"Good Art Should Confuse You": No Joy's Jasamine White-Gluz on the Success of Bugland and the Making of Her New EP, Big Life, Big Leaf

Photo Credit: Samuel Fournier

Jasamine White-Gluz has spent the last fifteen years actively dismantling every expectation placed on No Joy. When the project first emerged in the early 2010s, it was almost too easy for the music press to box them neatly into the shoegaze revival. But rather than simply imitating the genre's defining pioneers, White-Gluz began carving out her own distinct lane. Over the last decade, she has steadily transformed No Joy from a traditional reverb-drenched guitar band into a sound entirely her own—a lush, unpredictable sonic world that is packed with her own unique, hyper-specific details.

This evolution reached a brilliant fever pitch with Bugland, a record largely inspired by her move to the countryside. It felt like a beautiful, chaotic sensory overload, and rightfully dominated the year-end lists. But how do you follow up a masterpiece of boundary-pushing maximalism? If you're White-Gluz, you continue mining the intricate details of those rural surroundings, reunite with your Bugland collaborator—avant-garde electronic producer Angel Marcloid—and create Big Life, Big Leaf—a tight, three-track EP that serves as both a spiritual companion piece and a radiant farewell to the Bugland era.

What makes Big Life, Big Leaf so fascinating is its inherent paradox. Recorded during a weekend marred by unexpected, shared personal loss for both White-Gluz and Marcloid, the EP refuses to wallow in the darkness. Instead, it bursts with a defiant, blinding optimism. It is the sound of choosing light when it would be so much easier to succumb to the heavy. It is a sonic translation of being the friend who cracks a joke to stop everyone from crying.

Catching up with  Jasamine ahead of the EP's release, she is as unapologetic and refreshingly candid as the music she makes. We talked about processing grief in real-time, letting go of the need to look "cool," and why great music should confuse you a little on first listen.

I think good art should confuse you, make you think, make you uncomfortable. I am not really attracted to art that feels super familiar.

Happy release day for Big Life, Big Leaf! You’ve described this EP as exploring the pain of saying goodbye, but sonically, it’s remarkably bright and radiant. How did you approach balancing those heavy, sad themes with such uplifting music?

Thank you! I realized pretty recently that I'm a glass-half-full person. In tough or sad situations, I tend to become the "clown" that tries to lighten the mood or cheer people up. I didn't really realize those characteristics also spread into my musical output. Musically, I'm always drawn to contrast and unexpectedness, combining elements that normally shouldn't fit together but somehow do.

You collaborated closely with Angel Marcloid on this release, and you both unexpectedly went through a personal loss during the exact same recording weekend. How did navigating that shared grief shape the emotional core and sound of these tracks?

Angel and I worked pretty quickly, adding lots of ideas on the go as we were tracking. Some of my takes weren't technically perfect, but they were the most emotionally raw, so we decided to use those instead of trying to get a perfect take. It's so cheesy, but music is my outlet for healing. Being able to create these songs with Angel was an incredible way for us both to express the complexity of what we were going through.

You’ve often used EPs as creative playgrounds without the pressure of a full-length. Coming off a massive, sweeping project like Bugland, what did a tight 3-track EP allow you to execute that a full album wouldn't?

It's true; in the past I have used EPs to try out different methods or ideas before committing them to a full length. This EP felt a bit different than others I have done in the past. I'd say it felt more like the Pastel & Pass Out EP which we did following up Wait to Pleasure. On Big Leaf, I wasn't necessarily motivated by wanting to try out something new, but more that Angel & I had more songs ready and wanted to work on them. I had come back from a few months of touring Bugland and after playing those songs over and over every night, I felt inspired to write more in the same way we wrote Bugland.

Bugland ended up on so many year-end lists and earned massive recognition. Considering how aggressively you’ve pushed No Joy beyond the boundaries of a traditional rock band, did that acclaim feel like a long-overdue validation for refusing to play it safe?

