State Change by Molly Joyce

State Change is the riveting new album from composer and performer Molly Joyce, out July 11, 2025 via FatCat Records’ 130701 imprint. Blending influences ranging from the 20th century modernist lineage to the spectral drones of Andy Stott, Missy Mazzoli, and Nico Muhly, State Change draws unflinchingly from the medical record of a childhood trauma for seven electro-acoustic tone poems — stark and oppressive in its medical aesthetic, yet ultimately cathartic and healing. Joyce crafted the album with Grammy-winning producer William Brittelle largely at Figure 8 Studios with engineer Michael Hammond.

When Joyce was seven years old, she was involved in a car accident that nearly amputated her left hand and required many intensive surgeries; to this day, her hand is still impaired. Joyce pushed through this life change, and over the past eight years, her reputation has swelled as one of her generation’s most daring, conceptually driven composers.

Joyce’s 2020 debut for New Amsterdam Records, Breaking and Entering, ruminated on this seismic shift in pieces for toy organ, voice, and electronic sampling of both sources. The New York Times noted her music’s “serene power”; The Washington Post described her as “one of the most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome.” Pitchfork lauded her 2022 album Perspective — a sonic portrait of disability built from interview recordings, also released on New Amsterdam — as “a powerful work of love and empathy that underscores the poison of ableism in American culture.”

Using tools like the MUGIC (Music/User Gesture Interface Control) sensor (developed by violinist/composer Mari Kumra), motion capture systems, the touch-sensored KAiKU Music Glove, and pressure-sensitive platforms, she renders rotation, pressure, and gesturing into live, generative sound. Track titles such as “August 6, 1999,” “April 19, 2000,” and “October 26, 2001” mark surgical milestones in a somatic chronology of injury, adaptation, and reinvention.

State Change grew out of Joyce’s doctoral studies at the University of Virginia, where she began experimenting with adaptive music technology. “Some of these pieces started as class assignments,” she explains. “A professor mentioned the phrase state change in passing, and it immediately struck me — not just in a medical sense, but as a compositional idea.” As such, it became a guiding concept — undergirding not only the physiological shifts of acquired disability, but the creative explorations that followed.

“I never want it to be a pity party,” Joyce stresses. “Or to pit myself against doctors or medicine. It was simply material I found interesting to work with.” Her mother, a physician, had saved the operative reports — most of them clinical, but some unexpectedly emotional. One described her as “this poor little girl.” That line stuck. “Over time,” she reflects, “I started wondering: what if I could turn that into music?”

The album opens with “August 6, 1999” — the day of the accident. The first operation — reimplantation, nerve repair, bone fixation — is captured in lines like: “No function / No flexor / No extensor” and “In the wound / Paint and glass / Flesh and bone.” Over glinting sine tones that evoke the sterile chill of a surgical theater, Joyce’s voice cuts through: “I lay down / Wound the left / Skin the flap of what remains.” The opening track also introduces the MUGIC device, which lets her shape clusters of sound without triggering stray pitches — something a traditional keyboard wouldn’t allow.

“August 9, 1999” traces the next procedure: bone shortening, nerve repair, muscle reconstruction. The words remain clinical — “Skin is / Minimal / Flap is / Needed,” “Bone saw / Reset / Closure / Softness” — as the music channels the disorientation of being pulled from the wreck, stared at by strangers. MUGIC sculpts the volume of cascading arpeggios and jolts of pink noise, while gesturally derived sine tone pads flutter beneath. At the track’s climax, Joyce employs her chest voice shrouded in noise from throttling the MUGIC device — only intensifying its sense of unease.

“August 13 + 16, 1999” spans two back-to-back surgeries: a muscle transfer from Joyce’s abdomen to her left forearm and a skin graft from her thigh — followed days later by the flap’s removal due to failed blood flow. MUGIC is mapped to Y-axis rotation, echoing what Joyce calls “the continual up and down of the muscle transfer process.” At the suggestion of producer William Brittelle, the piece culminates in additional electronics and a jolting scream from experimental artist Fire-Toolz — a rupture laid bare.

“November 24, 1999” documents a nerve graft: a sural nerve from Joyce’s left calf used to replace the damaged radial nerve. The scar remains — a lingering presence she addresses in the lyrics: “It enveloped me / It took me / Into scar tissue,” followed by the devastating: “I have feelings / Of one / Movement lost.” A buzzing rectangle wave slices through the sine pulses like the graft itself; Joyce’s vocoder-warped voice seems to distort memory in real time.

“April 19, 2000” marks a turning point: scar tissue is removed from the tendons, and the wrist joint is opened to restore function. The language shifts accordingly: “Supine position / The hand was prepped and draped,” “Two Z-plasties / Six degree angles / Were then created.” The music mirrors this sense of release. Filtered sawtooth waves rise and fall, triggered by “yaw” — the vertical twist of Joyce’s hand — mirroring the slow unbinding of scarred tissue. Her voice floats above in a lighter register, joined by layered harmonies recorded through a studio talkback mic, deliberately chosen for its lo-fi grit.

“October 26, 2001” marks the removal of pins from Joyce’s hand — a rare moment of resolution. “Her wounds were clean, dry, intact / Remaining sutures / Were removed,” the surgical record notes. And then, simply: “No complications / Beginning range of motion.” The piece was composed using Bela, an open-source platform for ultra-low-latency audio, paired with a pressure sensor beneath her left hand. That faint, residual pressure shapes the harmonic texture of chords played with her right — a quiet dialogue between motion and stillness. The piece is restrained, but hopeful — a glimmer of forward motion.

The final track, “July 27, 2007,” arrives years later: a revision surgery to reduce scar size. “Flap elevated / No muscle was left,” she intones. It’s the only work on the album fully notated in traditional Western style. This final piece also features the KAiKU Music Glove, a touch-sensitive device worn on her left hand to trigger MIDI notes and samples. The result is tender and poised — a long exhale after years of fragmentation and repair.

“I was slow / I was slow to accept / The little girl / The little girl in me,” Joyce sings. State Change may mourn what was lost — but it also reclaims what remains. What endured from the wreckage.

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