no floor
More Eaze and Claire Rousay
Thrill Jockey
21 March 2025
In a way, No Floor – the latest collaborative effort from experimental artists More Eaze (Mari Maurice) and Claire Rousay – is a considerable move forward for both musicians, mainly because of what they don’t do here. While so much of their past work (individually and as a team) implemented Auto-Tune, confessional pop song frameworks, and found sound, this latest album sees them embracing a more minimalist, organic form of ambient sound. The result is a striking, restrained series of soundscapes touching on their mutual love of ambient country and experimental noise, still crashing down barriers but in a way that seems oddly accessible.
The five tracks, totaling about 30 minutes, celebrate their longstanding personal and creative relationship and focus more on the beauty within the noise. “It was a conscious choice to spend a lot of time making fucked up sounds and then figuring out how they could be beautiful in another context,” explained Maurice on the LP’s Bandcamp page. “With this record, I had no idea what Claire would do on each track, and we were both trying to match each other’s ‘freak’ in terms of sound design.”
no floor by more eaze & claire rousayno floor by more eaze & claire rousay
“Hopfields” opens No Floor with Rousay’s acoustic guitar fingerpicking alongside Maurice’s gentle pedal steel swells, with violins, synths, and low-key glitches weaving in and out of the beguiling, mysterious sonic atmosphere. It’s the perfect way to ease into this breathtaking, uniquely textured album. “Kinda Tropical” is a bit more unsettling, with odd squalls of noise blasting into the track at random periods, and the low buzz of field recordings laying down a sonic foundation. Rousay’s acoustic guitar appears towards the end of the track, like a welcome friend in the wilderness.
There are moments of droning stillness on No Floor, such as on the almost aggressively minimalist “The Applebees Outside Kalamazoo, Michigan”, a quietly intense but beautifully restrained performance. On “Limelight, Illegally”, the sounds that make No Floor unique are all on display, from the light acoustic guitar touches to the synthetic blasts of noise to the droning bed of violin that puts the duo’s ambient country instincts on full display.
The dreamy, eclectic “Lowcountry” closes out the record. It recalls a tweaked version of film score orchestrations. Strings and synths swell in a way that seems both emotionally resonant and musically adventurous.
What More Eaze and Rousay have accomplished with No Floor should be no surprise for anyone who closely follows these unique artists. That they have created work implementing such poignant yet intrepid moves will delight anyone who loves their music and is curious about why they are so beloved.
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