grouper

Grouper - Cover the Windows and the Walls

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"Moving on from the vocal-and-tape-delay of “Way Their Crept” to the inclusion of guitar and piano on “Wide”, Grouper has already proven to be a project that had a signature sound from the beginning but was always expanding the horizon of what is essentially a musical landscape ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifs perceived or envisioned by Liz Harris herself. The tracks on “Cover the Windows and the Walls” still have her choral vocals drifting over reverb from afar with a somewhat drowned ambience fluttering and dancing in the breeze. At some point you become aware that Grouper’s music actually IS the breeze, gently creating an atmosphere you feel you could touch."

Grouper - Way Their Crept

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"'Way Their Crept' was originally released back in 2005 but the folks at Type Records have managed to re-release it on vinyl and mp3 and it's high time. Although since the album's release there has certainly been a lot of interest generated in Liz Harris's Grouper project, we've always felt that more people needed to get hold of this album. Maybe that's down to the construction of the tracks - deceptive in their simplicity, on the first play you are almost encouraged to think that there's nothing to it; it's just vocals and tape delay, right? That's where you'd be wrong, Harris's voice is submerged beneath layer upon layer of dense noise and tape saturation, looping into a degraded whirlwind of cascading sound and on every play you wipe away another layer and discover something more. There are comparisons I could possibly make, the original press release compared 'Way Their Crept' to Arvo Part and William Basinski, but while there are similarities (Basinski's use of slowly degrading tapes, Arvo Part's sense of harmony and stark minimalism) Liz Harris is an artist I can safely say is out on her own. A Grouper album simply sounds like a Grouper album, you can spot her tracks a mile off - that voice, those slowly-shifting waves of audio, and to have a sound that characteristic is truly amazing. For me, 'Way Their Crept' is like watching a film, once you've started it's hard to stop; you've got to go through it in one sitting, taking in each track as if it were a scene in a movie, analysing it carefully before coming to the breathtaking conclusion, and when you finally reach the end you're well aware that you've sat through a very special experience indeed. Personal, emotional and packed with that priceless stuff missing from so much contemporary experimental music; substance, this is a stunning record and one which I'm certain we will be able to listen to many years from now and it won't have dated at all. These productions are totally out of time and out of place in the world, and rather than feeling like an alien experience listening to it, it feels like you are learning something about music, something about subtlety and restraint. An absolutely bumper recommendation."

sounds like: the bottom of the ocean, bioluminescent creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean, jellyfish