For the Record: March 21, 2025.
claire rousay and more eaze compile and share memories on Thrill Jockey, plus more new arrivals and future releases of interest.
For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.
This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)
These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.
Topspin.
The last record longtime collaborators claire rousay and more eaze issued jointly under their own names, Never Stop Texting Me, was a sweet, sly collection of high-gloss pop songs, whose synthetically altered vocals and surface sheen didn’t disguise the gentle vulnerability contained therein. Soon after, the two Texas expat multi-instrumentalists and art-pop chameleons hooked up again for a crying poem, a disembodied, dreamlike collaboration with Beijing rapper Bloodz Boi.
Separately, they issued two of 2024’s most arresting records: rousay, self-described purveyor of “emo ambient” leaned hard into the emo designation on sentiment, an unusually direct and strikingly beautiful debut LP for Thrill Jockey, while more eaze (a.k.a. Mari Maurice) fashioned an ecstatically lovely strain of ambient-Americana chamber music on lacuna and parlor, released on the Polish imprint Mondoj.
Now, rousay and more eaze are together again on no floor, issued today on Thrill Jockey. Whatever any of the above might have led you to expect, this new release is something else—though with its modest acoustic guitars and keening pedal steel, it’s not a world removed from lacuna and parlor.
After I posted about the album on Bluesky two days ago, I learned from a Thrill Jockey social-media rep that more eaze has dubbed no floor “prog ambient,” a paradoxical construction that possibly alludes to sophisticated studio arrangements balanced with simple, straightforward instrumental gestures, often to transcendent effect. The titles denote places in the duo’s shared past, and accordingly the mood feels warmly ruminative—even when anxious digital squiggles punctuate “kinda tropical.” (You can read a lot more about inspiration and process on the album’s Bandcamp page.)
As for that “wants to make me cry” line in my Bluesky post? Listen to the mournful violin (viola, perhaps?) on “the applebees outside kalamazoo, michigan,” suspended in liquid iridescence. Likewise, the tenderness that opens “limelight, illegally,” and the radiance of album closer “lowcountry,” traces of diaristic detail given public utterance. Ambiguous yet emotionally direct and evocative, no floor is about the memories of shared experience that bind us together, however time and life might move us apart.
For another view, try Levi Dayan’s nuanced, detailed analysis on The Quietus.
claire rousay and more eaze perform at Roulette on Sunday, April 13 at 8pm; details here.
New this week.
March 21.
Ishmael Ali/Aaron Quinn - Sometimes Cats Have Puppies (Tripticks Tapes)
François J. Bonnet - Banshee (Portraits GRM)
Pierre Boulez - Éclat-Multiples - Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Contrechamps/Michael Wendeberg (bastille musique)
Sarah Davachi - Basse Brevis (Portraits GRM)
Christopher Irniger Pilgrim - Human Intelligence Live (Intakt)
Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith - Defiant Life (ECM)
Lucy Liyou - Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name (Orange Milk)
Cecilia Lopez and Wenchi Lazo - Desposable (Tripticks Tapes)
Molto Ohm - FEED (New Focus)
more eaze & claire rousay - no floor (Thrill Jockey)
Paulownia (Yoona Kim, Anwei Wang, Marie Carroll) - Paulownia (Tripticks Tapes)
Macie Stewart - When the Distance is Blue (International Anthem)
Nick Storring - Mirante (We Are Busy Bodies)
Upcoming releases.
April 4.
Sam Weinberg Trio - Of Peeling Passage: Live at Sisters (self-released)
April 18.
Raven Chacon - Voiceless Mass - Present Music (New World)
May 2.
Sarah Hennies & Tristan Kasten-Krause - The Quiet Sun (Dinzu Artefacts)
May 9.
Austin Wulliman - Escape Rites - JACK Quartet (Sono Luminus)
May 16.
Alex Paxton - Delicious - performances by Dreammusics Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain (NEC), GBSR Duo, and Explore Ensemble (New Amsterdam)
June 6.
Elisabeth Klinck - Chronotopia (Hallow Ground)
June 13.
The Westerlies - Paradise (Westerlies Music)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.