[Cover photo credit to Margherita Caprilli]
Environmental activists and musical collective from Bologna, Italy, Joycut have released their new album THEBLUWAVE_. THEBLUWAVE_ documents and highlights Joycut’s evolutionary process spanning from the time the group was formed, to their exclusive performance at Robert Smith’s Meltdown Festival in 2018.
THEBLUWAVE_ was recorded in Bologna, Italy “mostly at night, playing all of our instruments available in there, even a shinai, which is a long wooden sword used in Kendo” explain the artists and one of the goals of the music was “liberation from this civilization”.
Joycut explains this experience:
“Writing THEBLUWAVE_ was a very complex, unprecedented, long-lasting and therapeutic process. It went through many phases of our life, photographing them fully. From emotional introversion to technical research, from the exploration of feelings to the construction of pioneering languages and sounds.
The lockdown paralyzed us, we came from wonderful seasons, in full activity and in turmoil and growth. That sudden forced pause, set in a context of darkness, has called everything into question. The album has been completely turned upside down, reopened, remixed, transformed into a sound that screams a need for peace and silence.”
Soon, the band will release the physical version of THEBLUWAVE_. For the physical release, Joycut has “made sure to scrutinize every step of the manufacturing and shipping process” to ensure that their environmental footprint is as small as possible. Granulate, the grains used to make their vinyl release of THEBLUWAVE_, is based on calcium zinc stabilizers, instead of the classic heavy metals stabilizers which are highly toxic. The machines used to manufacture the records are powered by green energy, green gas, and solar energy all supplied by local suppliers.
The sleeves are FSC-certified and use water-based vegan ink, and packages are shipped in a 100% carbon-neutral manner. Larger shipments are sent on a pallet made of recycled wood with biodegradable shrink-wrapping made from 50% sugar cane. Any leftover cardboard from the manufacturing and shipping process is recycled and used for packaging and transporting purposes by the companies the band partners with who use empty spaces on trucks for sharing logistics.
They describe the album as:
A double album | 76 minutes | Four acts | On four sides_
Dedicated to those who dwell on the ways of introversion_
A call that cannot be put off to observe this fragmented contemporaneity_
Explorations dedicated to the experience of abstraction, disorientation, traveling, return_
