COCOJOEY'S WORLD (FLUORESCENT PINK CASSETTE) | MUSIC CASSETTE

Before Cocojoey joined the Hausu Mountain family with their 2025 album STARS, it turns out that they had already created their own world: COCOJOEY'S WORLD, and we're all living in it. Chicago-based songwriter / producer / multi-instrumentalist Joey Meland's debut under the Cocojoey moniker originally hit the streets in 2022 as a self-released digital / tape album with subsequent tiny editions to follow on various formats. Hausu Mountain is delighted to return COCOJOEY'S WORLD to the physical world with a proper tape / CD reissue that features a bonus track and updated artwork / packaging from HausMo honcho Max Allison. The album demonstrates that Meland's spellbinding omni-genre production style, hyper-intricate vocal and keyboard performances, and earworm hook sensibilities were all there from the jump - a culmination of a lifetime of musical exploration and personal growth that manifests in grand fashion from the project's earliest material. Ecstatic pop melodies collide with brutal death metal breakdowns. Operatic arias float over 16-bit video game fantasias. Piano solos dance through bossa nova arrangements and spiral into Meshuggah-esque prog denouements. Cocojoey's toolkit is bottomless and they apply everything in their brain, their hands, and their heart to pursue unfettered self-expression. More than future Cocojoey material, COCOJOEY'S WORLD highlights breakbeats and drum & bass production as a rhythmic starting point for each track's skyward trajectories, imbuing the album with a bright and fidgety energy that it's composer aptly describes as "Wii-Sports-Core." We get the feeling that Meland has our pleasure as listeners in mind at all times, seeking out moments of tranquility or joy in equal measure with moments of catharsis and abandon. This philosophy is so in keeping with Hausu Mountain's ethos as a label that it feels like COCOJOEY'S WORLD has always been in the catalog. But now, it's official.