Ronnie Martin is Joy Electric. For over ten years, he's carefully crafted dense, eletronic pop songs using only analogue sythesizer. With the exception of his voice, every last sound originates in his vintage Roland modular sythesizer. Joy Electric's music is truly electronic pop. Unlike "synth-pop" or "electro-clash", the focus is first and foremost on the songwriting. Before ever touching the sythesizer, Martin composed his songs with the aid of traditional instruments like guitar and piano. Once the osongs are written, he turns to his synthesizer to translate the sings into their final, purely electronic forms. With this carefully attention to songcraft, Martin creates songs that feel instantly timeless in the way that Henry Mancini, Cole Porter, and Morrissey did; songs that seem to exist outside of the constraints of time, as though they could have been written a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now.

The real magic begins when Ronnie Martins turns to his Roland System 100 modular synthesizer. Without the aid of computers, samplers, or drum machines, Martin builds his songs note by note, sound by sound. A synthesized blip is subtly transformed into a kick drum. A hiss of white noise is filtered until it becomes a distance cymbal crash. A simple electronic wave becomes a soaring, triumphant melody under Martin's masterful manipulation. Like a clockmaker sliding tiny gears into place, Martin builds his songs one sound, one note at a time. All of Martin's programing is done using alalogue sequencers, much like those used in the seventies, before the advent of digital sythesizers and sequencers. This tedious, perfectionist method of working allows him to achieve a sonic purity and originality unmatched by anyone or anything else. As Joy Electric, Ronnie Martin, is truly the only person on Earth making music the way he does - 100% synthesized, 100% analogue, every last note and sound built from scratch, every rhythm triggered by volts.

Joy Electric's new album, "The Tick Tock Treasury", is the second in "The Legacy Series" of fantasy-themed concept albums. Much like a series of novels, each record is a self-contained story with its own themes and implied events. As always, the record made entirely on the Roland System 100 modular synthesizer. The only effect used on the record is the Roland RE 2001 "Space Echo", a tape-based echo effect from the early seventies.