A week after Helen returned with Linda's Head, Liz Harris has another record on the calendar. Music for Two Films About Water, her first album released under her own name, collects two new instrumental scores for short films about water. It arrives on Kranky on November 27, and one of the pieces is already out.
"Untitled (from Constellation)" runs 21 minutes and 35 seconds. It is the score for Takashi Makino's short Constellation, a film that turns water into something closer to a dream than a landscape. Harris built it, and the companion piece, from layers of mellotron, tape loops, Wurlitzer and field recordings. You can hear the full track on the Bandcamp page above.
Two films, two scores
The album is exactly what the title says. Side by side sit two long untitled pieces, each tied to a short film:
- "Untitled (from We Exhale)," written for Tanja Engelberts's We Exhale, a film about how damming, channeling and pollution have changed the Rhone River
- "Untitled (from Constellation)," for Makino's aquatic short of the same name
Harris has been scoring and collaborating with experimental filmmakers for years. She worked for a long stretch with the late Paul Clipson, and she has performed live with Makino and with Dicky Bahto. Film projection is part of how Grouper shows often work. This is the first time those film commissions have been gathered as a Liz Harris record rather than folded into a Grouper release.
Where it sits in her catalog
Since 2005, Harris has released music as Grouper: fogged voice, guitar and piano that helped define a strand of ambient music a lot of younger artists still chase. Kranky has been home to that work for much of the run, from Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill through Ruins and beyond. Helen, her band with Scott Simmons and Jed Bindeman, is the louder, shoegaze-leaning side. Nivhek is the most abstract alias. Putting her government name on the spine marks the film scores as their own lane: instrumental, patient and tied to pictures.
The Bandcamp page, sold through Kranky's store, lists an LP for $22, a CD for $15 and a digital download from $9.
Our call
If you already live in Grouper's fog, this is the next quiet one to put on the calendar, alongside other November records like Hood's Cold House reissue. If you came in through Helen last week, it is a useful reminder that Harris moves between band noise and long-form instrumental work without choosing a lane. Pre-order the LP or CD on Bandcamp, or start with the Constellation score streaming now.
