Joy Electric

Item: The Tick Tock Treasury
Author: Tyler Baber

The Tick Tock Treasury

(2003)

Reviewed by Tyler Baber

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Label Tooth & Nail RecordsDecapolisMarch 2003

electronic indie pop synth pop

Joy Electric is one of those musical experiences, one that the listener either loves or hates. Ronnie Martin's synthesizings have been getting him attention for about ten years now, and Tick Tock Treasury is Martin's seventh full length original album in addition to quite a few EP's and a best-of/rarities type boxed set.

For the uneducated listener, hearing one Joy E song is hearing them all, with the possible exception of Unelectric for obvious reasons. The music is loop based electronica made entirely on analog synthesizing equipment with Martin's unique voice singing through. Joy Electric isn't quite electronica, it really isn't quite any one genre. In fact when describing Ronnie's music "original" is one of the few unbiased words that comes to mind when hearing Joy E. His voice, which has been described as "the voice of an effeminate robot-fairy" stands out more than the boops and whirs of the synthesizer, especially since twelve tracks of drum machine loops and "bum-chik-boop"s can get tiresome.

Joy Electric's originality is not confined to Ronnie's voice. The words to the songs on the Tick Tock Treasury are the typical fare of bipolar lyricism. Going from unhealthily jolly in songs like "Tick Tock Treasury" and "The Confectionary" to brooding and depressed in "(I Am) Made From the Wires" and "C Minor Miners," Ronnie does the usual flip flop between the giddy schoolboy and embittered veteran of life. Thankfully it seems as if Ronnie was given some type of prescription that keeps the mood swings to a minimum on this album, with the side effect of blaring cynicism. Most of Tick Tock Treasury explores the unpleasant aspects of life without being dark to the point of the listener wishing for synthesizer-assisted suicide. "Misfortune's Apprentice" and "(Design) The Blueprints for Joy" are neither depressing nor sugary, a pleasant escape from what people have become used to in Joy Electric albums. Songs such as these that make listening to the album the entire way through a more tolerable experience, the listener can finish without feeling like life has lied to them in some way.

The music on Tick Tock Treasury plays a subtly strong part in the album. There seems to be an undercurrent of clockwork, with simple metronome driven beats hidden under more complex clicks and whistles. Ronnie's synthesizers paint a fairyland that has been over run with industrialization, a sort of fantasy urban landscape where unicorns drink happily downstream from factories spewing out cotton candy clouds of pollution. The world of imagination is at war with the world of the clock, and Ronnie Martin is the protestor waving his picket sign hoping some one will notice.

Tick Tock Treasury is, for fans of Joy Electric, a mature Ronnie Martin. The boy who sang hopefully of fairies and candy canes and the angsty young man who bitterly reflected on monosynths and matterhorns have finally grown into a man who realizes that life can be both happy and sad and music doesn't have to reside on the extreme ends of the spectrum. However, the music alone is enough to ensure that people who aren't fans of the band's history probably won't change their minds in hearing Tick Tock Treasury. While it may be one of Ronnie's strongest albums to date, it is still a Joy Electric album and that fact alone is enough to make this album relatively inaccessible.

C+