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Joy Electric

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Joy Electric is a one-man electropop/synth pop group consisting of Ronnie Martin.

Joy Electric started out 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 Jeff Cloud joined Joy Electric from 1996 until 2002. Ronnie is once again solo as Joy Electric.


Pre-Joy Electric History

Having experimented with live shows, formed countless after-school bands, and recorded an album that was never to be released, Ronnie and his brother Jason found their way onto Michael Knott’s fledgling label, Blonde Vinyl, with a dance album to produce.

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 two similar-sounding albums, Dance House Children found Jason leaving to pursue his own musical endeavors.

With the help of a few friends, Ronnie turned from the club-oriented music to a more melodic, orchestrated sound. The range of instruments on his third album exploded, 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.

The Volatile Years

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 & 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 and Nail), and the launching of Martin's signature sound which he carries to this day.

Although Joy Electric was now part of a "real" record label - with all the benefits of promotion and better distribution - this did not spell the end of Martin's worries for his budding project. Amidst mostly punk, ska, or hardcore bands, Joy Electric was usually dismissed as a Tooth and Nail curiousity - a funny little joke band with Atari music and girlish vocals. Looking back on those years, Martin recalls a crisis of feeling legitimate and being treated as a peer. Audiences at Joy Electric shows remained small. "Melody" caused no stir. The album came and went without much response from the audience, the critics, or anyone in general.

This depressing situation was the backdrop for the next CD - an EP appropriately titled "Five Stars for Failure". This EP - Martin's first, could not have contrasted more with the exuberantly optimistic joy of "Melody". Bi-polar Joy Electric had slumped to the opposite extreme. The sound become slower and more dire. Covering previously happy songs (with remix titles like "The Woods are Haunted" and "The House in the Woods") Martin seemingly undid all his previous work.

Besides simply being sad, the Five Stars EP showed a curious development: with darker sounds and "House in the Woods" songnames that conjured up pictures of frightening Black-Forest scenes, Joy Electric was picking up a strange strain of imagery: the dark world of German folklore, mixed in with a little bit of medieval scenes for good measure. The upcoming album - "We Are the Music Makers" would become the strangest goth album to be produced: dark and Teutonic, electronic and infectious, antiquated with a strong backbeat.

The Slow Turnaround

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 (or rather, out of the lack of having anything but simple analog synthesizers on which to painstakingly 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. This would be purism, surely. No more drum machines. No more samplers. The synthesizer would make every sound. And so under these contraints 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.

Summoning up some long-suffering persistence, Martin again began from scratch. Taking this opportunity, he recalls, he decided to move into an even more purist direction than before. Of course, now that the first half-completed album is no longer in existence, it's hard to gauge just how radical a move that was. But when the new album was realized, it was apparent that, once again, Martin had managed to surprise everyone.

A listen through "We Are the Music Makers" will bring one through Arthurian songs of dim castles, assemblies of knights riding out to battle, and songs dedicated to monarchy and crumbling recollections of Christendom. It was a strange subject matter for a mid-90s electronic album. Of all his albums, Martin consistently cites this as his least favorite. But that should not deter listeners. Indeed, the songs are quickly monotonous - a consequence of Martin's inexperience at this new "purist" model. The songs "Burgundy Years", "Hansel", and "I Beam, You Beam" stand at the core of this album, and are some of Martin's most memorable and emblematic work.

Martin quickly followed this album with yet another EP. While retaining the Black-Forest fairy-tale theme, he dropped the darker, gothic strains and produced a set of songs that were to be the perfect mix of pop and nostalgia. Joy Electric, in some way or another, has always been an escapist band, leading the listener into a sort of musical land largely unfamiliar and isolated. This new EP, "Old Wives Tales," stands as the high-point of that escapism. The songs are beautiful and easy to listen to. The lyrics provide a haven for anyone tired of life as usual and longing for somewhere new and undiscovered to retreat into. "Old Wives Tales" proved to be just what fans were looking for. Shows' audiences began to grow, the EP sold in greater numbers, and favorable articles appeared in all sorts of music magazines. Finally, the band was getting the attention it deserved.

Commercial success

Riding this building wave of popularity, Joy Electric began commanding greater respect both abroad and at home. This attention back home at the Tooth and Nail label was especially critical, leading to a series of albums that were designed to, and indeed succeeded in, garnering some degree of commercial success. Music videos were made and became more widely distributed. The music moved out of cult circles and picked up new fans in rapid numbers.

Thus, "Robot Rock" was the album forecast to launch Martin into his well-deserved place of minor stardom. Tired of feeling like a wimpish techno band amidst his punk labelmates, "Robot Rock" was the album that, as the title suggests, would show the world that electronic music could rock and hold its own against traditional genres. The album moved away from the world of "bedroom production" and into professional studio hands. The vocals came across polished and well-groomed. Having practiced on his analog synthesizers for years, Martin's sounds began commanding better control over his synthesizers' sounds. To showcase these growing skills, the songs were generally more sparse. The entire album harked back, more than any other release, to his groundbreaking work in "Melody".

