1.24.2010

Grouper/Roy Montgomery - Split - (2010)

Genre: Ambient/Shoegaze

Info (Roy Montgomery)
Info (Grouper)
Download

Here's a new split with one of my favorites, Portland's very own Grouper and New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery. The Roy Montgomery side starts the split with one 18 minute track of ambient guitar that makes you feel like you're going through a journey (in a good way), it's worth a listen, but in my opinion comes nowhere close to what Grouper has to offer on this split. Then again I may be a bit biased given I have this split and am posting it solely for the Grouper material, and the fact that Grouper is one of my favorite bands.

The first Grouper track "Hollow Press" starts off with windy white noise, then about half way through faint keys and Liz Harris' dreamy vocals enter. It then flows seamlessly into the next song "Vessel". This is a much more stripped down Grouper than we're used to hearing. Instead of dreamy acoustic guitar, or more ambiance as heard in earlier albums, we have instead a single, reverb drenched Wurlitzer keyboard, and voice. "Hold The Way" follows up with the same instrumentation as before, and once again flows seamlessly into the last track "Pulse". Keeping the same theme as "Hold The Way", it eventually is drowned out in windy white noise.

6 comments:

  1. Nice stuff, but is it normal to hear a dog barking on the last Grouper's track? Oo

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  2. No it's not a normal thing to hear. I thought I wouldn't give away EVERY detail of the album.

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  3. Do you have the original album, so that you could post it again? =/ That dog sound is really annoying...

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  4. Oh when I say it's not normal I mean there hasn't been a dog barking on any other album. Sorry for the misunderstanding. The dog bark is a part of this split.

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  5. Really =o It's quite strange and doesn't fit the music at all... I was quite sure it was an error but it's ok then.

    Nice blog btw, it seems that we have the same tastes in music ^^

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  6. Glad you like it. It's nice to hear that since I've just kind of started this.

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