"What made rousay's earlier work so exciting was how shrouded in mystery it was, thanks to the asymmetrical, sometimes erratic placement of found sounds. t4t, one of her best projects, exploited the microphone as a tool to convey physical touch in sound, letting short whispers, deep breaths, and arrhythmic drum hits build tension with no clear goal in mind. A similar ambiguity distinguished a heavenly touch, the first entry of her trilogy, where exceptionally contrasting fidelities marked a clear separation between discrete recordings."
"A little death doesn't wield found sounds in the same disjointed manner; instead, rousay seems interested in how sounds can lose definition, easily melting into one another. On "doubt," a drone grows in tandem with static electronic whirrs. Buried samples of chattering voices blend into the textural fog, their shape indistinguishable from rain, a moving field recorder, or modulating electronic waveforms."
"In "conditional love," a high-pitched drone and Andrew Weathers' ringing lap steel fuse into what sounds less like two separate instruments than trembling electrical feedback. The interplay of sounds is unusually tight and the mixing just as meticulous, a real compositional development for rousay. rousay is pushing her music in a more theatrical direction than ever before, and it pays off most on the title track."
rousay's earlier work used asymmetrical, erratic placement of found sounds to create a sense of mystery. t4t employed the microphone to convey physical touch through whispers, breaths, and arrhythmic drum hits that generated tension without a clear trajectory. a heavenly touch separated recordings through contrasting fidelities. A little death emphasizes blending, where sounds lose definition and melt into one another. On "doubt," a drone grows alongside static whirrs while buried chattering voices become indistinguishable from rain or modulating waveforms. On "conditional love," drone and lap steel fuse into trembling electrical feedback, with unusually tight interplay and meticulous mixing that advances a theatrical compositional direction culminating in a title track combining clarinet, violin, field sounds, drone, and insects.
Read at Pitchfork
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]