Articles
2014 TOP 10s & 20s
Dday One

Albums
2562
Poppy Ackroyd
Blueneck
Nicholas Chase
Vicky Chow
Carlos Cipa
Dale Cooper + Witxes
Dday One
Federico Durand
English + Vitiello
Everyday Dust
Eyck and Tarnow
Faded Ranger
Grouper
Robert Hood
Human Greed
The Invaderz
Thomas Köner
Kontext
Akira Kosemura
Heiko Laux
Norberto Lobo
Andrew McIntosh
Monolog
Aina Myrstener Cello
Northumbria
Michael Nyman
One World Symphony
Postma & Osby
David Pritchard
[.que]
See Through Trio
Dirk Serries
Jakob Skøtt
Miguel Zenón

Reissue
Hassell and Eno

Compilations
Air Texture Volume IV
Emerging Organisms 5
Hyperdub 10.4

EPs / Singles
David Ahlen
Blu Mar Ten
Boston feat. Solis
DIFFER-Ent (By DJ Bone)
Gone Beyond
Matthias Grübel
Lami / Ratti
Lubomyr Melnyk
Ryo Murakami
Om Unit
Pursuit Grooves

Grouper: Ruins
kranky

The word ruins typically connotes a condition of architectural collapse and destruction, but it can also just as easily allude to a damaged psychological state. That would seem to be the case in Ruins, the latest collection of hypnotic songcraft from Liz Harris under the Grouper name, given that the modest recording, by her own description, finds her processing “a lot of political anger and emotional garbage.”

With the exception of the closing piece, “Made of Air” (recorded at her mother's house in 2004), Harris recorded all of the songs in 2011 in Aljezur, Portugal during a residency provided by Galeria Zé dos Bois. It's about as naked a set as one could imagine: recorded with nothing more than a portable four-track, Sony stereo mic, and upright piano, the forty-minute mix of instrumental and vocal songs captures Harris documenting experiences such as daily walks, “(f)ailed structures,” and “(l)iving in the remains of love.” Such details convey the impression of someone bruised by struggles, romantic and otherwise, and attempting to make sense of and recover from it using creative means.

A sense of place is established at the outset in the opening instrumental “Made of Metal” when cricket chirps, bird caws, and dog barks are heard alongside a stark, droning pulse. At the opposite end, “Made of Air” closes the album with eleven minutes of hazy dreamscaping in characteristic Grouper style. It's the vocal songs that are more affecting, however. Her tremulous voice is so hushed during “Clearing” and “Holding” that one struggles to decipher the words she's singing. But even when the songs' lyrics remain opaque, their lilting melodies are so haunting it hardly matters. Though slightly darker in tone by comparison, “Call Across Rooms” proves to be as lovely, as is “Lighthouse,” which, in classic Grouper form, casts a potent spell in its simple yet stirring vocal and piano presentation. The experience of listening to her music is like having some long-forgotten memory re-emerge and swell in elemental power as it comes slowly into focus.

Bolstering the already intimate quality of Harris's work is her decision to present the material in undoctored form, pretty much the way it went down (no attempt was made, for example, to eradicate the microwave bleep that appears near the end of the piano instrumental “Labyrinth”). When she states, “I hope that the album bears some resemblance to the place that I was in,” we obviously interpret that to refer to something more than just the geographical locale where the recording happened.

December 2014