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To be re-released on cassette, CD, and t-shirt w/ DL code on November 6th, 2026. Cassette is a C44 – transparent fluorescent pink cassette with black imprints. Packaged with a 2-sided 4-panel J-card. CD packaged in a 4-panel digipak. Front artwork by Julianne Griepp and design by HausMo Max and Cocojoey.
This is the catalog page with album information and artwork. To purchase, head to our Bandcamp page.
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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 that is (caps necessary), 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 October, 2022 as a self-released digital / tape album with subsequent tiny editions to follow on various formats, all of which are nestled comfortably in fans’ homes and not to be found even on resale markets. 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.
For many years before Cocojoey emerged as Meland’s primary project, they participated in the music scenes of their native Madison, WI, through college in Champaign-Urbana, IL, and into their life in Chicago with projects of various stylistic stripes, including black metal bands as a teen (as captured on the COCOJOEY’S WORLD interlude appropriately titled “middle school black metal”), funk and indie rock bands as a young adult, and solo experimental/noise projects throughout. Adept at keyboards, guitar, drums, and all manner of electronics, Meland feels like they often served as the missing link within other people’s bands in these earlier era(s), taking on instruments as needed and contributing their talents to fulfill their bandmates’ ambitions. In their work as Cocojoey, Meland traces their own solo path from songwriting to production to performance, tapping into a reservoir of experience gained not only from other collaborations but from years spent teaching music at a professional level. They learned they could do it all on their own, and found complete freedom in burrowing into new ideas with no restrictions on genre and no limit to the complexity of their songwriting.
COCOJOEY’S WORLD hits as a tale of liberation through music and the process of developing trust in oneself, as Meland’s lyrics lay out a personal quest to overcome hardships both external and internal: scrapping through life in Chicago as a musician / music teacher while grappling with chronic physical conditions that threaten to derail their momentum. Cocojoey presents these problems in both their lyrics and their production with an ever-present outlook of humor and hope. They frame “COCOJOEY’S CAVE” as an exploration of agoraphobia in social settings with an upcoming scheduled hospital visit looming over their mood, while the accompanying dungeon-synth / blastbeat metal sonics and their sweetly pitched-up vocal melodies contrasted with ferocious howls set the scene for a “traveler with a lantern [to] explore [their] cave.” What better way to strip away the fear associated with an upcoming colonoscopy? By the end of the album, with the mantra of “OUT THERE” assuring us that “we’re ephemeral anyway,” we have borne witness to Meland’s anxieties and well-wishes for their future, with each moment accompanied by production that illuminates the emotions of their creator in lockstep with their lyrics.
In the wake of the original release of COCOJOEY’S WORLD, Meland hit the ground running. Through a continuous schedule of local Chicago shows and a regimen of DIY touring that finds them on the road across the US every few months, they’ve enraptured a dedicated fanbase eager to fall down the rabbit hole with each new song that Meland introduces to the setlist – which still features COCOJOEY’S WORLD classics that hit as hard as ever. As sublime case studies in narrative tension and sudden turns in composition, these early Cocojoey songs burst with unexpected climaxes and on-a-dime shifts in both directions of intensity that really get the crowd going in a live setting. Gnarly slam metal riffs with Meland barking like a hardcore frontperson could give way to whimsical keyboard interludes that evoke a stroll through a fairy forest grotto. What seems like a conventional pop song could split open into hyper-complex polymetric passages following time signatures that only their creator could comprehend. 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 its composer aptly describes as “Wii-Sports-Core.” In our minds’ eyes, we’re cruising through low-polygon waterscapes on jetskis or gazing at digital rocky island vistas from the green on the golf course. We get the feeling that Cocojoey 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.
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