more eaze and claire rousay – no floor | Album Review

Thrill Jockey

In the backrooms of my memory, redwoods and oceans blur into deep snow and summits, each shining like a precious stone. I guard these collections of memory like a sullen dragon, unwilling to lose even a moment in these sacred landscapes. One of my favorite places is central California’s Mono Lake region. The sparseness of its sweeping high desert plains, dotted with the few trees brave enough to weather its arid seasons, brought me to tears the first time I experienced it as a child. There is power there, barely concealed in the violent crags and glacial scars, yet there is softness in the surrender of the earth to its own weaponry. I am enchanted by tide pools – each a miniature universe, easily disrupted by the swipe of a careless hand. The gentle starfish and hurried hermit crabs bear no burdens, suffer no cares, and allow the whims of the tides to carry them to the next microcosm that fate deems they ought to inhabit. As a young girl, I would ponder the little creatures as they seemed to regard me with a similarly curious gaze, humming to myself as the icy waters of the Pacific lapped at my rosy feet.

I sense the same reverence for place in more eaze and claire rousay’s brilliant new release, no floor. Through the five tracks of their collaborative EP, there runs a feeling of deep, almost holy, nostalgia for rural America. Having grown up rurally myself, I have an appreciation for the odd beauty that comes with such a youth – the dilapidated grocery stores in lonely strip malls, scattered livestock farms, sprawling meadows, and brilliantly starry night skies. There is a charm to it that is distinctly American and unique to each region of the country. As more eaze (mari maurice) and claire rousay hail from Texas and Canada, respectively (both equally barren places), there is a specific feeling to this LP - not like country music, no. It is the feel of vast plains of emptiness, waving fields of golden grass, and shimmering heat mirages on roads that lay straight for miles. It is the incomprehensible loneliness of living twenty, thirty, or forty miles from the next town and experiencing the paradox of both isolation and overwhelm. It is the great grief of loving a place that you know you have to leave – unwillingly divorcing a part of your very being. That is the feeling of no floor.

maurice and rousay have already made a name for themselves both individually and collaboratively as producers and composers, each with an impressive (if not daunting) body of work. While their previous output proves their talent in the electronic, ambient, and hyperpop genres, no floor sees the two powerhouses working together in an entirely new way. According to the composers, no floor is an ode to a specific set of third places like bars where they spent time together over the course of their youth. The duo humorously refers to them as “pillars of our debauchery.” Third places are socially necessary and would include anywhere that people can foster a sense of community outside of the home (the first place) and work (the second place). They are a tragically diminishing commodity for today’s young people as the world rushes towards a seemingly inevitable digital existence. I have favorite third places - the library, concert venues, museums - and I cherish making memories in them with people I care about. An entire album dedicated to the places and evenings whiled away by rousay and maurice is a beautiful, tender tribute to youth.

Photo by Katherine Squier

Each track on no floor is a living, vibrant collage of whimsical created sounds, supported by rousay’s delicately sparse guitar work and maurice’s pedal steel. The use of shimmering, warm strings throughout this LP captured my heart immediately, as I have a soft spot for them in my own work and find that they lend incomparable emotion. The opening piece on no floor is called “hopfields,” and the locale in question is an elegant brasserie in Austin. The track opens with a plucked guitar, joined by swells of pedal steel and crackling static in the background. My ears feel as though they are cocooned in angora as the music relaxes and evolves over the course of eight gentle minutes. One can easily picture soft conversation over glittering cocktails as humming synth and an achingly beautiful string line paint a warm, blurry picture. In the background, one hears something akin to a train whistle, and I imagine that I can feel the rumbling of steel wheels as I lean back in my chair and close my eyes.

The third track on this release is even more specific than the first, zooming all the way in to depict “the applebees outside kalamazoo, michigan.” Instead of feeling safe and welcoming like “hopfields,” “applebees” has a distinctly eerie, almost sinister, aura. Though the track opens in a warm and inviting way, it quickly transforms into something entirely different: odd glitches and low, brooding strings create a feeling of unease. The composers mention that they stopped at this particular Applebee's during a tour, and their unfamiliarity with the area comes through the piece as sliding pitches that lead to uncomfortable, though brief, dissonances unsettled me and gave me the unnerving sense of being watched. “applebees” could very easily soundtrack an A24 thriller – beauty juxtaposed against something deeply, viscerally off. Though the piece is strange and otherworldly, I am drawn to it for those very reasons. It is compelling and stands out in the tracklist like a desolate truck stop in the middle of the night-time desert, haunted and glowing fluorescent.

“kinda tropical” is less specific in title, though just as exact in sound. The second track on the album (and also my favorite) is littered with wonderfully charming glitches that skip and stutter throughout. This cacophony of synths is supported by tenuous strings that fade in and out, sometimes violently swelling to a fever pitch before disappearing like snowflakes on skin. This track sounds like how my favorite landscapes feel - sparse, vast, and gorgeously compelling. Though this is the most minimalistic work on no floor, it is nonetheless stunningly evocative. As a devotee of the American minimalist genre and its composers, I love works that contain multitudes of emotion and storytelling through repeated motifs, sounds, and rhythmic textures. “kinda tropical” proves how effective this style of composition can be: less is more here.

With the release of no floor, more eaze and claire rousay have once again surpassed their own standards and broken their own molds. This LP is magical and mysterious, a pristine sketchbook of connection during the tumult of youth. It is a glorious and eccentric tribute to the otherworldly element of rural living and the transformative power that third places hold. In the past, I have found collaborative releases to come across as forced, an arranged marriage of sorts, but no floor proves that artistic union can be found between artists – and that it is an incredible thing when done well. 

Britta Joseph is a musician and artist who, when she isn’t listening to records or deep-diving emo archives on the internet, enjoys writing poetry, reading existential literature, and a good iced matcha. You can find her on Instagram @brittajoes.