Grouper

In a city of huge noise and mass distraction, experiences such as Grouper are feel few and far between.

When you dare not clear your throat or open a can of beer for fear of compromising the rich, thick, but dangerously quiet atmosphere Grouper creates, you know you’re among something special. Not just because Grouper ranks alongside the finest ambient artists of her generation, and not only because her efforts operate within a more sensitive technical framework than most live situations, but, put simply, because, in those moments, the stakes are so extraordinarily high.

On the most primitive scale of live music making (loud versus quiet) Grouper operates at the less familiar ‘other’ end. The end that very few artists dare to tread. Caking EVERYTHING in reverb offers up some sort of safety net, however, there are risks. One awry guitar string or dud piano key sees the entire venue polluted with a repeating bum note for minutes at a time. All it takes is one mistake for the spell to be broken, and yet, surrounded by a desk of cassette players, pedals, wires, an electric guitar, piano and several microphones, Grouper is unfazed.

She sets about building a wall of ambient sound by shaping a droning sonic terrain and then proceeds to embellish it with individual piano-or-guitar riff-led passages that bed into the aforementioned soundscape. There are very few opportunities for applause; each song merging into the next as she lulls the audience into existing, at least for an hour or so, at her pace.

When Liz Harris begins to sing everything unifies. The spinning layers bed in with her vocal; the crowd, the low-lit staging, the former Hackney Arts Centre, freshly rebranded (but still decaying) EartH unifies and even though the set does feel very much on the edge (due to the high stakes mentioned previous), Grouper excels in showcasing the very thing she has championed throughout her career; what she feels necessary and absolutely no more.

As a result, not a single note goes missing.