Low drummer and vocalist Mimi Parker has died | Low

Mimi Parker, drummer, vocalist and songwriter for the Minnesota indie band Low, has died, her husband and bandmate Alan Sparhawk has stated. Parker was identified with ovarian most cancers in December 2020. She was considered 54 or 55 years outdated.

The band shared the news on social media. “Associates, it’s laborious to place the universe into language and into a brief message, however She handed away final evening, surrounded by household and love, together with yours. Preserve her identify shut and sacred. Share this second with somebody who wants you. Love is certainly crucial factor.”

The information follows the cancellation of a string of dwell exhibits as a result of issues associated to Parker’s well being. After a prognosis in late 2020, Parker started therapy for ovarian most cancers in 2021, and publicly revealed her well being standing in a podcast interview firstly of 2022.

Lots of the band’s friends paid tribute on-line. “I heard the information in essentially the most base circumstances, surrounded by degenerates, caught and cursing, in a convention room in Deerfield,” wrote producer Steve Albini. “I used to be momentarily overwhelmed, the sound of her voice resonant in my reminiscence, stunning and heartbreaking. Godspeed Mimi Parker. Requiescat.”

Beak>, the Bristol trio led by Geoff Barrow, additionally of Portishead, stated: “We are able to’t categorical how saddened we’re of this information. Mimi & Alan have created a number of the best music of our time and to have hung out with them was a really humbling expertise for us. A ravishing couple. Our ideas are with Alan and their household.”

Parker was born in 1967 and grew up in a small city outdoors of Bemidji, Minnesota. She started experimenting with music from a younger age, arising with harmonies to enrich her sister’s guitar and leads. The pair sang alongside to the outdated nation and gospel information launched to them by their dad and mom.

Throughout this time, Parker discovered music to be “a solace, a spot of escape”, she later informed Stereogum. She additionally performed percussion in a live performance band and a marching band at highschool.

Parker met future bandmate and husband Alan Sparhawk at main college, earlier than they fashioned Low in 1993, with bassist John Nichols. Initially she performed a modest drum package composed of only a snare, cymbal and flooring tom, and used brushes as an alternative of drumsticks. The band’s debut album, I Might Stay in Hope, was launched in 1994, and later included in Pitchfork’s 1999 listing of one of the best albums of the Nineteen Nineties.

Whereas supplementary members of the band got here and went, Parker and Sparhawk remained on the helm all through Low’s almost-30 yr historical past.

With their sluggish, minimal preparations and sometimes quiet supply, Low are recognised as probably the most authentic and completed names in indie rock. Crafting a softer various to the heavy, grunge-oriented sounds of the 90s, the band have been related to the rock subgenre “slowcore” – though members have publicly disapproved of the time period.

Throughout their 29-year profession, Low have put out 13 full-length studio albums. Whereas sustaining a definite sonic identification, the band have weaved in several kinds throughout their discography. Their 1999 EP Christmas is without doubt one of the most beloved indie-rock takes on festive music, and introduced the band to additional consideration when it was featured on an advert for Hole clothes.

Their two most up-to-date LPs, Double Negative and Hey What, launched by Sub Pop in 2018 and 2021 respectively, noticed the band make additional forays into digital music and digital manipulation, one thing that was trialled on the 1999 report Secret Identify, and have been hailed as a powerful profession reinvention.

Following the departure of bassist Steve Garrington after 12 years and 4 studio albums, the band formally grew to become a duo in 2021.

Parker is survived by her two youngsters Hollis and Cyrus, in addition to Sparhawk.