Greater touring, in turn, led to ever more fans and more attention. Following his pattern, Martin released another EP, although it generally disappointed fans. With only one new song, the rest of the album descended into mediocre covers. The entire album seemed too backward-looking for a band so much on the move. Even the title, "The Land of the Misfits," seemed a parody of earlier times.

And so fans sat back and waited for the next release. And they waited. Eventually another EP materialized, the "Children of the Lord" maxi single. Still following the pattern of flooding the EP with covers, Martin had the sense to at least bring some greater variety to the release. Two songs featured him covering radically different influences: Punk rockers MxPx and seventies singer Keith Green. The last song was a Cloud2Ground cover of a song off the upcoming album. By the sounds of the EP, good things were in store for the next release.

Indeed, in 1999, "CHRISTIANsongs" was released. Concerning the title, Martin explained his frustration over Christian music groups attempting to downplay their religion in hopes for greater commercial success. Having grown up a Christian, Martin had rarely allowed his faith to intrude heavily upon his music. He nevertheless disapproved of silly "we're Christians but we're not a Christian band" statements. In contrast, and to set the record straight for any fans, Martin's new album title left no doubt concerning the matter.

And indeed, "CHRISTIANsongs" contained some of the most overt references to Christianity, exorting believers to remain strong ("Lift Up Your Hearts"), singing musical prayers of religious dedication ("Make My Life A Prayer"), and containing songs proclaiming general obedience to God ("True Harmony"). But the album contained deep lyrical divides. The religious songs were overwhelmingly religious. The other half of the album was, more or less, the usual Joy Electric fare.

"CHRISTIANsongs" also demonstrated Martin's ability to move beyond bubbly-happy songs that critics condemned for being too shallow. The album showcased a wide range of feelings, spanning to familiar exuberant territory all the way into new, darker directions. Not since "We Are The Music Makers" did an album contain so many minor keys.

The Legacy Series

2001 saw the release of Legacy Volume 1: The White Songbook. A year and a half in the making, The White Songbook continued in the synthesized tradition of the past few albums (indeed, on the same semi-modular monosynth; a Roland System 100), but with many intricate and interwoven layers of sounds building on each other. The whole project had a very literary feel to it. The music was divided into four thematic chapters, and the very sparse artwork of the album was meant to invoke the sense of an old book. This album also brought the relatively successful single "We Are Rock". In spite of a level of critical success, Ronnie was miserable during the album's long and tedious production. The companion EP to this album is Starcadia.

The Legacy series continued with The Tick Tock Treasury, whose sparseness was a musical reaction to the thick and lush nature of The White Songbook. Instead of including lyrics in the booklet, Ronnie opted to include a short story which served as inspiration for the title of the album. As opposed to The White Songbook, The Tick Tock Treasury's placement in the Legacy series was found only in a small and passing liner note in the CD insert. The companion EP to this album is the aptly-named The Tick Tock Companion, a long-running set of experimental synthesizer music recorded in one take.

The third Legacy album was Hello, Mannequin. Like its predecessor, its place in the Legacy series was only shown by a small liner note. This album brought a significantly more rigid structure to the songs, with basslines sometimes not changing for the duration of an entire track. The companion EP, Friend of Mannequin, contains remixes, several new songs, and a three-part interview.

The latest Legacy album is also the latest full-length release, The Ministry of Archers. Identified as a Legacy album only by the mark "lv4" (for Legacy Volume 4) in the liner notes, this album was also the first to be produced in the newly-renovated Electric Joy Toy Company on Ronnie's new Moog synthesizer equipment. The new synthesizer brought a significant change in sound, though the album bears some resemblance to previous Legacy works. Namely, it is broken into chapters like The White Songbook and contains no lyrics like The Tick Tock Treasury. The companion EP, Montgolfier and the Romantic Balloons, is split into two sections: an eponymous mini concept album, and a collection of remixes and extra tracks called Other Archers.

Discography

Website

The Joy Electric website is very simple and somewhat broken, the only images being of the merchandise available there. The site has an enter page, displaying the band's latest release (currently Montgolfier and the Romantic Balloons). The proceeding page was designed with frames, the only colors being gray (background) and pink, black and blue (text and links). The index page once had a blunt introduction, referring to the site as "Joy Electric on the computer" and proclaiming that the site had no images or effects, or "anything getting in the way of what you came here for; information." This part of the site is now blank.

Features

The top header of the site features various links, leading to pages with amateurish designs and fairly useful information.

  • news features the latest announcements from Joy Electric, typically tour news and magazine reviews of his latest albums.
  • shows displays the current Joy Electric shows.
  • The store is the place to purchase albums, package specials, clothing and other merchandise related to Joy Electric.
  • notes is a rarely updated area of the site, an album log written by Ronnie Martin.
  • ejtc is an article on the current whereabouts of the bands who record at the Electric Joy Toy Shop, currently featuring Joy Electric and The Bros. Martin.
  • The forum is simplistic; the highlights being a section where users ask Ronnie questions and he politely answers them (Ask Ronnie...), a now deleted area for buying, trading and selling electronics (The Pawn Shop) and the users' strange Internet culture.
  • myspace is Joy Electric's (rarely, if ever updated) MySpace page.
  • contact has the e-mail addresses for management, booking and Martin himself.
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