Liz Harris to Release ‘Music For Two Films About Water’ via Kranky

Liz Harris will release a new album, ‘Music For Two Films About Water’, on November 27 through kranky. The record collects two recent scores she wrote for short films, one by Tanja Engelberts and one by Takashi Makino.

Harris, who also records as Grouper, has kept film and visual work close for years: multiple decade-spanning projects with filmmaker Paul Clipson, and live collaborations with Dicky Bahto and Makino. Scoring is less a side pursuit than a parallel practice, and this album makes that overlap explicit rather than incidental.

The title names its own material. Harris builds these pieces from mellotron, tape loops, Wurlitzer and field recordings, a palette that lends itself to submersion, to textures that drift and recede instead of announcing themselves. Water suits a composer who has long favoured decay and residue over clean lines.

The lengthy ‘Untitled (from Constellation)’ is the first piece available to hear. What the format implies matters here: two scores written for two different directors, issued together as one album. Whatever they share, Harris is the one doing the connecting, applying the same sensibility to separate images and giving the music a life outside the screening room.