I am grateful for any listens and recognition this record got. There's almost nothing more rewarding than making something so true to yourself and having people connect with it and share that. I feel like I'm just doing my thing like I always do, but if anything, this motivates me to push my boundaries even further.

In a previous interview, you mentioned, "I like when music really confuses me the first time I hear it." That was my exact reaction to Bugland—outlets lazily call it "shoegaze," but underneath, it's a dense, chaotic sensory overload. In an era dominated by 15-second TikTok hooks, how do you think that initial confusion changes the way people experience and digest your music?

I think good art should confuse you, make you think, make you uncomfortable. I am not really attracted to art that feels super familiar. When I am creating, I am not really thinking about the end result or how it will turn out, I am just regurgitating what has inspired me. When making Bugland, I had just moved to the country and was (still am!) inspired by all the minuscule fine details in my new surroundings. I guess I expressed that by making a sort of maximalist dense record. The right ears, or the ears that are ready for sounds like that, will hopefully find it.

When No Joy started, the industry tried very hard to force bands into neat, marketable genre boxes, whereas today genre fluidity is everywhere. Do you feel like the music industry finally caught up to what you were trying to do all along?

I suppose so! Maybe there just became so many micro genres that it eventually became impossible to pin anyone to anything. Or maybe it became easier for musicians to experiment with different sounds at home so they could make any kind of music they felt like. I think playlisting has a lot to do with it, with abstract 'moods' being the categories instead of genre styles.

You’ve noted that getting older helped you shed the obsession with looking "cool," allowing you to unabashedly embrace influences like Korn or early 2000s nu-metal. How has that "I don't care" attitude changed the way you navigate the music business today?

I think its partially the old 'dont sweat the small stuff'. After you've been through some crap in the industry and faced the real highs and lows and ups and downs, you begin to learn what really matters. I found that even after disappointments, making music was something so visceral to me that I was going to continue creating what felt true to me no matter what. Staying true to whatever inspires me means I am putting my full self into what I produce and not trying to fit into whatever trend is happening at the time. So yes that does mean bass lines inspired by Korn lol.

In the past, you’ve used street trash and scrap metal to record percussion instead of standard gear. Are there any weird objects or unhinged found-sounds hidden in Big Life, Big Leaf?

I can't honestly remember, but everytime I work with Angel there's always some unhinged sounds being sampled somewhere haha.

Shoegaze and heavy alternative music are having a massive cultural revival right now with a whole new generation discovering it online. As someone who’s been in this space for over 15 years, what’s your take on this new wave?

I'm all for discovery; that's what can push the genre forward. For so long, shoegaze was always referencing just My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain, Slowdive, etc. I love that now bands like Deftones are part of the lexicon.

The music industry can be notoriously exhausting, especially for independent artists. What is something you know now about creative survival that you wish someone had told you when you were starting out in your twenties?

I have gotten pretty good at listening to my internal instincts. I've learned the difference between making music and making music. That is to say, there are creative moments where I can just feel that there is something special happening; that was what happened with the song Bugland. It was the first song Angel and I worked on, and I could tell we were onto something and needed to pursue it. But there are other songs that I have done that are perfectly fine songs, but they didn't give me that instinctual feeling and I don't think they connected with audiences, maybe because they didn't really connect with me. I have learned to pay more attention to my gut instinct and less to deadlines or the need to rush something out to stay relevant or anything like that.

You’ve said that to mourn can also be to celebrate. In what ways does this EP serve as a final farewell to Bugland, and what are you celebrating as you look toward whatever unknown territory No Joy explores next?

Whenever I finish an album cycle like this, I always think that it's the last album I'll ever do. I pour all of myself into making records, and when the cycle ends it feels unfathomable that I would have any other ideas or songs or places to go musically. So, for now, I have to plant some seeds of inspiration and see what grows out of them. Big Life, Big Leaf is certainly a companion to Bugland, but I don't think Bugland itself is going anywhere. If anything, we might venture deeper into it.

Big Life, Big Leaf was released on August 21, 2026, via Hand Drawn Dracula and Sonic Cathedral. You can stream and purchase the EP here.