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Vocalist Patty Waters straddles approaches that are something like a lounge jazz and a vocal avant-gardism, singing to stripped down instrumentals playing familiar then dissonant intervals, often ones that feel just slightly off of what you expectâthe effect is something like holding an old photograph in your hand and noticing the material distortions. What sounds sentimental in a Nat King Cole or King Moody croon, becomes haunting or grin under Patty Waterâs command.
I especially get that effect from this album, College Days, in which her voice warmly vibrates at the center, with the instruments falling into the background. Itâs perfect rainy day music from her, but this album also has a lot of her screaming and using her voice in a remarkable way, it definitely draws comparison to someone like Meredith Monk, where breathe voice and tone become their own force. This track Wild is the Wind is the noisiest and reminds me of Arthur Russell at some points.
Reccomend if you like: Joan La Barbera, Bjork, Shelley Hirsch, Fiona Apple, Meredith Monk.
Jan 9, 2024
Related Recs
Liz Harris â the one-woman, do-it-all singer/songwriter/musician who essentially IS Grouper â is the sound of someone disappearing before your very eyes; an ache with no underlying injury; a whisper from an unseen voice. Such is the ephemeral ghostliness of her music, an intensely private form of expression captured within a very public context. If you took My Bloody Valentineâs layered collage of sounds and applied Lowâs 4AD ambient acoustic surface to them (vs. Kevin Shieldsâ concussive, punishing feedback waves), you might be approaching the outer rings of Grouperâs orbit.
"On dreams I'm moving through heavy water/
The love is enormous, it's lifting me up/
I'd rather be sleeping."
Druggy, sexy, arty, pretty, but never pretentious. The sound of the waking dream.
Mar 20, 2024
It's haunting and melancholy but very passionately performed. If you like Christine and the Queens, Holly Humberstone, or Holly Herndon for that matter, you'll dig this probably (but put through a Celtic filter). Came out in April and I keep returning to it. Especially "Life of the Forbidden," "Wee Rosebud," "Into This, Called Lonliness," and the closing track "S.O.S. Song of the Sword" is VERY on the Kate Bush tip.
Jul 12, 2024
Itâs the instruments and sounds that does it. It sounds apocalyptic. Lots of BOOM CRASH and deep hums. Hums so deep and visceral that you start to wonder if this is what Gabrielâs horn would sound like if it were Judgement Day. Itâs loud and continues to get louder and louder until you start to feel claustrophobic. Your heart starts racing and maybe you sweat a little bit. Then it manages to reach the deepest parts of your heart and you start to empathize with Joy. This must be how Joy feels being made to live with the fact that she will probably never experience a life of self-expression, vulnerability, and contentment. Her essence sucked out of her. A woman named Joy who never experienced joy in all her 30 years of livingâhow ironic. At the end, itâs got you looking up at the hollow sky, feeling disconnected and disillusioned, too.
Apr 26, 2024
Top Recs from @blipkin
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forget if i put this here already, but this app and are.na are my favorite digital locations rn
brainchild of members of iconic design/art collective k-hole, itâs a place for making connections and shit
itâs like if Pinterest was more design forward and had cooler people and a lot of pdfs
follow me https://www.are.na/ben-lipkin
Jan 6, 2024
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You can dm them something and theyâll upload it! For free!
Dec 21, 2023
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old men named things like âLarryâ and âBobâ will respond with either confusion or desire, it feels more mystical than most religion, and is great fun. write to a friend, or someone you lost, or someone you want
Dec 20, 2023