Joni Void
Everyday Is The Song

“It operates a graceful disintegration and re-composition of the streets - through hundreds of tape samples. There are raw, strident sounds - many of them filtered and unidentifiable - occasionally morphing into melodies. Layer upon layer, Void creates a crowded yet ghostly landscape.” - NARC

 “Seamless set of found sounds that weaves from found-sound electro to musique concrète… an enviable musical achievement.” - ECHOES AND DUST

"In the eye of an emotive dust devil he creates loopological, plunderphonic, and sampladelic lo-fi dizzy spells, with himself as bedroom troubadour..." - BAD ALCHEMY

“At times the songs are unusually moving or unexplainably powerful, then at others tensely disorientating or distant. One thing is certain though, peering into Joni Void’s sound world is never dull.” - BACKSEAT MAFIA

Everyday Is The Song is Joni Void’s third album for Constellation and a deeper plunge into emotive audio montage; the Montréal-based French-British producer calls it “Tape Vortex / Musique Verité / Memory Collage”. The album’s raw material relies centrally on a Walkman bought at local record shop Death Of Vinyl in spring 2020 and lost at a Backxwash show two years later, but not before hours of audio snippets were captured and archived. Everyday Is The Song is an evocative sample-based sonic diary brimming with warmth, transience and hyper-specificity where Void explores a more abstract and interstitial terrain of drifting miniatures. It remains very much a collection of songs, but relative to the more assertive and intensive tracks channeling explorations of traumatic interiority on their previous pair of acclaimed LPs, Void’s new album flows with intentional lightness and a more incidental atmosphere. Songs are constructed from audio recordings made all over and often while literally on the move: walking, cycling and skateboarding around the city; in bus and train stations; from car windows. The album’s overt musical material was recorded, often spontaneously and informally, in all sorts of jam spaces, living rooms and at local live shows. Perambulation is a central theme and constituent fabric of Everyday Is The Song, carrying with it a colloquial spirit of gentle, intrinsic sentimentality. The self-proclaimed “love, soul, agency, and whimsy” virtues of Ruby Yacht (R.A.P. Ferreira, Pink Navel, et al) have also been a lodestar for Void in this respect. 

As Sasha Geffen writes in their glowing 8.0 Pitchfork review of Joni Void’s last album Mise En Abyme (2019): "There is still experience that can't be atomized and analyzed, however slippery it may be even to those feeling it; [Void] hunts that sensation of flux and liminality, unearthing warmth in a landscape of paranoia." Everyday Is The Song continues in this ineffable vein, but on an explicit mission to substitute psychosis with the ephemera of fleeting delight in observation, documentation, participation, the daily small acts of sharing, caring, enthusiasm and kindness of creative being-in-the-world. The album’s sonic travelogue through local audio geography and community conveys a sort of urban pastoralism and charming softness. Less kinetic and beat-driven than previous work, a field recording and audio art sensibility prevails, with a tempered intimacy that sends this new song cycle sailing along mostly dulcet but detailed waves of materiality. The result is an electro-acoustic tape collage album of beautifully drifting melody, occasional voice, wide-ranging ‘instrumentation’ and enchanting texture. Void’s deeply personal and keenly original aesthetic of assemblage and experimentation is on fine display, less burdened by forceful statement-making, but scrupulous, generous, and full of feeling. 

Musician friends whose instruments, sounds and voices appear on the album include Owen Pallett, N NAO, YlangYlang, Sarah Pagé, Shota Yokose, Mojeanne Behzadi, Maya Kuroki, Moshi Moshi and Thoughts On Air to name just a few. The album’s title comes from Strawberry723, a Twitter bot that posted “Everyday Is The Song” on May 5th 2018 (the one-year anniversary of Void’s 2017 Constellation debut Selfless) and serendipitously invokes Void’s own long-running local event and micro-label platform Everyday Ago, itself taken from the Japanese-to-English auto-translate of a sentence about depression that yielded the phrase “I am being sad, everyday ago.” Everyday Is The Song remains perhaps broadly melancholic in temperature, but marks a turn away from angst, agitation, despondency or despair for Joni Void.  Instead, its subjectivity imbues the quotidian with affecting narrative, understated wonder, and a wholly engaging serenity. Thanks for listening.

PACKAGING NOTES

CREDITS

(Adapted from the album's liner notes)

Directed, edited and designed by Joni Void.

"Tape" was originally a johnny_ripper beat made in 2015 & samples The Tape Beatles – Exciting Exiting + Take My Hand.

"Still-Life" samples the 10” lathe test cut of Espace-Temps by Personal Touch
With lo-fi guitar by Scott Johnson and vocals by Sarah Pagé
Outro guitar recording – Owen Pallett + outro voice/poem – Mojeanne Behzadi.

"Disposable" samples Mai Mai – Julia + After Dinner – Glass Tube (Live) + Andrew Cyrille – Rims & Things
+ a snippet from Superpals404 rehearsal with YlangYlang in 2015.

"Non-Locality" samples NYON - The Leaving Song + Phew & Seiichi Yamamoto – 幸福のすみか.

"Event Horizon" features Maya Kuroki + Ida Toninato on vocals & Jarom Osorio on bass
In the outro, the voice sample – Moshi Moshi Live at Parc Angrignon
+ guitar sample is Thoughts On Air – Falling With The Leaves (from the same 10” lathe as "Still-Life").

"Negative Loop" samples Nennen – 4.5 and features Shota Yokose on bass.

"In-Between Moments" features Sarah Pagé on harp & samples a speech by Maya Deren.

"Parallax Error" features N NAO (remix of ‘Dormir’, our 2020 recording sessions and a tape snippet from our duo live performance at Lachine)
+ backing vocals by Sarah Pagé.

"World Is Spinning At 33RPM" samples Yaara Valey – Spinninround featuring Eddie Wagner on flute
+ the voices of (among many) Anas Himjam, Jarom Osorio, Matt Thomson, Eddie Wagner, Shota Yokose.

"Vortex Any% Speedrun" outro vocal sample by Mojeanne Behzadi.

 "Present Day Montage" samples Still Sweet – I’ve Never Seen Paris In The Spring
+ Acid Mt. Royal performance with Sarah Pagé, Maya Kuroki, Shota Yokose & Eddie Wagner on 22 April 2018.

"Post-Credits Scene" samples Cornel Campbell – In A Good Mood Tonight + Dorine Muraille – Muraille_3.

Mastered by Simon Lancelot.