Joviale – Mount Crystal
Joviale is thrilled to announce their debut album, Mount Crystal, out September 12th via Ghostly International in conjunction with its lead single/video, “HARK!.”
Co-produced by Joviale with John Carroll Kirby, Jkarri, and Kwaku Konadu, Mount Crystal is an ascendant, conceptual album. The songs are electric and soulful, dashed with jazzy experimentation, rhythmic rock, and vibrant sound design, all realized with a cast of collaborators including Sam Wilkes, Carter Lang, and Will Miller. Initially imagined as a play, Mount Crystal brims and bursts with life — peril, humour, and the buzz of the human spirit — conjuring a metaphysical climb that transcends the audio format. With plans to further manifest the vision as a live set and more, Joviale sets the course:
“Mount Crystal’s lore is driven by the embodiment of desire, danger, and desperation. A mirrored dimension in a distant reality where nothing is left unsaid. These chapters crave to tear apart the illusion of pleasure by alchemising the unrelenting pain I’ve experienced in my efforts to love, deny, and embrace the sweetest melodies with the sweetest friends.”
“HARK!” acts as the album’s super-charged centerpiece, crossing sinister funk with serene majesty. “Not even them mountains can stop you! Not even them angels can help you!,” Joviale shouts into the horizon as records scratch, guitars solo, and voices shriek and laugh. The group leaned into an evil groove during its recording, where Michael Jackson’s Thriller was a studio playlist staple. Joviale says about the track, “Sometimes things don’t make sense but we can still have fun in that uncertainty.”
Inspired by the comedic musical mastery of Prince’s 1986 film Under the Cherry Moon and the offbeat surrealism of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Joviale first saw Mount Crystal as a murder mystery, hypothetically casting each collaborator as a character in the story. Co-producer John Carroll Kirby (Steve Lacy, Frank Ocean, Solange, Kacey Musgraves) became the American cop investigator tracking a series of murders in a strange British hotel. Joviale and contributors Fabiana Palladino and Laura Groves are entertainers at the hotel; co-producer Joshua Gaskin-Brown aka Jkarri (PinkPantheress, Nia Archives, Bel Cobain, Natanya), is the resident handyman always at work in the periphery, and so on. The loose framework immediately set a relaxed, anything-goes mentality to recording sessions spread over various makeshift studio set-ups, including Joviale’s living room during a month-long stay in Barcelona. “We all have one thing in common, which is that we love to jam as musicians and love to have a stupid time and we will work from each other’s houses,” says Joviale. “In this trio with John and Joshua, I felt very much in the lead; they’d be like, ‘we get it,’ and that’s because we were able to jam through it.”
Joviale’s personality reverberates across Mount Crystal’s densely detailed world. They speak with swagger and sing skyward, cutting through rubbery basslines and angular strums, synthesised horns and harps, unruly beats, and unusual sound bites. The antithesis of background music, these songs leap from headphones much like an engrossing movie makes itself known on screen. Joviale’s sonic references span Sade, Kate Bush, Janet Jackson, Todd Rundgren, ‘60s girl groups, Japanese composers, and “the freaky guys and girls and the divas of the ‘80s… glamorous rock’n’roll, Rick James, Prince, Quincy.” Artists who prioritised playful ambition and bravado.
While set up as fictional abstractions, these songs also reflect Joviale’s lived-in experiences: broken-hearted letdowns, realizations, and the search for clarity and truth. Sequencing arcs upward and back down as if scaling its namesake. Lyrics detail dynamics between the self and others.
Joviale Tour Dates:
Wed. Sept. 17 – Liverpool, UK @ Jacaranda Club (in-store)
Thu. Sept. 18 – Leeds, UK @ Vinyl Whistle (in-store)
Fri. Sept. 19 – Oxford, UK @ Truck (in-store)
Tue. Sept. 23 – Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade (in-store)
Thu. Nov. 13 – Berlin, DE @ Säälchen *
Sat. Nov. 15 – Utrecht, NL @ EKKO *
Sun. Nov. 16 – Antwerp, BE @ Trix *
Mon. Nov. 17 – Paris, FR @ Petit Bain *
Wed. Nov. 19 – Bristol, UK @ Lantern Hall *
Thu. Nov. 20 – London, UK @ Electric Brixton *
* = supporting Nourished By Time
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