Grouper will release two new albums in April, according to an interview with Liz Harris on Pitchfork.

The albums – Dream Loss and Alien Observer –  are intended to “stand solidly on their own”, but can also be taken as a diptych, with the collective title of A I A.

“Dream Loss is a collection of older songs, mostly written before a hard time,” Harris tells Pitchfork. “Alien Observer, for the most part, is made of songs recorded after that time. Each has a song that belongs thematically on the other, a seam stitching them together. Both albums…explore otherness. Being an other to one’s own self, to other humans; ghosts and aliens, both literal and metaphorical; and other worlds to escape to (beneath the water, in the sky). Thinking about people who have died.

“The process of making these albums reacquainted me with what I want to explore in music,” she continues. “Friction, exploration of something large and outside of me, describing and traveling to intangible objects and places, unseen movements and connections between people and spaces. Songs that move on their own, that have an autonomous monstrous quality, songs from another world.”

Harris will be self-releasing Dream Loss and Alien Observer on both vinyl and digital formats. She debuted her Grouper project – a dense, dark mingling of folk, drone, shoegaze and psychedelic influences – in 2005, and since then she’s released two bona fide classic albums under the name: Cover The Window And The Walls (2007) and Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill (2008).

Dream Loss tracklist:
(first heart tone)
1. Dragging the Streets
2. I Saw a Ray
3. Soul Eraser
4. Atone
5. No Other
6. Wind Return
7. A Lie

Alien Observer tracklist:
1. Moon Is Sharp
2. Alien Observer
3. Vapor Trails
4. She Loves Me That Way
(second heart tone)
5. Mary, on the Wall
6. Come Softly