Sundaze 2107

 Hello,  


Today's Artist is the electronic/ambient music project of Scott Morgan, from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The name Loscil is taken from the "looping oscillator" function (loscil) in Csound in case you wondered, Scott Morgan was also the drummer for the Vancouver indie band Destroyer, but then studying communications and music at Simon Fraser University opened Morgan to the possibilities of experimental and electronic music and the rest as they say,is history...... N'Joy

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As Loscil, composer/producer Scott Morgan creates ambient music that drifts between the intuitive and the intellectual with deceptively easy grace. Since his 2001 debut album, Triple Point, a set of evocative tracks revolving around thermodynamics, he's shaped his masterful atmospheres and delicate, almost subliminal melodies with conceptual frameworks. The history and striking geography of southwestern British Columbia -- especially his hometown of Vancouver -- inspired some of his finest albums, including 2004's First Narrows (his first work to blend live instrumentation with electronics), 2012's Sketches from New Brighton, and 2014's Sea Island. While Morgan expanded his focus with 2016's ecologically minded Monument Builders and the meditations on creativity of 2019's Equivalents, the vast yet intimate feel of his music remained.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Morgan moved from the city's eastern suburbs to Courtenay on Vancouver Island as a boy. In his teens and twenties, he grew bored of the island's stillness, and channeled his restlessness into the bands he played with, which later included a stint as the drummer for Destroyer. However, studying communications and music at Simon Fraser University opened Morgan to the possibilities of experimental and electronic music. As he trained to be a sound designer and director, he learned about the fundamentals of computer music as well as the work of 20th century experimental composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Submers
Morgan's education shaped the music he was making on his own. Taking the term "loscil" (a combination of "loop" and "oscillate") from the audio programming language Csound, he began performing his minimalist dub/techno/ambient-inspired tracks at a friend's independent theater. He made a demo album, A New Demonstration of Thermodynamic Tendencies, named after and inspired by a physics textbook Morgan found at a used book store. After a friend suggested he send the demo to Kranky, the label signed him and, following a few tweaks, released it as Loscil's debut album. Arriving in October 2001, Triple Point introduced the conceptual basis of Morgan's music and his abstract yet vivid style. Following a European tour with Stars of the Lid, Morgan started work on Loscil's second album. This time, he looked to underwater craft for his music's emotional and thematic coherence and used heavily processed samples of classical music to convey its aqueous depth. Submers, which appeared in November 2002, included a touching requiem for the crew of ill-fated Russian nuclear vessel Kursk.

Destroyer's Rubies
For his next album, Morgan used a much wider range of sound sources. Along with samples, found sounds, and computer-generated tones, he also incorporated live instrumentation into the work. Inspired by Vancouver's Lion's Gate Bridge, May 2004's First Narrows featured Fender Rhodes courtesy of Zumpano's Jason Zumpano, along with contributions from Destroyer guitarist Tim Loewen and cellist Nyla Rany. At this point, Morgan was still Destroyer's drummer, and his remix of the band's 2006 album Destroyer's Rubies, "Loscil's Rubies," appeared on its vinyl release. That May, Morgan also issued Plume, which reunited him with Zumpano and featured xylophonist Josh August Lindstrom alongside guitarists Krista Michelle Marshall and Stephen Wood.

Endless Falls
Loscil returned in 2009 with Strathcona Variations, an EP for Ghostly International that ranged from minimalism to orchestral heights. With March 2010's somber Endless Falls, Morgan took another step forward; the album's final track showcased the vocals of his Destroyer bandmate Dan Bejar. The Italian label Glacial Movements issued Coast/Range/Arc, a piece inspired by the Coast Mountains, as a limited-edition release in June 2011. Morgan's next pair of albums showcased different sides of his hometown. Appearing in September 2012, Sketches from New Brighton took its name from an oceanside park in Vancouver that was considered to be the city's birthplace. The album spawned the following year's Intervalo, a reworking of several Sketches from New Brighton tracks with pianist Kelly Wyse. In November 2014, Morgan and Wyse reunited for Sea Island, which drew inspiration from the isle that is home to Vancouver's international airport. That year, Loscil also appeared on a split EP with Fieldhead.

Morgan's 2015 works included the For Greta EP, a benefit release for a friend's daughter who was battling bone cancer, and the interactive smartphone EP Adrift, which incorporates the elements of each track differently each time it plays. A warped VHS copy of Koyaanisqatsi, as well as the writing of philosopher John Gray and the photography of Edward Burtynsky, shaped Morgan's vision for November 2016's pensive full-length Monument Builders. The next year, collaborations with Seabuckthorn and Lost Trail arrived. In 2018, Morgan self-released Bannockburn, an extended version of one of the tracks from Adrift. In August 2019, he issued Equivalents, an album inspired by a series of moody, early 20th century photographs of clouds by renowned photographer and artist Alfred Stieglitz.

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Loscil's ambient compositions exist between worlds. Both electronic and naturalistic, drone-based and melodic, rhythmic and adrift, the Vancouver producer's three-track Strathcona Variations is both placid and filled with dread, a suite of gentle, barely-there compositions whose odd, surreal beauty can't be underestimated.

Initially, each track on Strathcona Variations appears smooth, a flawless surface whose variations are imperceptibly gradual at best. Closer inspection, though, reveals a world of subtle mood-shifts, distant blips and clicks, and orchestral flourishes disguised as synthesizer tones (and vice versa). Opener "Strathcona" is a fine slice of minimalism, spreading two alternating, undulating organ chords out over eight minutes, adding a miniscule electronic click and a series of room-temp synth passages whose cloud-like interactions become the track's focus. "Union Dusk" overlays a series of gently stuttering samples and drones, building to a vibraphone-led climax that evokes a tiny, electronic Steve Reich. Closer "Midnight on Princess" has a cinematic lift to its otherwise dirge-like swells of strings and drone. At only three tracks, Loscil's Strathcona Variations is decidedly brief, but its sense of space and emotion is bottomless.

