Dazed Digital | Lo-Fi Revisited: Grouper
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Lo-Fi Revisited: Grouper

Portland based act whose last album Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill was a masterclass of dread-and-fuzz soaked atmospherics.

Text by Kin Woo   |   Published 25 September 2009

You started out making music playing on a Wurlitzer in your bedroom – is making music a form of escape for you?
It's many things...sometimes a trap or a tidal wave, an obliterator; that's just the nature of it, no other way or other place.

You grew up in quite a close community – do you see some of that sense of community manifested today in some of the DIY music scenes popping up in places like Portland, New York, LA…?
There's always community of some kind with any music.  Hard to know who is connected and who isn't, what is real community and what isn't.  I am not sure I always feel connected.  Not quite abreast of the scenes you're talking about.

What do you make of this current resurgence of acts and labels making music and art on little-to-no budget?  Do you feel any association with this so-called lo-fi movement?
Not sure because I'm not very familiar with this resurgence...I do feel drawn to doing music the way that feels right, feels good, and to other folks doing that too....making something nice, something small, precious.

Portland is a small city with an almost overabundance of great music. Why do you think that is?
It's cheap, people here are isolated from the rest of the country, and they tend to spend hermetic winters indoors.

www.myspace.com/grouperrepuorg

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