About

As Grouper, Liz Harris combines aspects of ambient, psychedelic, and folk music as well as dream pop into music that is equally mysterious and moving. The singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist uncovers different nuances within her style on each of her many releases, which range from the lush and relatively poppy territory of 2008's widely acclaimed Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill to 2012's sprawling double-album A l A to more intimate works like 2018's Grid of Points.  — (via Gray Area)

Most artists would struggle to put one album of the quality Liz Harris exhibited on Alien Observer (the first part of her A I A double-header) but somehow she's managed to churn out a full two forty minute albums each as breathtaking as the last.

Dream Loss is the murkier, more grimy counterpart to Alien Observer distant pop and travels still further into Liz's astral tape haze and noisy, vocal ambience. While the record might begin unassumingly enough with the downplayed 'Dragging the Streets', 'I Saw A Ray' greets us with a volcanic slither of noise and calloused harmony. This deeply buried melancholy transports us through the album, and while the noise subsides to make way for Liz's familiar layered vocal loops and subtle, withdrawn songs, the character and texture is still one of distortion and fragmentation as opposed to the occasional overt prettiness exhibited on Alien Observer.

As Liz mentioned in the run-up to this ambitious double release, the albums are two very separate works, yet somehow feed off eachother when heard together. To hear one without the other is to only hear a single element of the whole piece - Dream Loss adds the darkness, and in sinking deep into it we get a whole new understanding for Alien Observer. It's a harrowing trip, but one laced with beauty, restraint and that unquantifiable magic that seems to grace mostly anything Liz Harris touches. Just buy it; you won't be disappointed. — (via Label)

—

The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music these last few years, this collection of elements may sound familiar, possibly bordering on cliché. But it's all in how you fit the pieces together. Despite sharing characteristics with a lot of other current music, Harris' has a distinctive sound that she pretty much owns. Part of the distinctiveness can be traced to Harris' voice, which floats above the music and can sound delicate and shrouded and mist and can also evince an approachable earthiness. The other aspect that sets Grouper apart is an approach to sound that feels somehow both cruder and more sophisticated than the majority of the lo-fi crop. It's crude in the sense that it seems to hearken back to the dark, home-recorded songs of an earlier era.

Dream Loss is heavier on the distortion and EQ, and with an atmosphere that alternates between the hissy, open drift of the stratosphere with the thick, all-encompassing immersion of the ocean floor. The tracks here feel less like songs and more like moods, studies, and shapes. "I Saw a Ray" flirts with noise music, with a bit of industrial grind added to the held tones, while "Soul Eraser" seems to crumble into dust and regenerate itself simultaneously. — (via Pitchfork)

↓
Label: Kranky
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue
Reissued: 2019 / Original Release: 2011
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Experimental, Ethereal, Ambient

File under: Electronic // Ambient / Experimental / IDM
⦿