Joy Electric: История Электронного Звука

Band

Joy Electric is the brand label for a series of electropop/synthpop productions by Ronnie Martin. Martin began producing music under the Joy Electric name in 1994, after the demise of Dance House Children, a band Ronnie was in with his brother Jason Martin of Starflyer 59. Starflyer 59 bass player and Velvet Blue Music owner Jeff Cloud joined Joy Electric from 1996 until 2002. Joy Electric is currently a solo act.

Having experimented with live shows, formed countless after school bands, and recorded an album that was never to be released under the moniker Morella's Forest with Randy Lamb, Ronnie and his brother Jason found their way onto Michael Knott's fledgling label, Blonde Vinyl, with a dance album to produce, Songs and Stories. After buying an old Akai sampler and a few synthesizers, Ronnie began crafting his own spin off of current electronic "club" music. Still working with his brother Jason, Ronnie's new band, Dance House Children, posited cold, hypnotic electronica against quaint, old fashioned lyrics. After producing another album, Jesus, Dance House Children found Jason leaving to pursue his own musical endeavors, Starflyer 59. With the help of a few friends, Ronnie turned from the club oriented music to a more melodic, orchestrated sound. A large range of instruments were used on his third album, containing timpanis, Moog synthesizers, and far more exotic sounds than anything he had previously produced. It was evident that Martin was quickly moving beyond the level of pre programmed keyboard sounds as he became more well versed in the programming of his synthesizers. Rainbow Rider: Beautiful Dazzling Music No. 1, the name of his third album, formed the bridge between Martin's "techno" like early days and his enigmatic Joy Electric creation. Rainbow Rider was part of the name of Ronnie's third album, rather than a change in the name of the musical group from Dance House Children.

During the process of writing his fourth album originally intended as Beautiful Dazzling Music No. 2, then Fairy Tale Melodies (some Tooth and Nail promotional material came out with this name), and then later to be renamed simply as Melody Martin found the sound of his project changing radically. Of course, changes were quite evident during Beautiful Dazzling Music, but this fourth album carried things to the extreme. Analog synths began to dominate the studio floor space. Furthermore, Martin began perfecting a clock like musical technique that had a strange assortment of blips and whirls constantly rotating in the background. The fourth album resulted in several things: a new band name (Joy Electric), his signing with a new label (Tooth & Nail Records), and the launching of Martin's signature sound which he carries to this day.

By this time, Martin became increasingly fascinated with the idea of musical "purism". Finding inspiration in '70s electronic bands that were "purists" out of necessity (having nothing but simple analog synthesizers with which to assemble an entire collage of blurpy sounds), Martin delegated nearly his entire studio to the closet and vowed to build an album up, brick by brick, from the sounds of just one master synthesizer. Under this constraint he went to work—designing, programming, and storing all his sounds for the new album in a Roland JD 990. Putting all his eggs in one basket (or synthesizer in this case) left Martin particularly vulnerable to one perennial problem: his synthesizer's storage memory got wiped clean. It's uncertain how this happened, but halfway through the new album Martin found that all his work had been lost. Martin had to begin again from scratch. Taking this opportunity to reconsider his approach, he decided to move into an even more purist direction than before, determined to create a cohesive synthesizer concept album with a medieval, Tolkienesque feel. Of all his albums, Martin consistently cites this as his least favorite. (On top of feeling burnt out from the amount of work he put into the album, he came to feel in retrospect that the albums' more experimental sound concealed a somewhat subpar group of songs, in terms of hooks and melodies). and on colored 12" vinyl by Republic of Texas Recordings and Somewherecold Records in October 2005. The Otherly Opus was released on March 20, 2007 as the fifth and final volume in the Legacy series, noted as "Moog Dynasty Years Volume 2". The album includes some of the most intricate vocal work on a Joy Electric album to date. Thematically, the album is split in two halves. The first half is known as The Otherly Opus, while the second half is The Memory of Alpha, a mini concept album about antediluvian times. The album's companion EP, Their Variables, contains remixes of all songs on The Otherly Opus as well as two new songs. It was released on September 18, 2007.

Continuing on the Moog tradition of the previous two albums, Joy Electric's album My Grandfather, The Cubist was released May 27, 2008. The following year, two EPs were released: Early Cubism is a digital download consisting of demos of three tracks from My Grandfather, The Cubist, while Curiosities and Such contains six new songs. In 2009, Joy Electric released "Favorites at Play", an album composed of covers of artists such as Coldplay, The Killers, Blink 182 and more.

On March 20, 2012, Joy Electric announced that the new album would be released independently. A Kickstarter campaign was launched to raise $6,000 to fund the project. The goal was reached within nine hours. Dwarf Mountain Alphabet had been previously announced in an interview with Ronnie Martin in Fall 2011. The album was released on December 4, 2012.