San Antonio, TX-based sound artist and musician claire rousay has risen to prominence over the past few years with a body of work that’s strange, diverse, and often somewhat confessional. Her discography encompasses exuberant solo percussion recordings, elusive assemblages of field recordings, warped pop, and what she has come to term “emo-ambient.” In a recent feature in the New York Times she declares “I basically record my whole life”, and one catches fragments of mundane exchanges or peculiar auditory phenomenon she happened to record threaded throughout her compositions. rousay’s music is potent and disquieting despite tending often to favour unostentatious dynamics and timbres, instead commanding engagement through its acute sense of place, disarming vulnerability, and even wry humour.
claire rousay is based in San Antonio, Texas. Her music zeroes in on personal emotions and the minutiae of everyday life — voicemails, haptics, environmental recordings, stopwatches, whispers and conversations– exploding their significance. rousay has released music on a range of labels, most notably Astral Spirits, Second Editions, Longform Editions and American Dreams, who in 2021released a softer focus, a collaboration with visual artist Dani Toral.
rousay’s music has received acclaim from NPR, which writes that rousay “enchants the ordinary,” and Pitchfork, which calls her music “quietly devastating.” rousay has presented music at venues like Issue Project Room, Casa Del Lago (CDMX)and Salon De Normandy (Paris), among many others, held residencies at Rhizome DC and Elastic Arts Exposure Series, and performed with musicians such as Ken Vandermark, Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten, Jacob Wick and Tom Carter.
Search claire’s complete discography
CMC Presents Multilocation is generously supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, The SOCAN Foundation, FACTOR, The Ontario Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Foundation. This presentation is also supported by The McLean Foundation and the Canada Arts Presentation Fund.
