Joviale - Mount Crystal - Blue (Colored Vinyl Blue)

Joviale makes music that feels like a show; drama lies in the tension between pop impulse and something more cerebral and sensorial. A multidisciplinary artist from North London, they came up as a theater kid and now harness their prismatic creative expression across mediums, fusing components of visual art, performance, and recording into a singular world. In 2021, following their Hurricane Belle EP, which caught the attention of Pitchfork and Crack Magazine, they quietly receded from view in an effort to evolve and hone their skills as a writer and producer. In 2025, out from behind the curtains comes Mount Crystal, their full-length debut on Ghostly International, an ascendant conceptual album that reintroduces Joviale's point of view. Songs are electric and soulful, dashed with jazzy experimentation, rhythmic rock, and vibrant sound design, all realized alongside co-producers John Carroll Kirby and Jkarri and a cast of collaborators, including Sam Wilkes, Carter Lang, and Will Miller, among others. Initially imagined as a play, Mount Crystal brims and bursts with life - peril, humor, 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: 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, synthesized 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 girls 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 prioritized playful ambition and bravado. "Moonshine" came together over several jams; Joviale was challenged to channel the classic Prince muse a la Sheila E., Vanity, and Chaka Khan, a notion in contrast to their self-described "giving art teacher'" disposition. They surfaced several lines on the spot (like "I'm easy breezy / Sweeter than a kiwi" while eating an actual kiwi). The track builds to rhythmic bliss with James Mollison of Ezra Collective on saxophone. Late album comedown "Blu!" was their first experience "writing in communion with someone." Jkarri's sweet-toned signatures meld with Joviale's heady cadence as Kirby holds down the keys.

Track List:

Disc: 1

1. The Mountain
2. Snow
3. Heavy
4. Crush
5. HARK!
6. Foul Play
7. Let Me Down
8. Moonshine
9. Both Ways
10. MC (intermission)
11. Beam
12. Blu
13. Disappear
14. Wishing