Vinyl LP pressing. When words trail off at the beginning of Claire Rousay's Everything Perfect Is Already Here, ornate instrumentation is waiting to fill a void left by the breakdown of language. Yet it becomes clear as we trace Rousay's collaged sonic pathway that breakdown, of meaning and also of melody, is also a place to rest. Everything perfect... is made up of two extended compositions that cycle between familiarity and unknowing. There are seemingly infinite ways to feel in response to these pieces of music, which shift tone across their languid duration, earnest like a familiar song but unbound from the emotional didacticisms of lyrical voice and pop form. Rousay builds a fluid landscape around the acoustic contributions of Alex Cunningham (violin), Mari Maurice (electronics and violin), Marilu Donovan (harp), and Theodore Cale Schafer (piano), whose respective melodies weave gently in and out, sometimes steady, sometimes aching, sometimes receding altogether in deference to less overtly musical sounds.
