- Accomplished ambient pop from the Austin artist.
- Austin experimental artist more eaze (AKA mari maurice) is part of a wave of producers weaving soft-focus ambient, ASMR and other electroacoustic elements into novel configurations. After a slew of releases—21 solo and collaborative albums over the past six years, according to Discogs—her latest, yearn, lands on excellent Chicago outlet Lillerne Tape Club.
maurice makes understated ambient pop, but the music's humble facade belies its densely layered construction. The ten-minute opener "galv" starts off with field recordings of the wind in the trees, introducing pensive synths and autotuned vocals, abstracted to various degrees. Eventually, an Ashra-style electronic Krautrock rhythm starts up as we wade into an amniotic groove.
The rest of the record is similarly tough to pin down. "Priority," featuring Ben Bondy, is an atmospheric acoustic guitar ballad reminiscent of K Records or early 2000s IDM-inflected pop, but against the backdrop of the last decade of Auto-Tune innovations. yearn concludes with "Leave," an epic soundtrack-style drone that folds in piano, synthetic strings and domestic field recordings. Something about the intimate, voyeuristic tone of more eaze's music puts me in mind of Arthur Russell. In the way the late legend's intimate, innovative recordings beckoned towards transcendence, yearn achieves a casual sublimity.
Tracklist01. Galv
02. In Dreams
03. Priority feat. Ben Bondy
04. Leave