GROUPER "Way Their Crept" --- CONTACT

it is available to buy digitally tho right?

i wonder if limited mp3 release will become a thing/is a thing

y'huh though, via boomkat etc??

is there a "best of grouper" collection i could purchase also (nb, digitally)

x-post cool...

Alien Observer is up on Spotify as well fwiw

I wonder what the thinking was behind the decision to not press enough to meet demand? Cos it strikes me as being conscious rather than cautious.

I mean, DDD is now on its third repress.

Anyhow, Weird Forest will have some on sale tonight...

"WF HQ received a VERY LIMITED quantity of the new Grouper A I A LPs. So few that they would sell out before everyone on the mailing list received this message. In the interest of fairness, I will post them for sale on the Weird Forest website at 7pm (pacific time) tomorrow (Tues 4/19). I apologize in advance for any disappointment but there were not enough records to go around."

xp to ronan, ya, it's on itunes

wonder what the thinking was behind the decision to not press enough to meet demand? Cos it strikes me as being conscious rather than cautious.

do you think? ehh. i kinda saw it more as an obliviousness. that there are also provisions for another press based on demand doesn't make it seem like a kinda fetishisation-of-the-limited thing.

one of the weird things that comes up re: this & mississippi is where the boundary lies between, a), pressing a bunch of records and selling them being a personal project, that one can take control of and do according to your own terms, versus b), there being an obligation to provide for the market and meet demand, etc. there are a lot of records that have come out (the first nite jewel & zola jesus LPs, say) in the past few years where the vinyl has disappeared & never come back, even while LPs go for crazy money on ebay. i sorta think that keeping stuff in circulation, repressing if there's enough demand, etc, means that you should be able to print something up according to your own specs without being called out for being small-scale or exclusive or whatever. i can see how doing it on a handmade basis, albeit in smaller numbers, and maintaining control, is worth some of the awkwardness of not necessarily meeting demand.

like: there is always a lot of fuck mississippi etc, but why shouldn't you be able to open a store and do your best to make and distro some lps?

do you think? ehh. i kinda saw it more as an obliviousness. that there are also provisions for another press based on demand doesn't make it seem like a kinda fetishisation-of-the-limited thing.

I can totally see this side too.

I guess I was just angling at the fact that it felt to me like this (relative) level of demand could have been anticipated and that there must have been other factors at play. Perhaps financial ones relating to the size of the pressing they could afford for instance.

And being that this is a private press I want the money to get to her you know? I want her to be able to meet demands and sell and sell so she can afford to keep making music.

But as you say, there's another run coming so my conjecture is moot anyhow!

Ordered a copy from Forced Exposure but have doubts it will actually ship. Don't mind buying digital as long as it's FLAC.

Ordered a copy from Forced Exposure and specified a zip code of a town I lived in a year ago, rather than where I am now. It still says "processing" so ideally they get my corrections (there's no way to specify it on their webstore) before they go out (if they go out at all). I will go ahead and say that this has been a bit of a hassle (and I'm not making things better by participating).

album doesn't turn up in forced exposure's search anymore, plus my account now shows no open or shipped orders. so that's the end of that adventure.

hey hazel i do not really understand your posts but they are freaking me out, disrupting the serenity that descended after ordering a copy of this & stopping worrying about it all. doesn't your account just say being processed or whatever?, since that was the state it would've been in before? that it's disappeared from the site seems more like a good sign than a bad one.

nope, my account shows no orders whatsoever, although I have an email from them with an order number. didn't mean to panic you. I'd like to hear it sooner rather than later, but if there's going to be a repress, I won't die.

but what about the rest of us

but

Weird FE stuff. I got an email saying it has shipped ups. I didn't use the beta site btw.

that's a good point, the beta site is a beta site. some weirdness could be expected.

Weird Forest has them up right now for those who haven't got em yet

they had them up for about six seconds.

My FE order just says "ON HOLD / Awaiting Restocks" now. So I'm pretty sure that's the end of that.

^^ Same here, sadly.

I appreciate limited releases of an artist like Grouper, who controls her own output, but this is rather ridiculous. Scouring the internet, going to music websites where the records are up only a minute or so before they're all gone... Hugely frustrating.

The chase was thrilling but unsuccessful, so I torrented it. When it's easier to buy, I'll buy it. Boomkat has FLACs, but I'm not paying $26 for a download.

Are you kidding me? $26 for a fucking download?

That's for two albums I assume, but still.

Don't hate Boomkat too much, the exchange rate is what makes it so high.

the albums are a fiver each on itunes fwiw

Or two pounds something each on emusic.

Do they have non-lossy formats?

No, just cheap and cheerful 256kbps vbr MP3s iirc

A copy of each just showed up on Discogs. $30 though.

