GROUPER/CITY CENTER SPLIT 7" - self released

This is a self pressed 7" from Grouper and City Center...whose blog I've been following regularly, and I found I just missed at Death by Audio playing here in Brooklyn. I'm sure he'll be back, at the usual alternative space venues.
I'm pretty sure that is the sleeve for the release above, I had to track down what I think is his post on the single.
City Center has been posting tons of his work to download and it's really interesting to have the process so exposed and out there to watch daily. Demos, rough tracks...it's the stuff usually on B-Sides of singles.

CC's track 'This is how we see in the dark', lulls with a sleigh bell, with the echo on the vocals turned up way past 11. This is pretty heavily manipulated sound all around. It's actually going perfect this morning with the snow all drifting around, blowing huge snowflakes in between the buildings.
It's really muddy, insanely dense, the sounds really start to blend together. It's kind of the opposite of that harmonics thing...it's ultra echo and reverb, into infinity, but none of the sounds are in the same room with each other. It's separated layers working like harmony...I think. I'm no music scientist.
But really interesting, lots of exciting directions always experimenting...I want to hear a new sound, to get inspired by a particular sound. How did they make that? How would I go about reproducing this?
I want to go write some stuff now.

Grouper is quiet acoustic, I almost started to think it would be this minimal the entire way through. There's something in hearing the playing of an acoustic when the gain is all the way up. It's like looking through a microscope...every little nuance is exaggerated...it can't help but be beautiful in a kind of interesting way. Then the layers of dreamy lady vocals just usher in the sad.
These two performers go great together in that dense, out of focus way.

She's playing Feb 13th, at the New Museum...and I'm going to see what's going on that Friday

The fact this is self released makes it even more intimate and a cool thing to take down off the shelf.

This is from her blog, but she could be out at this point....
GROUPER/CITY CENTER SPLIT 7" No Label 500 Copies, Clear Vinyl, Printed Covers Available mid-December, but I'm taking pre-orders now. The record is $6PPD in the United States, $7 PPD to Canada and $10 anywhere else in the world. I know it's a while to wait until they come, but the majority of the pressing is already spoken for by distributors, so if you want to fully guarantee that you get one, you should pre-order cause who knows what happens if you sleep. I'll send records out as soon as they come and probably include some other stuff as well, as I've been working on some extra sounds/sights lately for mailorder ideas. Paypal is the best, to westsideaudio (at) gmail (dot) com, and if you have any questions, hit me there also, or leave a comment and I'll get back to you about it soon. Thank You!!!! http://citycenternyc.blogspot.com/

But Yay it's available from Fusetron!
*Artist: GROUPER/CITY CENTER Title: Split Format: 7" Label: No Label Country: USA Price: $5.50 "Two brand new exclusive songs from Portland, Oregons Grouper and Brooklyns City Center. Two like-minded one-person operations on the softer side of noise, the two have played a fair amount of shows together and now join forces on this split 7". Grouper (Type Records) comes with the multi-tracked vocal murk and snow-buried atmospherics of "False Horizon" and City Center drowns under tape-manipulation loop disintigration and raw echoes on "This Is How We See In The Dark". Limited to 500 copies on a no-label private press by the artists. Clear vinyl."