Canadian-American musician, composer and artist Claire Rousay's world is one of irregular, overlooked and intimate beauty. Over the course of her ever-growing array of recordings she has managed to chart out a terrain that remains utterly personal, but wholly communal in its appeal. Her music, which simultaneously holds the textures of ambient, the reflections of folk, the melodics of hyper pop and the energetic flurries of noise, exists in its own universe. It is a cosmos she has created with the simplest and most generous of offerings.
Rousay’s work operates in genre-spanning fashion; she is primarily known for composing highly emotive, whisper-quiet musical works that heavily forefront musique concrète and sound design elements like haptic sound and field recordings. These avant garde elements are often paired with strings, piano, and electronic melodies and textures. Her albums in this vein – on celebrated labels like Thrill Jockey and Shelter Press – gained her notoriety in the international ambient and experimental community
Observations of the quotidian world, refocused and reshaped, to create deeply engaging sound fields where song form and acoustic zones meet. Rousay’s world is one in which we are welcomed without reservation and embraced without constraint. Her songs are places, her sound worlds environments, and she invites you to join her there.
Fresh from her performance at The Substation on July 18, Claire Rousay stopped by Soak on PBS for a special Studio 5 Live set. Listen back to this intimate performance and interview with host Hannah McKittrick here.
Studio 5 Live is made possible by Carlton Audio Visual and is supported by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
