Claire Rousay Breaks Down 7 Perfectly Produced Songs
The ambient experimentalist dissects records by faves including Elliott Smith and Charli XCX, and details the process behind her twilit new album, ‘A Little Death.’
The Producers is an interview series where our favorite artists discuss their favorite music production.
For Claire Rousay, almost any sound—any moment—can be the start of a song. She usually begins new tracks by creating a collage out of intimate field recordings from her everyday life before adding tonal elements like guitar, strings, and drones. The result is disarming—ambient music suffused with heart-wrenching feelings more often associated with hushed singer-songwriters. “What makes good ambient music is that the creator of it does not think of it as ambient music,” she says. “They think of it as something much grander—something that you would not want on a playlist that somebody falls asleep to.”
The producer, composer, and songwriter’s latest album, A Little Death, evokes the fading hours when day turns to night, and many of its foundational field recordings were taken during twilight. Rousay is always attuned to the sounds around her, like a cat twitching its ears toward a strange new noise, and she recalls finding inspiration for the song “Night One” while taking the trash out of her Los Angeles home. “I noticed this disorienting phasing effect that happens in the back of my apartment, where there are two open garages that act as amplifiers for the cars that are coming from both sides,” she explains. So she ran back inside to get her recorder to document this weird pocket of sound, eventually intertwining the lonely whooshes of passing SUVs with contemplative acoustic guitar plucks and piano melodies. I tell her I wish my own trips to take the garbage down were that inspiring. “It was a rare moment,” she offers in her typical deadpan tone. “I’ve taken the trash out many times after that and got no inspiration.” The track ends with Rousay’s footsteps walking back into the apartment and the humble clang of her girlfriend doing dishes.
Even though A Little Death explores a variety of nighttime atmospheres and emotions, from the eeriness of the dark to the soul-tugging regret of wasting yet another day, Rousay admits she’s far from a night owl. Her best work happens when she’s sitting at her computer between 8 a.m. and noon. And up until about six months ago, she spent a year going to bed at 8:30 p.m. and waking up at 5 every morning. “I wasn’t really comfortable being out at night for a long time,” she says, adding that being on tour, drinking, and drugs were taking a toll. “Going to bed early saves you from making a bad choice. Now I can keep it together. I’m OK at night again.” This month marks a year and a half of sobriety for Rousay.
As we talk about some of her all-time favorite music productions, Rousay repeatedly emphasizes the idea that a piece of music is only as good as the person making it—regardless of what equipment or plugins they own. It’s a point that’s increasingly relevant amid our era of fake bands and AI slop, when anyone can pump out a constant stream of drivel without putting their own humanity on the line. So while Rousay is hardly a luddite—she puts all of her tracks together on her computer, which is often running the music-making programs Ableton, Max, and GRM Tools simultaneously—her work is literally embedded with her lived experiences. She makes taking the trash out sound as poignant as a 2 a.m. hug from a friend you haven’t seen in far too long. Her music is inimitable, so it makes sense that the music she’s drawn to is extraordinarily human, too.
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