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Experimental, intuitive and feminist, Joye’s pop works like a powerful electronic spell, a ritual of healing and emancipation. After Thelma in 2022, the singer, songwriter and composer now announces ANGEL (this mixtape is for u), six new tracks + bonus to be released in spring 2025. Check out POWER, the first single already available!
“Wise girls go to heaven, others go wherever they want” goes the feminist slogan Joye seems to have made her mantra. At the age of 26, the musician is at the heart of a singular universe looking like a liberating sabbath, above which hover the spirits of Sevdaliza, FKA Twigs, Björk, M83 and Fred Again. Handling synthetic textures, chiaroscuro poetry and electronic experimentation with maturity, Joye makes of her music a tool of care and empowerment for herself and others.
The first ingredients of her sonic potion are to be found in Toulouse, where Joye practiced classical piano for eight years at the conservatoire, wrote her first texts in English as a teenager, and was introduced to sorority within the Sojalisca all-female vocal quartet. Having completed her studies in jazz musicology and music therapy, in 2022 Joye presented Thelma, a first solo EP inspired by Women who run with the wolves, the famous book by storyteller and psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Dedicated to “wild women” – those who dare, who speak out, who resist and claim, those who flaunt their freedom – Joye composed the five tracks on Thelma like restorative incantations and intimate rebirths to transform herself (into a badass warrior, madonna rebel or superheroine, as the EP cover suggests). Through her music, Joye puts her desire for independence into action, and life responds: Inouïs selection at Printemps de Bourges, finalist at the Rose Festival in 2023, pupil at Transversales in 2024.
But Joye is struck by grief. What to do with abysmal grief? How do you transcend the pain? The only option for the musician, who conjures up the darkness with the six new tracks on ANGEL (this mixtape is for u), is to make a mockery of death in order to live even stronger, to get her head above water.
Celestial pop, supernatural synths and luminous vocals are the hallmarks of ANGEL’s repertoire, which also allows itself some bubbling, uptempo electronic eruptions, reflecting the strength of the vital impulse that manages to emerge even when everything goes wrong. An ode to vulnerability, a song of the dark, “WHO’S GONNA FEED ME” explores the vertigo of loss, while “POWER” lights a futuristic bonfire with UK garage overtones, celebrating the art of hope and resilience with dance. True to her feminist convictions, in ANGEL (this mixtape is for u), Joye also settles scores with her monsters and traumas, for herself and all her “broken yet unbreakable” sisters, as Wendy Delorme writes in her novel Viendra le temps du feu. Ruthless and vengeful, in “ SINS” Joye casts spells on those who have done her harm, right up to the hyperpop climax, while in “WITCH” she allows herself to rap ferociously for the first time, ridiculing them and undermining their hold. Leaving to return to what’s alive within you takes a lot of courage, and this is the subject of “REBEL”, which ends in a techno high mass. « Magical » is dreamlike, pure and vibrant, and in a final gesture of gratitude to allies past and present, it bears witness to the healing power of past violence.
Protected by her ANGEL, now invincible Joye no longer hesitates to bare her claws, ready to continue her fight for freedom, life and joy.
Words by Jeanne Lacaille
