Liz

I’ve got some ideas for images that are tenuously at best linked with the music I’ve been listening to in compiling my seemingly inevitable end-of-year chart and I had something else completely in mind for today. That said, I was coming down the hill this morning and nature just handed me this one instead –and it seems somehow to fit anyway…

#12 ‘The Man Who Died In His Boat’ by Grouper

I’m kicking this chart thing off right after nostatic but before middleman gets his underway and I was just saying to the latter the other day how this particular album might be the point of convergence for the three of us. Much as I enjoyed seeing Liz Harris last year playing with her little tape machines, I prefer these tracks with a song at the heart of the fuzz and crackle. Obviously it’s not really ‘new’ stuff, I suppose (being outtakes from her ‘Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill’ album, got to love that title too) but if anyone is well fitted by attention paid to the scraps and offcuts it’s probably the artist who calls herself (in this guise anyway) Grouper. This is an album that makes you reach for the 4AD adjective book for descriptions – it’s gossamer iridescent and dare I say ethereal, though it’s also bound by shadows. Like Jasmine in the Hawthorn, it’s lovely and unexpected stuff. It’s also immersive - quiet music that makes most sense when you play it loud…