jay Crocker, in collaboration with Shawn Dicey. Following the release of 2015's engaging MUUIXX record, Crocker took several years to write and record Plurality Trip, which came out in April of 2018 on Constellation Records. Plurality Trip is an immersive experience, in turn, spiritual and droning, filled with introspective soundscapes that could also function as morbid club hits. The variance and depth of Plurality Trip speak to Crocker's talent, intelligence, and eye for detail, all of which became immediately evident in a conversation about his creative process.
KEXP: Could you describe the instruments used to record Plurality Trip?
Jay Crocker: I used a collection of homemade instruments along with a sampler. By homemade instruments, I mean homemade drum machines, synthesizers. little noisemakers, and stringed instruments. [2015's] MUUIXX consisted more of me just playing those instruments all the way through. Plurality Trip is more sequenced. It has the same sounds but sampled and sequenced which makes it a lot easier to reproduce live.
How do you visualize your music before you start to record?
There are a few different ways. Sometimes I score it in a standard notation or use an elliptical notation I created called the Planetary Notation System. Other times, I’ll record an improvisation onto a 2 track tape machine, and then dump that into a sampler and cut it up to create a piece.
The Planetary Notation System is an elliptical notation based on gear sets. Say you had a circumference of 30 centimeters and centimeters equal quarter notes. So I take the 30 quarter notes and divide that into 'x' amount of time signatures to create the phrase of that particular voice. Then I’d do another circle that is 15 centimeters and take those 15 quarter notes and divide that into a phrase. That makes the instruments' time signatures independent of each other and creates an endless, infinite kind of feeling or color.
Did you come from a background based in the mathematics of sound?
No, not really. I moved from the prairies of Calgary, Alberta all the way east to the countryside of Nova Scotia. It is kind of near the Atlantic Ocean. This move created a lot of isolation — I didn’t have a musical community anymore. Before I was involved in the improv and noise and pop (to some extent) scenes in Calgary, which were pretty strong at the time. Moving created this isolation, and I started having to fix everything myself. Also, I got pretty into motors… all this came together around the same time. Gear ratios were always very interesting to me, so I thought I could create this notation system. If you use triplets, in particular, you can make music sound like an infinite process.
The notation system is also is an entirely different way of looking at music from the get-go. Even if I don’t adhere to the notation or gear sets to a T, it creates something that I can jump off from into a different space. It’s not an idealistic process either, because it can move in any sort of organic way based on what I want to hear or feel in the moment.
I’m a big jazz fan and still play jazz guitar. Once I started listening to jazz and improvisation, the whole musical world started to open up from there. There’s so many jumping off points into comparatively free ways of playing and experiencing sound. That was pretty important to me and still is.
What freedom comes from building your own instruments?
Sometimes it’s more the opposite of freedom, where you have to search harder to overcome the restrictions in place. Instead of having an infinite palate, I’ve whittled it down to around 14 or 15 different homemade instruments. Each one makes countless sounds, but restriction enables you to create a dialogue, voice, and language with those instruments, be it a weird stringed instrument or motorized hurdy-gurdy wheel.
Are you able to hear how isolation impacts Plurality Trip?
Yeah, Plurality Trip is definitely a reflection of the isolation coming full circle. Now it’s not an issue anymore and is part of my creative process. Before moving I had never lived in the country before or away from my hometown, so it was quite an unexpected culture shock. In order to deal with that, I invented all these new ways of playing music for myself. Where I am today geographically has totally transformed my process into what it is now.
I had a friend from Calgary [Shawn Dicey] come visit me around five years ago, and he came back and bought a piece of land out here. After MUUIXX had been recorded and I was starting to figure out how to play it live, [Dicey] came on board. There are a few collaborations between us on Plurality Trip, and the general process has become more collaborative as opposed to me playing solo.
Plurality Trip is pretty much a live record, recorded onto five tracks on a tape machine. There were only a few small edits made and one of the tracks has a few overdubs. I wanted to make the whole process a little quicker, in terms of writing, recording and being able to perform it live, so I tried to do it all at the same time. That way we didn’t have to go back and re-learn things in order for it to translate to a live environment. The process also adheres to the theory of having limitations we put on ourselves so we can create a specific energy.
Does it require an emotional shift to play your music live because it’s built in isolation?
I feel closer to this music live than any other music I’ve played. It satisfies that spiritual part of myself. It can shift and change and we’re manipulating the sounds in so many different ways but without being able to talk about it in language. It all stays within the realm of sound. Even so, there’s a good dialogue between the two of us. So I don’t know about an emotional shift necessarily, but I think I get into a pretty deep place while performing this music, for lack of a better word.
Has the JOYFULTALK project helped you interact with different cultural subsets that you hadn’t previously interacted with before? There are so many different ways of trying to situate your music, and it seems like that would result in you playing to a bunch of different audiences.
With JOYFULTALK we’ve been lucky to, for instance, play one night with a post-rock band and the next at a classical music festival. We're able to find an audience in all these different places. There have definitely been some intense interactions and moments with audiences or bar staff because we're playing music that's a little weird compared to what some people usually listen to. But then, of course, there have been really wonderful interactions with people who have been super inspiring to us. Touring is a very interesting way of traveling through the world. The one complaint would be that I am never in one place long enough to really experience the culture, but at the same time, I often get thrust into wonderful musical communities in the process.
JOYFULTALK's 2018 record Plurality Trip is available now on vinyl via Constellation Records. For more information, including information on future live performances, visit the band's website or Bandcamp.
