WORLD PREMIERE VIDEO - JOEMCA

Watch: Joemca - "Big Dreams" from Consequence of Sound on Vimeo.

Joemca Premieres "Big Dreams" Video. His album, 16 Devils will be out late summer on One Stone/The Orchard.  Joemca (JUM+KA) EP Out Now On One Stone Records.

Here’s a line you don’t hear very often: “The puppet world blows my mind.”

We’re not talking about the next generation of Jim Hensons here, either. We’re referring to Joemca’s ongoing relationship with Inkfish, an experimental puppetry troupe that explores the human condition like John Cusack’s string-pulling character in Being John Malkovich. And by exploring the human condition, we mean everything from a “fantasy of Einstein taking back the [atom] bomb” (The Brain) to a moody meditation on war-torn wives (Three Good Wives), with Joemca’s rich, tightly-woven soundscapes scampering across every last scene.

Kinda like how the L.A. native/New York transplant spent the last year coloring outside the lines of his long-awaited debut LP, 16 Devils. Despite having roots that reach as far back as 2006, the album feels like one seamless collection of love songs that are a little off, a little more real than one verse/chorus, verse/chorus exercise after another. Which makes sense when you think about it. After all, Joemca’s self-titled EP was co-produced by Yoko Ono’s longtime collaborator, Rob Stevens, earning a stack of press clippings for its “tastefully morbid tales of hummable melodrama” (Spin) and “words [that] are as heady as the music itself” (All Music Guide). Or as The Village Voice put it, “Hearing [Joemca] is like taking a walk through a scattered mind, yet it all somehow makes sense.”

“My puppet show stuff is a lot more abstract and atmospheric,” explains Joemca, “but my solo songs are more like Sam Cooke—deceptively simple.”

That’s immediately clear if you listen closely, as “Big Dreams” raises the curtain with crushed beats and groove-locked hooks. Elsewhere, “Tip Toe” is haunted by phantasmagoric harmonies; “Sleeping Pattern” is pelted by laser-like synths and clouded keys; and “Control Yourself” is cut with restless rhythms that are a few BPMs away from being a drum ’n’ bass single. So while Joemca insists he’s been influenced by Al Green as of late, his background in classical composition (Mozart, Chopin) and cutting-edge electronic music (Oval, Plaid) also seeps into 16 Devils’ shape-shifting songs. That, and Joemca’s days of studying film in college.

“I was more interested in being an auteur than anything else,” he says, “so I’d write and direct all my own movies. No one would understand any of it, but they made perfect sense to me.”

Joemca’s records are much more universal—the perfect balance between artiness and accessibility. And he’s not about to stop making them, either. Another set of songs is already in its early stages, although Joemca insists, “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I like when things aren’t spelled out for anyone, you know?”

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