Grouper

Grouper is the moniker used by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Liz Harris, whose quiet, intense, sparse, and often mesmerizing work straddles the line between folk and ambient. Her music conveys a strong sense of tranquility. It is built with bare-bones instrumentation and very little layering, so much that silence becomes an element that she incorporates into her compositions. Her set-up typically focuses on a simple piano or guitar as its base, though in the beginning of her career when her music was almost purely atmospheric, she was also partial to electronic effects and loops. What has remained constant in her body of work is the subtle, drowsy and fragile feel of her songs, and the emotional aching they capture. The moody nature of her sound can be unsettling at times, but it is also quite captivating.