★Kranky
A I A : Alien Observer
**2019 small repress on Kranky** The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music thes…
A I A : Dream Loss
'This sound / synapse transposition is as haunting as it is beautiful -- surely Grouper's best.' --Tiny Mix Tapes. 'If past Grouper releases have inhabited abyssal trenches and damp backwoods, here Liz Harris takes us journeying across constellations…
Equivalents
Canadian composer Scott Morgan’s 12th long-player as Loscil takes its title from an influential series of early 20th century photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, abstracting clouds into miasmic, painterly canvases of smoke and shadowplay. It’s a deeply f…
Cloud Room, Glass Room
With percussionist extraordinaire Steven Hess now a full-fledged member, Mark Nelson and Pan American deliver their first new album since White Bird Release in 2009. This collection of new sounds began with the duo rehearsing for a series of shows i…
Dream Memory
"Guitarist Ken Camden returns for his third solo album, continuing his explorations to seek out new techniques and sounds from the electric guitar. By utilizing both a steel slide and e-bow technique, Camden has moved into micro-tonal territory to b…
Lisbon
Lisbon is a new CD EP by Keith Fullerton Whitman, a document of his live shows after an extensive performance schedule in 2005 in the wake of the acclaimed Multiples CD. As Whitman describes it: 'This recording, captured to hard disk on stage at Gale…
No. 4
Christina Vantzou follows her role in the superb CV & JAB album for Shelter Press with the starkly haunting No.4 in her chrono-numeric series of albums for Kranky. No. 4 took shape across roughly two years, incorporating a diverse array of musical an…
Grid of Points
Not long after recording her 10th album, Ruins, Grouper (Liz Harris) traveled to Wyoming to work on art and record music. She found herself drawn towards the pairing of skeletal piano phrasing with spare, rich bursts of vocal harmony. A series of sta…
Strands
From Steve Hauschildt: 'Strands is a song cycle that is about cosmogony and creation/destruction myths. The title alludes to the structural constitution of ropes as I wanted to approach the compositions so that they consisted of strands and fibers…
The Benoit Pioulard Listening Matter
LP version. "The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter is the sixth Kranky album from Thomas Meluch under the nom de plume Benoît Pioulard. It arrives on the 10th anniversary of his first LP, Précis, and offers a rekindled focus on self-examination, as…
Physicalist
Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve. "Physicalist is the third album from New York City synthesis trio Forma. Since their acclaimed self-titled debut in 2011, Forma have been perfecting a distinctive style of improvised kosmische and minimalism tha…
Precious Systems
LP version. "Precious Systems is inspired and influenced by the landscape in and near New Orleans, particularly the juxtaposition of the natural with industrial and commercial constructs as they reflect life here. The songs on the album attempt to cr…
Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
Brand new edition of Grouper's breakthrough 2008 album which has been out of print on all physical formats for the last few years* Here's what we had to say about the album when it first came out on Type 5 years ago: "With the label's hiatus well and…
The Man Who Died In His Boat
2016 reissue. Following a series of impossible-to-obtain releases for her own Yellowelectric imprint and a CD compilation of her gorgeous 'A I A' set, Liz Harris seems to have settled with Kranky who are re-releasing her classic Type album 'Draggin…
No. 3
Gatefold double LP version. "Album No. 3 from Christina Vantzou is the result of a two-year process of composing, arranging, rearranging, experimenting, and melding classical instruments with synths and electronics. Recorded in Belgium with a 15-pi…
The Original Faces
"When I was a child, I spoke to Helen."Helen is a pop group from Oregon. Liz Harris (vocals/lead guitar), Jed Bindeman (drums/tambourine), Scott Simmons (bass/guitar), and Helen (backup vocals). Originally started with the intention of being a thrash…
Where All Is Fled
Double LP version. "Steve Hauschildt's new album is his first since the late 2012 release of Sequitur. Although Where All Is Fled sonically harkens back to his earlier albums such as Rapt for Liquid Minister and Tragedy & Geometry, it slowly becomes…
Sonnet
The sound of the fifth Benoit Pioulard full length is lush and verdant, a temperate rain forest of ear ecstasy that reflects the environment surrounding the artist. A mostly instrumental work, it is an adept melding of song and sound, melody and text…
No. 2
Developed over a four year period, and entirely funded by a part time job working as a SAT university entrance exam mathematics tutor, Nº2 was composed using synthesizers and a variety of unidentiï¬ÂÂÂed samples that were manipulated beyond recogni…