Since 2010, Jasamine White-Gluz has been making haunting and gorgeous music as the principal songwriter for No Joy, the great and underrated Montreal band that’s crafted their own blend of dreampop, shoegaze, and noise-rock. After completing and touring behind the group’s latest album — 2015’s More Faithful — White-Gluz felt the need to change it up, to explore writing in a different context than a four-piece rock band.
She found a new collaborator in Sonic Boom, AKA Peter Kember of Spacemen 3, Spectrum, and E.A.R., who’s also worked with Panda Bear, Stereolab, and Yo La Tengo. The two traded ideas back and forth between Montreal and Portgual, White-Gluz sending sketches to Kember, who’d then reshape them. The end result is an experimental, self-titled EP that’ll be out next month.
Today, we’re premiering the first taste of the EP, lead single “Obsession.” Somewhere in between a diffuse synthpop track and a deconstructed club jam, “Obsession” is a fascinating and addicting listen. It almost feels like it begins in media res, like White-Gluz had verses and choruses that she and Kember then cut up and rearranged; the first time White-Gluz’ voice truly enters, it almost sounds like she’s halfway through a chorus. From its poppier beginnings, the track rides a persistent bass groove out into more trance-inducing territory, White-Gluz eventually becoming a processed ghost of a presence until ceding completely to the song’s ambient, celestial outro.
It’s a six and a half minute epic, and this is the radio edit. (The album version is 11 minutes and features an extremely gratifying moment where, after the song floats off into the ether, the beat crashes back down, more glimmering than before.) “Obsession” is accompanied by a fittingly trippy video produced, directed, and edited by Sonic Boom and Nuno Jardim.