In her newest two-part release, AIA: Alien Observer / Dream Loss Liz Harris (Grouper) abandons the once-familiar ascendant vocal presence heard on Dragging A Dead Deer… in favor of a sentimental reversion to old styles in the vein of Wide, Way Their Crept, or Cover the Windows… The only exception is the title track to the first of the two LPs, “Alien Observer”, which slakes the casual listener’s longing for something short, accessible and emotive. In an excerpt from an e-mail she wrote to Pitchfork Media about the album, Harris wrote:

“Dream Loss is a collection of older songs, mostly written before a hard time. Alien Observer, for the most part, is made of songs recorded after that time. Each has a song that belongs thematically on the other, a seam stitching them together. Both albums… explore otherness. Being an other to one’s own self, to other humans; ghosts and aliens, both literal and metaphorical; and other worlds to escape to (beneath the water, in the sky). Thinking about people who have died…

The process of making these albums reacquainted me with what I want to explore in music: friction, exploration of something large and outside of me, describing and traveling to intangible objects and places, unseen movements and connections between people and spaces. Songs that move on their own, that have an autonomous monstrous quality, songs from another world.”

But it now at boomkat

Grouper – Alien Observer
Grouper – No Other