Albums to watch

Ruins

Grouper

Ruins

Album number ten from the Californian-based ambient / dream pop musician Liz Harris is a stripped-back affair

ADM rating[?]

8.0

Label
Kranky
UK Release date
27/10/2014
US Release date
28/10/2014
  1. 10.0 |   Tiny Mix Tapes

    In the quietness between piano notes and breaths and rolls of thunder and frog croaks, when the atmospheric hiss in your ears spills out into the sounds actually around you, it seems at the same time to invite your surroundings in
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  2. 9.0 |   Fact

    An album brimming with emotion despite the aching space at its heart
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  3. 9.0 |   Clash

    When she sings here, Harris is never full-blooded, instead a hushed accompaniment to her own playing – which is not to say that lyrics don’t strike home like stakes to the swollen heart
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  4. 9.0 |   The Line Of Best Fit

    It stands as both a fascinating new direction, and a heartbreaking memoir of a period now sinking into the past
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  5. 8.8 |   Pitchfork

    The emotional core of the album is the four melancholy songs for piano and voice, which are complemented by two instrumentals of a similar mood
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  6. 8.7 |   Earbuddy

    Liz Harris turns to the grand piano for her most intimate, emotional album yet
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  7. 8.5 |   The 405

    Grouper always creates music that demands a keen and patient ear. If you make the mistake of not lending the music your full attention the songs will disintegrate and thicken the atmosphere
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  8. 8.0 |   Drowned In Sound

    The tracks here are more in lieu of Chopin’s ‘Nocturnes’ or Satie’s ‘Gnossiennes’ - plaintive, dark meditations on loneliness that sit comfortably in the middle-distance
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  9. 8.0 |   musicOMH

    Ruins is one of those albums that sounds as it it was made easily and affordably – but it is also the kind of album that very few artists would have the courage or audacity to make
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  10. 8.0 |   All Music

    This is some of the ambient artist's most vulnerable and beautiful music
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  11. 8.0 |   Beardfood

    A consensus of oddities and scraps that manage to have a certain amount of intrigue and beauty that her more concocted excursions don't have
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  12. 8.0 |   NME

    Doggedly lo-fi but effortlessly enthralling
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  13. 7.5 |   Consequence Of Sound

    At the end of a record as cloudy and soothing as Ruins, the only place left to go is the recesses of your own mind. Liz Harris shows us firsthand how to do so fearlessly
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  14. 7.0 |   PopMatters

    Such an intimate, atmospheric LP
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  15. 7.0 |   Exclaim

    Yet another exceptional offering that captures a truly unique voice in a uniquely natural setting
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  16. 6.7 |   Pretty Much Amazing

    Despite consisting of well-crafted, thoughtful songs, the emotional gutpunch that is to be expected from a Grouper album never quite arrives over multiple listens
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  17. 6.0 |   Mojo

    Harris's spellbinding songs still feel beautifully half-hidden, buried in black space. Print edition only


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