[Gorilla vs. Bear] Grab Yeti’s new issue at their official site, and check out more Grouper content here.
Tag: Grouper
Kevin Martin has revealed more details about his long-awaited fourth album as the Bug. Fresh off a session with Gonjasufi, he told his Twitter followers, “Gonja’s voice is like a homesick alien’s heading for the stars…He is a brother from another planet.”
He continued, calling the record a “dream come true” and promising it sometime this year, including sample-driven duets with Daddy Freddy, Flowdan, Warrior Queen, Death Grips, Grouper and Martin’s longtime GOD/Ice/Techno Animal collaborator, Justin Broadrick of Jesu and Godflesh.
Check out a lengthy interview with Martin from last summer here, and his last duet with Broadrick, the Bug single “Catch a Fire” (featuring King Midas Sound’s Kiki Hitomi) below…
Continue reading »
Photo by Samantha Casolari
As we continue to look back at the year that was, we’d like to take a moment to memorialize 40 records we haven’t already highlighted in our editors’ lists (available here, here and here) or album spotlights, starting with a stunner that soothed our caffeine-wracked nerves every time we had to deliver an issue on deadline…
Since he’s already emerged as one of the underground’s preeminent dark-ambient players (see: last month’s The Resurrections Unseen LP and a looming collaboration with former Isis frontman, Aaron Turner), we gave William Fowler Collins some simple instructions for the 81st installment of our Needle Exchange series: send us a mix that’s “bleak but beautiful.” He answered the call with a skeletal, spooky meditation on everything black metal and Morricone, The Shining and Grouper, and what long New Mexico nights does to a person…
More details about Animal Collective’s All Tomorrow’s Parties bill are available here. Check out a killer two-hour mix that starts with Orthrelm and ends with Zomby below…
Continue reading »
Pitchfork has managed to pry some exciting news from the ever-elusive Grouper. According to an E-mail exchange between the two, Liz Harris has completed two LPs for an April release: Dream Loss and Alien Observer. Collectively known as A I A, the self-released efforts will be available in digital and vinyl formats, “meant to stand solidly on their own, and also as satellites in the same system.”
“Dream Loss is a collection of older songs, mostly written before a hard time,” Harris explained. “Alien Observer, for the most part, is made of songs recorded after that time. Each has a song that belongs thematically on the other, a seam stitching them together. Both albums…explore otherness. Being an other to one’s own self, to other humans; ghosts and aliens, both literal and metaphorical; and other worlds to escape to (beneath the water, in the sky). Thinking about people who have died…
Continue reading »
Grouper’s limited Hold/Sick 7” will be available through Lawrence English’s Room40 label in early October. You can pre-order it here now. [Gorilla vs. Bear]
So we managed to sneak into Grouper’s rare Brooklyn gig on Friday night and still aren’t sure what we witnessed over the course of her main 60-minute set. (She also presented a new tape collage piece.) To be honest, the entire thing looked/sounded incredibly creepy, as if one of The Shining’s redrum-happy twins suddenly learned how to sculpt dronescapes and acoustic something-or-others from an ancient keyboard and several effects pedals. It didn’t help that the room was humid as hell—literally—with Issue Project Room’s single, solitary fan getting switched off in the middle of the first ’song’ because it was interfering with Liz Harris’ signal.
Now, when we say it didn’t help, self-titled doesn’t mean to suggest that Grouper was godfawful. She was actually quite great in an Enya’s Selected Ambient Works sort of way. In fact, the only thing that suffered during her spectral tone paintings was our ability to process what was going on—to figure out what was live and what was looped through the storm clouds ahead.
Anyway, if you missed the whole thing, we’ve got a special treat after the jump: Grouper’s entire performance from ATP NY last fall. Captured beautifully by WFMU, it features four extended tracks. Oh, and the photo (grabbed from _J on Flickr) on the left is from a Berlin appearance in 2009. Unfortunately, the Issue Project Room show was impossible to shoot without breaking its fragile spell.
Continue reading »
The Bitters
[Photo by Jeremy R. Jansen]
While self-titled certainly doesn’t field the same amount of mail we did five years ago, our ungrateful office still gets lots of free shit. With that in mind, we’ve decided to start supporting our favorite record shops every single week and sharing our favorite finds, even if that simply means a 7-inch from some broke ass Brooklyn band.
Here’s what we discovered at Other Music earlier today…
Continue reading »
