Joa Joys music sounds and feels like his name. There’s a languid earnestness in the airy melodies and discordant chord progressions of his latest album, Alvie, but it’s all imbued with humor and mystery. Homemade instruments spew novel timbres, creating strange aural outcroppings etched with glassine tones and gummy resonances. A bouncing cadence underpins the gleaming soundworld, fueling the joyous tendrils punctuating this realm of vibrant shapeshifting.
Alvie is OUT NOW on Discrepant. Find Joa Joys HERE.
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Where does your relationship with sound begin? Are there early memories, specific recordings, moments that first made a deep impression on you?
The music of my parents’ home (a Lot of early Argentine rock music, Luis Alberto Spinetta, and jazz folklore, Jorge Fandermole), the music played at home during my childhood, was very diverse; my parents encouraged us to be interested in music. I grew up surrounded by instruments from a young age, too, listening to my dad and my brother play. I shared a room with my older brother, and he would fall asleep listening to Argentine punk rock cassettes.
I went to quite a few experimental D.I.Y music shows as a teenager—“Circuito C!nico” and the bands led by my teachers from the I.V.A Instituto Vocacional de Arte Manuel José de Labardén (the public art school my friends and I attended as teenagers).
And then the bands that we made with my friends when we were 16 years old were experimental too. “La rata terrible” was one of them.
You work across music and visual art, and the two seem genuinely connected in how you think rather than running parallel. How did that connection develop? Did one come before the other?
Drawing and all my interests in the visual arts have been part of my life since I was a kid. In some way, I feel more like a visual artist than a musician. I studied art, and with music, I am mostly self-taught.
During my teenage years, thanks to a supporting group of friends, the I.V.A (the public art school I attended after school), and family members, I was able to find the courage to start making music. One exercise I’ve incorporated into my practice ever since is thinking about how these two processes can feed into each other—That’s more interesting to me than thinking of one practice as subordinate to the other.
The instrumental music I choose to make today also gives me freedom in this regard, as it isn’t constrained by words.
Your music is described as approaching sound as a habitable space. That’s a phrase I find myself really drawn to, actually. Something about that resonates with me deeply. What does it mean to you to make sound feel like somewhere you can actually be?
It’s a phrase that evokes a personal and sometimes elusive feeling that comes over me when I’m making and listening to music. It means so much to me, and it’s one of the reasons why I devote so much of myself to this.
For me, it’s sometimes hard to find the words to describe my own music, so this feels more concrete than “ambient”.
Alivie explores the experience of physical pain, its different phases, and the ways we cope with it. How did you find your way into that subject? Was it clear from the start that this was what the album was about?
When you create something artistic, even if it’s a very personal work, you aren’t necessarily always talking about yourself. I think there’s also something interesting that happens beyond the self-referential. For various reasons, it was clear from the start that this album had to revolve around that theme.
When I was younger, I had some conversations with the great Argentine teacher and artist Carolina Andreetti that helped me a lot. I often think back to something she once told me, which went something like this: “Art will never give you answers; rather, it will raise more questions.”
So I feel that my intention regarding these themes—and in general—is that: to ask a question.
The album is poetic rather than confessional, and that distance feels important. What did treating pain as image and atmosphere rather than this kind of direct expression make possible?
For me, the complexity of this album was precisely that: how I could address themes without having to name them so directly.
In relation to the previous question, I wanted this album to raise a question rather than provide an answer. Personally, what interests me is working with these moods, images, and evocations. What happens when the work is completed through another person’s listening experience is uncertain and personal. I like that.
I illustrated the cover art based on a dream in which I pulled that ghostly centipede off my hand and felt a great sense of relief, and then the arthropod went on its way. I aim for the things I create not to be too closed off, but to remain open and able to accommodate other questions and meanings.
Humor and joy (yes!) appear alongside weight and pain on this record, which feels true to how those things actually coexist in life. Was that balance something you planned, or did it find its way in naturally?
It was something that came up during the process. I had my doubts at times, but I like embracing the ambivalence of approaching my work in a “serious” way—or with a certain solemnity—while at the same time doing the opposite.
It’s a game. I’m playing, and I had a lot of fun recording the album.
