Currently based in Los Angeles, j.o.y.s. is a collective started by Ramon Narvaez; a multi-instrumentalist/poet of Puerto Rican descent that split time growing up in Central New Jersey and The Bronx.

j.o.y.s. is an acronym for “jump out of your skin”. While the phrase can conjure moments of shock and surprise, Narvaez, however uses the phrase as a foot lamp illuminating a path towards momentary transcendence - a sudden or gradual process of skin-shedding of former selves and past lives. j.o.y.s., as an album, reconciles with the past before blissfully stumbling into something new.

The music on j.o.y.s. follows a similar serpentine path. An album comprising 9 songs that represent the culmination of countless hours of experimentation and collaboration that went into the recording process. This consisted of Narvaez living in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles using a spartan set-up of electric guitar, a few pedals and a laptop and Narvaez’s longtime friend and collaborator Justin Gaynor contributing pedal steel from his apartment in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. The synchronicity not lost on the two, the theme of travel or trekking is prominent on the album - both in the physical sense and across the ribbon of memory that shape our identity.

To that end, Narvaez’s friendship and collaboration with Justin Gaynor (who releases music under the name Bestamo) started in High School in Piscataway, New Jersey, extended into the heady days of early aughts Brooklyn and continued even when Narvaez moved across the country. The two would dedicate Fridays to improvising and exploring new sounds together through video chat - bending time around them to keep their collaboration alive. A Tim Hecker show and Relatives in Descent by Protomartyr were pivotal gifts from the universe that would encourage Narvaez to turn these improvisations with Gaynor into a fully fleshed record. This led to Narvaez seeking out Sonny DiPerri, whose production credits include julie, Wisp, DIIV, Emma Ruth Rundle, my bloody valentine as well as Protomartyr’s Relatives in Descent to mix j.o.y.s. and serve as the resident mentor / spiritual advisor. During these sessions Narvaez would use this opportunity to understand how DiPerri worked, why he liked what he liked and why he made decisions during production. Following this tutelage, Adam Gonsalves was brought on to master the record for vinyl.

While the pedal steel is prominent, j.o.y.s., as a project, is more in conversation with shoegaze and noise than what has recently been deemed ambient country. Heavy brutalist slabs of noise, swirling feedback create the sound bed of these songs. Gaynor’s pedal steel on this album operates as important connective tissue as both the road and the traveler between the light and shadow zones. Drones are wrapped in distortion, processed just below the threshold where we’d throw the word “harsh” around. Rather, there is a delicate dance between Gaynor’s top-rope pedal steel lines - always sweet and always just a bit mournful - with Narvaez’s ringing bass notes and noise chatter. The two tread around each other warily - the push and pull creating positive tension that is necessary in anything deemed “ambient”. Listen to “heights” as an excellent example of this, or the way “lee & leo” lets those notes hang in the air while Gaynor’s pedal steel rises to catch them.

The light can’t ignore the dark. The record treads those venn diagram liminal zones admirably. Tim Hecker’s Harmony in Ultraviolet, loveliescrushing and Daniel Lanois Goodbye to Language are some of the ghosts piping into the Overlook’s sound system. Jon De Rosa’s excellent In Sea under the Aarktica moniker also feels like a fellow traveler here.

The self-titled debut album from j.o.y.s. is a journey between two longtime friends reconnecting and arriving at their own unique blend of apocalyptic euphoria