No Joy, the project fronted by Jasamine White-Gluz, has announced their first album in five years: Motherhood comes out on August 21 via Joyful Noise. No Joy’s previous release, the 2018 EP recorded with Sonic Boom, displayed a new excursion into electronic sounds, and that seems set to continue on Motherhood – although it blends in plenty of the shoegaze elements that the project initially became known for. White-Gluz says:
“The demo of this song started as a slow Industrial burner built on samples of me screaming. Once brought into the studio, the song found new life; our mission in the studio was that no idea was too weird to try. That led to us squishing Bananas into very expensive microphones to get textured percussion noises, shoving kitchen knives into guitar necks to create a perfect slide guitar sound and adding some Primus-inspired slap bass.”
The ethos that “no idea was too weird to try” was clear on previous single “Birthmark” and is displayed further on today’s new offering “Nothing Will Hurt”. The latest single begins with familiar guitar, but is soon subsumed by interconnected beats and bass that seem to be phased in from a low-BPM house track. No Joy make the combination work effortlessly, and use it to elevate White-Guz’s ethereal vocals out of turmoil and into a place of soothing, all the while ensuring that “Nothing Will Hurt” remains a delicious and danceable groove.
No Joy’s new album Motherhood is out August 21 via Joyful Noise. Follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
