grouper

Here are our favorite records of 2014. The general consensus seems to be that this was probably not the most amazing year of all-time for new music, and further, we just weren't feeling that many of the unanimously lauded critic/indie blog favorites this time around (many of which we wanted to love, but it just didn't work out, with a few notable and very obvious exceptions). But as always, if you

"Recorded pretty simply, with a portable 4-track, Sony stereo mic and an upright piano. When I wasnʼt recording songs I was hiking several miles to the beach. The path wound through the ruins of several old estates and a small village...

"The album is a document. A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love. I left the songs the way they came (microwave beep from when power went out after a storm); I hope that the album bears some resemblance to the place that I was in...

"I have been playing pop music with some friends and we made a 7". We're playing under the name Helen." -- Liz Harris of Grouper Grab Helen's beautifully blown-out debut Felt This Way / Dying All the Time 7" single on iTunes.

We're psyched to announce that we've teamed up with our friends at Austin's Chaos in Tejas to help present a couple of amazing shows at this year's fest, starting with one of our favorite / most important artists in the history of this site, Portland's Grouper, along with Jessica Pratt and Silent Land Time Machine on May 31 at the beautiful Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin... Read M

Download a somber, unsettlingly eerie new mix from Portland's Liz Harris for FACT, entitled Image Of True Death. No tracklist / more info here: mp3: (81 mb)

Our friends at self-titled magazine have hooked us up with a copy of Liz Harris of Grouper's beautiful, extremely limited (100 prints), signed Repeating Patterns 2 print -- pictured above -- to give away to one of you. The print was produced for self-titled's new Heavy Issue, as Liz's "visual interpretation of heaviness...

"Vital" is one of the highlights from Grouper's achingly beautiful new release, an LP's worth of unreleased material that Liz Harris recorded around the same time as her 2008 classic Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. The Man Who Died in His Boat + the 4th pressing of Dragging... Read More ...

Along with the welcome news that Grouper's out-of-print masterpiece Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill -- one of our favorite albums of the last decade or so -- will see its fourth pressing early next year courtesy of Kranky comes word that Grouper will also release a new record called The Man Who Died In His Boat, an LP of unreleased material from the Dragging era...