And some here too... http://www.reckless.com

I can't get that one to work, after clicking buy it just freezes (in both Firefox and Safari). This record is cursed. Thanks anyway.

And some here too...

hey thank you
assuming my FE order is not happening also so trying these guys.

Gone from reckless.com now

ha, yeah, i got that e-mail also. there's something on their FB from like Monday saying they got them in, so i guess it makes sense. i am hunting these lps so hard i am going to mount them like a moose-head when i get them fwiw.

don't understanmd all this stress, they will be repressed for sure just like Dead Deer.

it is being excited to hear it, just. i am trying to be deliberate about the way i hear records first, because with leaks, sometimes things come out, and you hear them, and then the point at which you buy them - which shouldn't be the exciting thing about an album coming out, but which should be a thing that you do, if you like the record - becomes pretty much devoid of discovery or excitement and so laborious and unappealing, and then bam it's a record you've been playing around and around for two months but which actually buying is a drag, some perfunctory measure that you mean to get around to. with the smog record, i heard half of it when it leaked, and i'm still psyched to get the LP. with this, i'm excited for it; that i'll get the vinyl means i don't want to buy a download of it, and the idea of hearing it and then waiting just feels like it'll lead me into that zone where i don't get around to buying a thing or i just buy one of them and--. i don't know. it isn't possessiveness, it's just anticipation for her LP; that there is other music to listen to until it gets re-pressed doesn't diminish the excitement of a new record that people are enjoying.

like, i'm trying to avoid that record-buying paralysis i sometimes get, when you feel like you're materialistically compiling objects that you already in some sense have, or know, out of this semi-nebulous sense of propriety & investment, getting into a conflict about whether i should be buying something more adventurous (having heard this specific thing), or one of her other records, or food, or eroding my debts, or whatever, instead. you eventually get reminded that records are good, useful, worthwhile objects to own, when you're broke and only have them for entertainment and they display their worth by modifying your living space, but buying something i've heard always feels like it's me being sorta possessive. where as trying to get it and so tying together the part where i hear it, & it is good, with the part where i reward grouper for excellent record-making efforts, just feels more convenient.

Got my copies in the mail yesterday, and damn these are great. But I think the reason these records were self released and not pressed in a large quantity is because it seems that they aren't really a proper follow up to dragging a dead deer up a hill. These songs seem like kind of an experimental departure for her. I could be wrong, but thats just my impression after a couple listens.

i'd say that these most recent two fit easily into her catalog...really the only departure was Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. That was the first exposure of Grouper for a lot of people (including myself), so it's easy to view that as the baseline, but that was actually quite an unusual release for her in terms of accessibility. and while that accessibility brought her a lot of accolades and most people intrinsically think of it as "better", she may have a totally different view. more power to her!

Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill is by far my fav Grouper release, btw! :) i'm just saying that this new one is kind of a return to her older , pre DDD up a hill sound.

the hold/sick 7" that was out a while ago felt like a step towards the more submersive old stuff, for sure

My Forced Exposure order was cancelled today. Does anyone know if Dead Deer is getting any more represses?

The two albums very much feel like one is considerably older and one is newer. In my car Dream Loss sounded so blown out I couldn't even tell that it had vocals, while Alien Observer feels like it has songs but that the vocals and the lyrics are nowhere near as crucial to the structures as they were on Dragging a Dead Deer. It sounds to me like she's shifted her melodic instrument from acoustic guitar to electric piano, and I think this is the first time I've ever actually missed the presence of an acoustic guitar on someone's record. But yeah, these seem way more in line with Wide / Way Their Crept / Cover The Windows and the Walls than with Dead Deer. Will likely grow to love it regardless.

i was a sucker and ordered from Volcanic Tongue as soon as I saw the post above, even though they were like a billion dollars each. And even then, I just received this message:

Apologies for the delay getting back to you, we've been overwhelmed with Grouper orders. Sorry but the Grouper LPs have sold out, the demand far outweighed what Grouper could supply, we’re very sorry you missed out.

Same here, tried it at two places now (FE, Reckless) as in actually placing an order and a while later hearing the demand was too high. Does it even exist on vinyl?

Tried FE, VT and Weird Forest, no luck. So i bought the ones on Discogs. Thankfully the exchange rate is in my favour...

just fyi this is gone-gone, i think, now: sold out on fusetron, & at boomkat too, boomkat who were charging twenty-pounds-each for the lps.

I want to buy these records. Please make more of these records.

Yeah, vinyl unavailability aside, Dream Loss is killing me. Haven't even spent any time with Alien Observer yet.

I prefer 'Alien Observer'..had a bit of an epiphany with the title track, on a still, sunny evening waiting for a train with blossom in the air. Need to spend more time with 'Dream Loss' tbh.