gROUSe is San Francisco based musician/ producer Ronan Carroll. It is an outlet for his electronic, dub and ambient influenced productions.
Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Ronan moved to California from his hometown in 1994.
He spent most of the 80's and 90's playing bass and guitar in various rock bands and later, as he started dabbling in the production side of things, found himself heavily under the influence of dub-inspired downtempo and trip-hop. Around the turn of the century he put together Locust Studios in his home.
He started composing beats and building tracks there and later added contributions from guest musicians like vocalist Aoife Hand and trumpeter Brian Switzer. The gROUSe sound was coming together.
In April 2005, "We Want To Be Loved", a set of 12 dark, spacey mostly instrumental downtempo tracks, was released on Carroll's own Babyfly Records.
The CD can be purchased at CDBaby and Amazon.com and MP3's can be bought on iTunes and many other MP3 stores.
In San Francisco the CD is available at Amoeba Records and BPM.
Indie-Music.com described the album as, "an eclectic offering of sounds, pulling guitars and trumpets together with the best of today's technology", also saying, "the women that accompany his music are soothing and haunting in their sound, helping gROUSe to keep the mood of this album strong."
Erasoul.com said: "A surprisingly diverse album ranging from loungey downtempo to spacey drum n' bass. Also, a lot of live instrumentation that fills out the Grouse sound nicely. The album only gets better with each song showing more range, while staying focused. All well-produced and cohesive throughout the entire album."
The album has also been described as, "multi-layered", with, "funky beats and soothing melodies", a "stunnning debut", and with "each listen someting new is dicovered." (CDbaby.com).
Songs from the album have been featured on the nationally broadcast PRI show "Echoes" and web radio like OverXposure.FM, JazzyLounge.com, DeepIntense.com as well as various college radio stations around the U.S.
Songs from "We Want To Be Loved" have also been featured in a documentary shown on Irish network television.