Joyero

Running the emotional gamut from cooly contemplative to fiercely dissonant, Joyero is an electronic pop project created by composer and multi-instrumentalist Andy Stack. On the debut Joyero album, 2019's Release the Dogs, Stack creates sleek soundscapes from suspended synthesizer lines, built around spare but tuneful melodies. He next adds vocals delivered in a hushed whisper, spare percussion patterns, and sounds that run with or against the current of the tunes given the mood the artist is hoping to evoke. Joyero represents Stack's debut solo project after establishing himself as a valued collaborator with other musicians. Joyero founder Andy Stack was born in 1985 in Baltimore, Maryland. After completing high school, he attended the University of Maryland, and later went on to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 2006, Stack and Jenn Wasner, a fellow Baltimore indie rock fan who had known Stack since high school, formed the duo Wye Oak, with Stack on drums and keyboards and Wasner on guitar (later bass) and vocals. Wye Oak grew into a successful and critically celebrated indie band, evolving from a folk-accented sound into an approach that embraced electronic influences. As Wye Oak's profile rose, Stack found there was a demand for his talents during his time off from the duo. He became a frequent sideman with the groups EL VY and Lambchop, appeared on recording sessions with Shearwater, Madeline Kenney, and Helado Negro, and composed the music for the 2017 independent film Black Mud, as well as scoring a handful of television commercials. At a time when Stack found himself with spare time between musical commitments and romantic relationships, he holed up in a small studio in his adopted hometown of Marfa, Texas, and started assembling his first solo recordings. Eventually, Stack recorded a full album's worth of electronic-based pop tunes, and Merge Records, the label that also released Wye Oak's recordings, struck a deal with him to issue his new solo material. Stack adopted the name Joyero for the project, and Merge issued Release the Dogs in August 2019.
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