My sense of humor is involved, too, and I thought it was fine to just let it be.
The palette here is very specific: digital and analog synthesizers, some hand-built, alongside flute, mandolin, and guitar. How did that combination come together for this album? Did the subject matter lead you toward particular sounds?
I like to define a timbral palette when working on an album. That choice is influenced by various factors depending on the project. In the case of Alivie, the title track was the catalyst for the idea of trying to “detune the MIDI.”
In other words, to disrupt the grid-based logic of digital production on the computer through various techniques, one of which is recording off-grid, the use of acoustic instruments and my current state of abilities as a music player, as well as the incorporation of DIY synthesizers with their characteristic instability.
Although I had already been working on this, I think that with Alivie I was able to explore it more deeply, and that adds to the album’s overall interpretation.
Building your own synthesizers is its own kind of practice. What does making the instrument give you that buying one doesn’t?
I don’t know if I like to think of it in those terms; I believe you can do something incredible with the tools you have at your hands, and every instrument has something special if you take the time to discover it.
But these synthesizers connect me to something similar to wearing a woolen garment knitted by a family member. My initial motivation for DIY electronic music equipment had to do with the fact that when I started making solo and experimental music in 2013 in Argentina, a synthesizer wasn’t something accessible. In fact, it’s still a limiting tool because of its price, but I think that perhaps with today’s technological advances, there are some options. I’m not an expert in electronics; I started building my first synthesizers at Manuel Osorio’s Tercer Brazo workshop. Making friends and following my curiosity, that journey is valuable to me. In the case of Alivie, I think they added a certain instability to the sound that fits well.
The record moves between atmospheric passages, folk-like elements, and moments of energy and abstraction. Is there a logic to how those different modes alternate, or does it follow something more intuitive? How much of it is planned before you start recording?
I wanted to experiment with moments that were more intensely energetic than on previous albums. The first of this project is from 2015, and I barely used drums throughout the years on 10 albums. Part of the self-imposed challenge, along with the theme, was to include certain rhythms and drum patterns, play more acoustic instruments, and try to make all of this come together as a cohesive whole.
That said, the way those elements intertwined was part of the mystery that always comes with working on an album—the good kind of mystery.
Alivie was recorded and mixed in your own studio, El círculo de pasto. How important is that to how you work? What does having your own space make possible?
“El círculo de pasto” is the home studio I have in my bedroom.
There’s also a bit of my sense of humor in this—I thought it was funny to give it a name when I started recording solo music in 2015, as if it were a professional studio.
I don’t know if this musical project would exist in the same way if I hadn’t had the chance to record, mix, and experiment so much with sound in the privacy of my room.
My approach is always to try to do the best I can with the tools I have; albums by artists I really like were recorded in similar settings, so this is something that’s part of my process. Although sometimes I’m curious to know what it would be like to record an album in a different space…
In the case of my previous album, Reposo (Pakapi Records 2023), I composed, recorded, and mixed it entirely on a cell phone.
Buenos Aires feels like it’s very much a part of this music, or an inspiration. How does the city filter into what you make?
That’s true. When we were thinking about scenarios for listening to the album with a friend, we said it’s an album that works well for listening to while moving around the city. The track “Asfalto,” in particular, is heavily influenced by this; in one part of it, I recreated city noises using D.I.Y analog synthesizers. The title and the feeling this track aims to convey have something to do with the physical and mental strain in the city’s brutal duality—as a place of both possibility and hostility, depending on an individual’s circumstances, and now exacerbated by more extreme weather conditions.
Pain changes over time: it recedes, returns, transforms. Did making this album change your relationship to the experiences it came from?
I don’t know, but it’s already interesting to revise and talk about the process. When the music is released into the world, something happens that’s hard to describe but very beautiful, and I feel like it doesn’t have a defined ending point. It’s more like an ellipsis.
What surprised you the most about making this album?
The time it took to come out—for various reasons—was longer than it had been for other releases, but it was a fun one to make.
And finally, to close as always… what are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
I like the sounds at night best. I like when the noises calm down a bit, and it’s easier to be more aware of the spaciousness of them.
I like frogs too…
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
