The Lab

The Lab is a nonprofit experimental art and performance space located in the Mission District of San Francisco.

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Claire Rousay + Maria BC

  • 2948 16th St San Francisco, CA, 94103 (map)

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Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$23 advance / $25 door / free or discounted for members
Advance prices include ticketing fees. Request your member DICE Code here.

claire rousay is a singular artist, known for challenging conventions in experimental and ambient music forms. rousay masterfully incorporates textural found sounds, sumptuous drones and candid field recordings into music that celebrates the beauty in life’s banalities. Her music is curatorial and granular in detail, deftly shaped into emotionally affecting pieces. sentiment is a meditation of the poignant emotional terrains of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sex. The album’s narrative arc is guided by delicate musical gestures and artistic vulnerability, audaciously synthesizing disparate and unexpected influences. rousay crafted the songs in various homes, bedrooms, hotels, and other private places, the feeling of time and energy spent alone radiating from each passage. The album is a collection of heart-rending, incisive pop songs that explore universal feelings with subtlety and remarkable vision.

Snippets of conversations, bird calls, and the clicking of a stove burner trying to ignite, are just a few of the field recordings that San Antonio-based sound artist claire rousay weaves together in her sprawling, meditative music. A composer of "emo ambient" sounds, rousay has released over a dozen projects since 2017, created a Sunday Mix for Crack Magazine in 2021, and toured her cinematic sonic poems internationally.

Ohio-born, Oakland, CA-based artist Maria BC (they/them) has slowly opened up their process over the years, moving from the one-room recording process of 2021 EP Devil’s Rain—careful not to disturb their roommates or neighbors—to the untreated apartment wanderings of Hyaline (2022, Father/Daughter) to the home of a family friend featuring an out-of-tune baby Steinway piano where they recorded their Sacred Bones debut, Spike Field.

Hyaline, was a 2022 ambient-folk highlight. It found the singer-songwriter crafting haunting tracks that played like they were beamed from the heart of some mystical, cobwebbed attic. Spike Field pushed their gauzy formula into increasingly manicured terrain, capturing the sound of a young artist who has quickly honed a singular voice. Strings, plucked guitar and buzzing swells accompany their classically-trained mezzo-soprano voice soaking their arrangements in a denser and more kaleidoscopic way than any of their previous work. Maria BC describes it as “filling out the sonic space,” as Spike Field builds on the intimacy of Hyaline through liberating instrumental embellishments.

Later Event: May 10
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