Search results: kranky

Review: Grouper's Liz Harris has made her name over the last decade with an evocative and wintry sound that is unique in its desolate minimalism. Moreover, while it wouldn't be every artist that would use a glacial yet abrasive dreampop power-trio as a way to blow off steam, this would seem superficially to be exactly what she's doing with Helen, her project in cahoots with members of Eternal Tapestry and Eat Skull. Yet 'The Original Faces' is a rare treat, replete with the hazy rapture of 4AD records of old yet suffused with the abstract sleight-of-hand that could have come from no-one else but Harris.

Review: Only Hinting, the full-length debut record by Detroit duo Clinic Stars, both refines and redefines their pitch-perfect fusion of downer-pop balladry and featherweight shoegaze. Recorded and produced at the band's home studio, the album was created across 2022 and 2023, patiently layering FX and spatial depths to give each song a swirling, subconscious undertow. Between its burring washes of electric guitar crunch, its subtle electronic backbones, and its more quiescent moments of acoustic stripped-backness, we wouldn't have guessed that this one was a debut at all.

Review: Clinic Stars' debut album Only Hinting is a melancholic swirl of downer-pop and shoegaze, crafted by Detroit duo Giovanna Lenski and Christian Molik. Having spent 2022 and 2023 recording at their home studio, they layered each track with dense FX and deep reverbs, creating an emotional undertow that envelops every song. Tracks like 'I Am The Dancer' spiral with strummed guitar swells, while 'Remain' pulses with gated reverb, and the greyscale melancholy of 'Isn't It' drips with dreamy, aching nostalgia. The album is as much about escape as it is about longing. Though the duo cite their industrial surroundings as a key influence, the songs themselves feel as if they're trying to transcend these confines, soaking in the romance of distance and detachment. Previous EPs 10,000 Dreams and April's Past offered a similar slowcore haze, but Only Hinting takes this aesthetic further, blending melody and ambience until they become indistinguishable. There's a delicate balance between lightness and weight, a constant tug-of-war between floating and sinking. The guitars drift, vocals melt into the background, and the production feels both expansive and intimate, stretching across shadowy cityscapes. With this debut, Clinic Stars have created a deeply immersive sonic landscape that lingers long after it fades out. Available to pre-order now, Only Hinting will be released on LP format later this year.

Review: Liz Harris' image as a gothic, studio-dwelling, ambient mastermind is cemented by her 12th album, 'Shade'. Compiling a loose and formerly unrelated collection of songs made over the last 12 years - from the short, ruined polaroid-style opener 'Followed The Ocean', to the naked strum-singing of 'Unclean Mind' and the droning submergence of 'Basement Mix', this one is arguably one of her most lo-fi projects. It easily captures Grouper's emergence on the international folk-ambient scene through the analog fog of rare CD-Rs and handmade cassettes, making her career trajectory a ghost story if we've ever heard one. Gear up for a print edition, with original sky photographs by Harris' friend David Horvitz, as well as a signed archival letter-press print of Moon Study, her exclusive new book.