Browse by Artist: GROUPER

Artist:	GROUPER
Title:	Way Their Crept
Label:	FREE PORCUPINE SOCIETY
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	FPS 014CD

"Way Their Crept is a beautiful and haunting release of processed vocals, keyboards and guitar recorded by Liz Harris in Oakland, California. Melodic and emotive elements create a complex contrast of grit and grain that Harris shares with fellow Oakland free-noise musicians Tom Carter and Xiu Xiu. Her music parallels the spiritual, meditative bent of guitarist Christina Carter while giving the breezy ambience of Brian Eno and Harold Budd a noisier, more brittle presence. Like an imagined ode to Throbbing Gristle by Arvo Pärt, Way Their Crept sounds like a choir of ghosts recorded a hundred years ago. Doppelgangers, phantoms and black holes emerge from countless layers of tonal and vocal arrangements and weave through the swirling fog of tape hiss and distortion."

Artist:	GROUPER
Title:	Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 038CD

This is the third full-length release for Portland, Oregon-based Liz Harris. Harris might have achieved a significant fan base thanks to the whispering, near-ambient vocal crusades of her debut album Way Their Crept and its follow-up Wide, but those with a careful ear would have heard slightly more trapped beneath her fuzzy chain of effects. Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill marks a departure of sorts for Liz, which sees her turn down the fuzz boxes which caged (and to some degree defined) her sound and allows her voice to ring out above everything else. It is an album steeped in the world of dream-pop -- a genre pioneered by the likes of Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil -- and far from shying away from the reference, Liz has instead grabbed on with both hands, creating an album's worth of perfect, left-field pop songs. Using delicate song structures which are at once both familiar and somehow alien, her vocals cry out hauntingly over stripped-down guitar lines and looped environmental recordings. Just listen to "I'd Rather Be Sleeping," a track that could be a mournful take on Belly, albeit with a more fragile heart. These unforgettable harmonies and vocal lines that embed themselves into your consciousness before you even realize it are the key to the album's success and the reason why it makes such a lasting impression. There is something to Liz Harris' music that defies time and makes you sit up and listen. These are the future soundtracks to love, despair and ultimately, hope.

Artist:	GROUPER
Title:	Wide
Label:	WEIRD FOREST
Format:	LP
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	WEIRD 027LP

"Grouper is Liz Harris and this is her second album, Wide. Submerged in this music, a vast pasture forms near a great sea just before dawn. The early morning vapors were everywhere hovering just above the ground. Soon the sun swells up and the vapors transmogrify into a tempest of hornets. The hornets envelope the sun with impressive fervor, but it melts them into haze again and the vapors migrate out to the sea. Grouper has collaborated with Jandek, Xiu Xiu, Ilyas Ahmed, Six Organs of Admittance, Jorge Behringer, Badgerlore, and others. This is the vinyl edition of the CD released on Free Porcupine Society." Limited to 1000 copies with beautiful tip-on style single pocket gatefold jackets featuring photography by Peter Harris.

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