New Grouper Music

New music from Liz Harris abounds: First there was her collaboration from late in 2011 with ID Music fave Ilyas Ahmed, Visitor, a mellow guitar ‘n’ treated tapes affair that in-the-know heads have been listening for ever since hearing their inter-mingled vibrations at the On Land Festival back in 2010, a happening circulated widely via the YouTubes.

This was followed soon after by a Grouper cover of Dead Moon’s “Demona” on 7-inch accompanying the new issue of high class goner ‘zine Yeti,  and then by Mirroring’s Foreign Body, an album-length collaboration with Jesy Fortino of Tiny Vipers. The latter of which sounds to our ears like the interstitial ambient pieces — e.g. “Rainbow Illness” — from the last Wolves in the Throne Room album drawn out to epic proportions.

And now, Violet Replacement Parts I and II, a CDr on Harris’ Yellow Electric label.  These two long-form ambient works — 90 minutes of music broken into two sets — go along with her European Tour of the same name (details at the Yellow Electric website). According to her website, “tape collage” is what she’s doing here, guitar echoes, field recordings and muffled keyboard tones that drift in and out of spaces that are much noisier than anything on her last few albums, sort of Pete Swanson’s Ghost O’Clock  slowed and throwed, Yellow Swans in amber.

No doubt the CDr — limited to 100 copies — will sell out on tour, but it’s available online at places like the iTunes store, where you can also download the sublime Grouper “Water People/Moving Machine” 7-inch she recorded when Ballroom brought her out here to Marfa in May of 2010. Check out photos and a brief Q&A on the Ballroom Marfa blog.

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