GROUPER "Way Their Crept" --- CONTACT

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.

Here's a little bit/interview with Liz. Her part starts around the 4:15 mark
http://www.wk.com/wke/show/dont_move_here/episode/3

Norman Records had some yesterday but all gone now:
http://twitter.com/#!/normanrecords/status/65078711191470080

Listened to Alien Observer last night and it's astonishingly beautiful.

^^yeah, no kidding. I still haven't listened to dream loss yet, but wow, alien observer is a stunner.

and man, the gauzy, low-fi thing just works so well for her sound. the electric piano (is that what it is?) on here sounds gorgeous.

I think it's a wurlitzer

ah, that does sound like a better fit.

i kinda think alien obsrvr is formless garbage honestly /no whiney

^Been waiting for someone to say that, really.
I don't think it's garbage, necessarily, but there isn't much for me to hold onto.

sure, I can see that. not necessarily a negative on a grouper record, tho. (imo)

hahaha, that's what everybody I have played any Grouper at all for says. "what is this crap? that's not even music."

Just play them some Stars Of The Lid and tell them to STFU

I was similarly somewhat disappointed. It's not like she screwed up or anything, either. She just wasn't aiming for the same kind of sound as on dragging a dead deer up a hill. But that for me is her standout release, so while I enjoy this new material for what it is, i've ended up listening through these about as much as I listened to her earliest releases - 3-4 times each - rather than the many dozens of timed I've listened to DDD.

I love SotL more than just about anything on this shitty planet, btw!

i can't decide whether it's crap or beautiful. there's something about 'dead deer' that's really moving.

i think with the excess of shitwavegazebrochillwitchhouse or whatever the fuck it is you kids do these days, its hard to tell whether stuff in this circle of drone music has been well crafted, or is just plain no-effort-let-the-pedals-do-the-work garbage

actually no it's not hard to tell at all, it's either shit or not, but uh, it's changed the way people approach and appreciate stuff.

The early stuff esp 'Wide' and 'Way Their Crept' is still awesome to me.. 'DDD' was shocking to hear at first, and is less of a straight ambient record than the others.. 'AIA' seems halfway, but less dense than the pre-'DDD' material.

think with the excess of shitwavegazebrochillwitchhouse or whatever the fuck it is you kids do these days, its hard to tell whether stuff in this circle of drone music has been well crafted, or is just plain no-effort-let-the-pedals-do-the-work garbage

It doesn't matter if it sounds good

The early stuff esp 'Wide' and 'Way Their Crept' is still awesome to me.. 'DDD' was shocking to hear at first, and is less of a straight ambient record than the others.. 'AIA' seems halfway, but less dense than the pre-'DDD' material.

think with the excess of shitwavegazebrochillwitchhouse or whatever the fuck it is you kids do these days, its hard to tell whether stuff in this circle of drone music has been well crafted, or is just plain no-effort-let-the-pedals-do-the-work garbage

It doesn't matter if it sounds good

'dead deer' is ok, ive never been all that impressed w/ her music but im really not sure what the point of her 'music' even is, it seem p bereft of any ideas, also its not really enjoyable to listen to so

That's a shame

you can post that twice

I think the idea here is taking a lo-fi, indie sound as a starting point and then blur the edges and stretch everything out (in some cases more radically than others). not exactly novel but I think she pulls it off and I wouldn't say the music is bereft of ideas even if it isn't heavily conceptual.

Just wait until her MTV Unplugged CD comes out.

backed by the roots

"Slow Walkers is a new collaborative project between Australian sound artist Lawrence English and ambient pop artist Liz Harris, aka Grouper. It's a multi-media project about zombies that will take the form of an album, video installations and a live audio-visual concert." (http://p4k.in/trPvwA)

http://vimeo.com/30846604

Pretty stoked for this. Lawrence English's The Peregrine LP is one of my highlights of the year.

Lawrence English's The Peregrine LP is one of my highlights of the year.

oh really? what's it like? i think he's real interesting but haven't really heard any of his solo stuff. the tenniscoats lp he recorded is special.

Here's a sample http://bit.ly/sbtPOM and a great piece on The Liminal http://bit.ly/ulpeYw.

I've been a fan since the two Digitalis vinyl reissues of A Colour For Autumn and Kiri No Oto so was primed for a new one.

A Colour For Autumn is fantastic, pretty excited to hear this news.

Great interview with Liz in the new Wire, I was totally clueless on the biographical stuff. Mostly about her upbringing as a member of a cult-ish commune called The Group and the influence of that on her music.

the peregrine is indeed beautiful

OOH tell me more about the cult

Okay, from what I can remember, it was a commune based at a large estate in the Sonoran mountains that was into Fourth Way spirituality. Children were encouraged to think of the group as one big family and consequently were persistenly moved around between different sets of parents. They were given a lot of freedom to roam around the estate and so spent a lot of time outdoors, but apparently Liz Harris didn't mix with anyone from outside the community until she was eleven when she got sent off to public school, where obviously she was a complete outsider. This was when I think the commune was collapsing anyway.

Meanwhile, her father had left the commune previous to this and as a result Liz didn't feel wholly a part of the group but was instead was in this limbo between that and the outside world. The article then goes on to talk about this theme of inbetween states as a central part of her work. It was useful!

(also Manuel Göttsching is on the cover, it's a nice issue!)

i wish that magazine weren't so expensive! is the Göttsching article long? worth reading?

also wow, what a mess of words here:

is never without some task around which and in connection with which it can alone exist. When this work is finished, that is to say, when the aim set before it has been accomplished, the fourth way disappears, that is, it disappears from the given place, disappears in its given form, continuing perhaps in another place in another form. Schools of the fourth way exist for the needs of the work which is being carried out in connection with the proposed undertaking. They never exist by themselves as schools for the purpose of education and instruction.

cults are so interesting

Yeah I'm not sure I completely understand that wiki entry, it's still about as clear as mud to me.

The Göttsching piece is pretty much focussed entirely on E2-E4 btw. Haven't read it yet though.

^^ That makes me want to buy it even more

there's also a piece about sandwell district

The Visitor 12" by Grouper & Ilyas Ahmed is available from http://littleaxerecords.com, under distributed titles.

I'd been looking for it for a while.

“Spent the last two weeks writing sketches/demos for forthcoming collaboration between me and Grouper for the upcoming Ninja Tune Bug album.”

http://www.factmag.com/2012/01/11/the-bug-working-with-grouper-on-new-album/

yeah, very interested in how that's going to turn out

Me too! Maybe like a droney lo-fi, dubbed out version of Liz Frasier with Massive Attack?

err, Liz Fraser obv

totally, in a general sense, although hopefully very much its own thing as well

it's nice seeing this new Ethereal/Witchy Girls + Beats sound happening in a lot of places, as that's prob one of my fav combinations ever