Photo by Samuel Fournier

Blue and grey. The colors of glum haven’t been a prominent palette within No Joy’s spectrum across her Bugland era and its newly-released counterpart extended play, Big Life, Big Leaf, but completing the latter in a celebratory epitaph with them in mind is something that only Jasamine White-Gluz alongside both works’ integrtal collaborator in Fire-Toolz could pull off in their existential explorations of nature. Through a fusion of shoegaze maximalism with a psychedelic electronic micro-dosing, “Süki & Amadeus”, the EP’s closer, hears their two worlds converging in grief.

Mournful this listen is not, however, as White-Gluz’s words stream conscious in transcendent fashion into the unknown. “I’ll be the one / Whole cloth of you / Peel away the grey and blue / Moontips I believe in you,” her voice ascends through clouds, as if sending a message through the listen’s energy waves into the cosmic beyond. When you learn that its recording was completed while the two watched a TinyKittens HQ livestream as a handful rescue cats gave birth litters of kittens, how can this not make you a believer that there truly is a circle to this life?

Directed by: Jeremy Dabrowski

No Joy’s Big Life, Big Leaf is available now on Hand Drawn Dracula.