In an ideal scenario, artistic collaborations work a kind of magic: Two talents add up to more than the sum of their parts, with creativity and curiosity yielding an end product that wouldn’t otherwise exist. That’s what Jasamine White-Gluz of Canadian shoegaze band No Joy had in mind when she began emailing with Sonic Boom, a.k.a. Pete Kember from Spacemen 3, in the fall of 2015. The more her band stayed within the confines of rock, the more White-Gluz wanted change. So No Joy decided to release three EPs that departed from the band’s shoegaze and noise-pop past, starting with 2016’s Drool Sucker and 2017’s Creep. The final installment in this series, No Joy / Sonic Boom, sees White-Gluz venturing into unfamiliar electronic territory with Kember. But while the pairing of their two sounds is unexpected, that initial surprise is about as far as the EP goes. It’s tepid from start to finish, offering little that feels exciting or inspired.
From the brusque opening of “Obsession,” No Joy / Sonic Boom sets itself up as a pulsing yet clumsy listen. The 11-minute opener begins well enough, with bass thumps building a trance beneath paranormal EQs as White-Gluz’s vocals smear across the higher registers. Her voice warps itself in alluring, subtle ways across the EP: It’s manipulated into a keyboard choir effect that can start or stop with the lift of a finger, gets pitched up to capitalize on its honeyed texture, and loops endlessly like a synth in the background. It’s easy to forget she’s contributing, though, due to Kemper’s habit of getting lost in his own experimentation. While soothing and inviting at its best, his electronic ambling ends up drifting off in aimless directions on all four tracks—that is, until he comes barreling back into the frame, like when the end half of “Obsession” finally returns with a sudden, misplaced drum fill. It’s as if neither artist, working remotely from their respective homes of Montreal and Portugal, felt comfortable pushing the other to refine their ideas past the rough draft stage.
The only song that makes effective use of White-Gluz’s and Kember’s complementary skills is “Triangle Probably.” Comically, it’s also the song most akin to the shoegaze sound White-Gluz hoped to ditch with this project. Chopped guitars whirl through echo pedals in a propulsive motion. In the distance, alternate vocal lines fade into focus and synths click like a spoke card on a bicycle wheel. Though it features a similarly abrupt reprise like the one in “Obsession,” this track keeps a tighter grasp on its intentions and proposed payoffs, sounding like a true meeting of minds instead of a not-especially-necessary Sonic Boom remix of No Joy.
Throughout No Joy / Sonic Boom, you can hear White-Gluz finding the borders of her comfort zone and looking for guidance when she makes it to the other side. The trouble seems to be that Kember does little to develop her ideas once she gets there, settling instead for familiar deadpan loops. There’s not nearly enough give and take to make the collaboration work. The result is an EP that feels hesitant to leap into any of the worlds it builds, however appealing they sometimes appear.
