JAY ISAAC

Baby Barn is a collection of 8 songs made while renovating the baby barn on our property. A baby barn is a barn that is smaller than a regular barn. The album is about the tools I used, the mice that no longer live there, their many nests, the pink insulation they used to build their nests, tradespeople I met, some who didn’t show up after meeting them, skies I saw while up a ladder, and excitement about the prospect of making money that is not from creative projects. The barn will be turned into a short-term holiday rental or guest house for friends and family. This album will be the soundtrack of my memories of this renovation project and also will be the soundtrack of the actual barn, as it will be played consistently during guests’ visits. But, it will be played in the inaccessible loft in a soundproof box so it won’t be audible. But it will be playing above guests while they stay and will be part of the experience we are developing to make our place stand out.

Pain Funnel is a 33-minute narrative sound piece consisting of 12 segments. It exists as a supplement to the exhibition Pitch Assembling which took place at Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto September 1-30, 2023. The piece abstractly chronicles Isaac’s personal experience as a door-to-door salesperson while also relating an imagined journey of peddlers who were early Lebanese immigrants to New Brunswick.

“Pain Funneling” is a term used in sales that attempts to recognize different forms of pain a customer may be experiencing and proposes to resolve that pain through sales-based solutions. It is a series of questions that assist a salesperson in uncovering a prospective customer’s needs,  or pain points, and allows them to make a sale while providing assistance.

Pain Funnel is a narrative that amalgamates Isaac’s interests in sales techniques, IFS therapy, and noise (music). IFS therapy, or Internal Family Systems, is a therapy model that proposes that an individual is comprised of “parts” or subpersonalities that interact in a similar way in which members of a family would. A “part” can be made up of traits that are the influence of an ancestor, whose own experiences have been passed forward into the present.  Like the sales technique of pain funneling, IFS attempts to uncover, both by the client and therapist, pain points through deep introspection, and then find ways in which to manage these.

Noise is an unpatentable, free, and ever-present phenomenon and is the primary musical influence of Pain Funnel. As a non-commercial form of music, noise offsets the entrepreneurial narrative by being a system of sound that is difficult to monetize. Pain Funnel is both a pitch and a story that parallels the process of how ideas are communicated and absorbed in both therapeutic and commercial contexts.

All songs written and performed by Jay Isaac in Rowley, New Brunswick
Mastered by Corey Bonnevie

© Jay Isaac 2023