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Montreal musician Jasamine White-Gluz has been making beautiful, lilting music with her No Joy project for well over a decade now, and she continues to take it to new heights. Last year, No Joy released Bugland, the excellent album that she co-produced with Angel Marcloid, the Chicago musician who makes gleefully experimental music under the name Fire-Toolz. Last month, Fire-Toolz released Lavender Networks, her own stunner of an album. Now, No Joy and Fire-Toolz have once again joined forces for a new three-song EP.
The tracks on No Joy's new EP Big Life, Big Leaf aren't necessarily Bugland leftovers, though the two releases do feel twinned. You can hear the EP's brand new title track as a continuation of what No Joy and Fire-Toolz did on that record, but the song also stands out on its own. It's a dizzy, euphoric combination of shoegaze and dance-pop, like Madonna's "Ray Of Light" being hit with a million actual rays of light. This is that real summertime music. Jasamine White-Gluz and Angel Marcloid co-wrote the track with Jorge Elbrecht, a regular No Joy collaborator who has spent a lot of time in the underground pop trenches.
In a press release, No Joy says:
This was a demo I had that we never got around to during the Bugland sessions. In 2024, I brought it to Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, Sky Ferreira), who I have a long history of writing with. We really love exploring the absurd, combining musical ideas that shouldn’t really make sense together — it felt great picking up where we left off after 2020’s Motherhood LP. Bringing the song back around to Angel Marcloid (Fire-Toolz) more recently (post-Bugland LP sessions) made perfect sense to me; both Angel and Jorge have insane musicality and melodic imagination. Angel is a brilliant pop producer, she has a knack for shaping where a song can take you emotionally. Tara McLeod (Kittie) rips on guitar as usual, continuing to bring this heavy-but-effervescent energy.
Lyrically, I wrote and recorded these vocals in one take during an emotional time this past spring. I was exploring the boundless pain one feels when it is time to say goodbye to someone or something. It is also during those moments that it is important to remember, ironically, to have joy. To mourn is also to celebrate.
Jeremy Dabrowski directed the sunny, abstract "Big Life, Big Leaf" video. Check it out below, along with the EP's tracklist and No Joy's upcoming shows.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Barking At The Sun"
02 "Big Life, Big Leaf"
03 "Süki & Amadeus"
TOUR DATES:
7/-3 - Rosklide, Denmark @ Roskilde Festival
7/17 - Quebec, QC @ Festival d'Ete Quebec
The Big Life, Big Leaf EP is out 8/21 on Hand Drawn Dracula.
Samuel Fournier
English (US) · 