Joe Nora - Land of the Endless

Joe Nora 'Puzzle Face' LP OUT NOW

Without chaos, there can be no clarity. Without soil, nothing will bloom. If life was devoid of challenges, art would become a series of dull plateaus. On his latest Friends of Friends album, the Bay-to-L.A. producer Joe Nora transcends the confusion with a work of startling beauty. His Puzzle Face is a series of colorful jumbles solved, existential paradoxes reconciled, phosphorescent beats floating above the grime of day-to-day existence.

The album’s genesis traces back to a period of stress and adversity. Nora found himself grappling with the big picture questions that plague us all: how does one survive financially while maintaining their sanity, physical health, and some semblance of normalcy? (whatever that might mean). He understood the need to rebuild from the ground up, but couldn’t ignore the daunting nature of such a radical overhaul. The only solution to the uncertainty was to go one step at a time, convert the ambiguity into a work of ingenuity, and re-assemble the pieces of the puzzle to discover the path forward.

The resulting mosaic embodies California cool and subterranean grit, sumptuous textures, and celestial levitation. It encompasses aqueous instrumental beat music, philosophical underground hip-hop, and soul-affirming alternative R&B. Puzzle Face reflects a coherent and introspective vision while simultaneously building a world of like-minded conspirators. At times, it recalls the ghostly wind chime soul of Teebs, the unquantized astral odysseys of Flying Lotus, and the ethereal funk of his FoF labelmates. Yet Nora’s vision is a singular reflection of his own left turns and limber experimentation.

In its three-dimensionality, seamlessness, and immaculate textures, Puzzle Face marks a major leap from Nora’s already formidable body of work. You can see his eye for film photography and facility with the Super 8, as applied to the timeless scenes and tableaus that populate the album. But Nora’s music is much more than pleasant background noise to vibe to. It’s a skeleton guy to finding something buried in your psyche. The aural equivalent of endlessly wandering through a maze until you are forced by necessity to discover the proper way to pivot. It’s the soundtrack to a life examined, scrutinized, and understood – at least until the record stops.

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