<a href="https://multiup.org/a512b914acb15f8612c3f8c8e6d93673"> Loscil - Untitled + Versions + Strathcona Variations </a> ( flac 285mb)


01 Heptane 8:13
02 Gallium 6:23
03 Erit 5:42
04 Iodine 6:02

05 Emma 5:53
06 Estuarine 7:33
07 The Making Of Grief Point (Instrumental) 7:33

08 Strathcona     8:02
09 Union Dusk     5:02
10 Midnight On Princess     6:14

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Loscil’s fifth album takes its theme from rain; a natural choice given the reputation Morgan’s hometown of Vancouver has for precipitation.  It generally fits the tone of the album too, as it is impossible to describe Endless Falls without relying on endless water metaphors.  However, while the feel of the album certainly approximates the soothing sadness of a rainstorm, the girth and complexity of the album seems much more evocative of deep, dark waters and slow-moving currents.  This is not an album of floating, wispy, inconsequential sounds—Endless Falls is both massive and deliberate.  Scott makes everything sound simple and effortlessly flowing, but that illusion is built upon a very meticulous layering of many constantly shifting tracks.

Scott Morgan has a strong intuition for pace, sequencing, and variety.  He also understands how far he can push his sound without breaking its hypnotic spell.  It is a treacherous path to navigate, as a too-memorable melody or a too-prominent beat can easily derail an ambient piece into the realm of song (which would be distracting), while doing too little results in a boring album.  This is not boring album.  As expected, the most memorable works on Endless Falls are those that push the envelope of the Loscil sound to its farthest possible edge, such as the shambling, crackling “Dub For Cascadia,” which betrays a heavy influence from electronic dub artists such as Pole.  “Lake Orchard,” on the other hand, bolsters its spacey shimmer with an insistent throb, but forgoes percussion.  In fact, percussion of any kind only appears again in very odd and subtle ways (like the rhythmic pops and clicks in “Shallow Water Blackout” or the chimes/bells in “Showers of Ink”).  While that is not inherently odd for an ambient album, Endless Falls is markedly less rhythmic and dub-influenced than its immediate predecessor (Plume).  Also, Scott’s day job is playing drums for Destroyer.

Morgan continues his fairly recent trend of enlisting a small group of talented collaborators to flesh out his sound, though pianist Jason Zumpano is the only familiar face from earlier albums.  In particular, the inclusion of violinist Kim Koch was an especially inspired idea, as her melancholy scraping and bowing provides a very effective textural foil to Morgan’s watery shimmer on the opening title track.  That said, the big news is that Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar turned up to provide a quietly intense and enigmatic spoken-word monologue for the closing “The Making of Grief Point,” the first ever appearance of vocals on a Loscil album.  Notably, it almost did not make the final cut, as Morgan was trepidatious about “changing the listening perspective from abstract, ambient music into foreground, conscious listening.”  His concern is certainly understandable, as Bejar’s strangely halting, stream-of-consciousness rambling (“the answer to the making of Grief Point is picnic baskets filled with blood”) easily steals the show.  However, it is simply too great a track to leave on the cutting room floor and actually allows Morgan to have his cake and eat it too: Endless Falls is an excellent ambient album, but it is appended by a creepily memorable “single” that easily stands with Destroyer’s best work.





<a href="https://mir.cr/VVUVMA0J">   Loscil - Endless Falls  </a> ( flac 241mb)

01 Endless Falls 7:55
02 Estuarine 8:21
03 Shallow Water Blackout 7:07
04 Dub For Cascadia 6:07
05 Fern And Robin 7:11
06 Lake Orchard 7:41
07 Showers Of Ink 8:44
08 The Making Of Grief Point 8:54

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Loscil is busy during his full time job with creating sound effects for video games, but his part time hobby is devoted to sculpting ambient experiments, mostly for Kranky label. But "Coast/ Range/ Arc" is another exciting contribution to magnificent arctic soundscapes of Italian Glacial Movements label. The album unveils grandiosely with monstrous drones of "Black Tusk", where huge soundwalls are surrounded by swirling hisses. The title is taken from Scott's domestic natural sceneries of Pacific Northwest, incredibly breathtaking and scenic area of Black Tusk pinnacle of volcanic rock in Garibaldi Park. Mesmerizingly ear-bending listening journey has just begun!!! Flow of water takes "Fromme" into more organic and aerial sonic terrains with lighter drones, more textured and spiced by experimentally-infused disruptions. "Stave Peak" attracts with its strongly visualizing theme bringing back some long forgotten memories. Deeply organic and tranquil, slightly orchestral dronescapes are hauntingly inviting and majestic!!! "Névé" navigates us straightly into static, barren and menacing drone territories wrapped by arctic wind. This is Loscil at its most immersing and glacial!!! Freezing domains are explored also on "Brohm Ridge", the longest piece clocking to 11 and half minutes. Slowly expansive and cascading drone wizardry paints spectacular sonic images, filled with panoramic intensity and gracious impression. "Goat Mountain", another longer track, is strongly picturesque hike with gently evolving minimal dronescapes, and brings this album into tranquilly fascinating finale. As usual for Glacial Movements, Bjarne Riesto and Keep Adding leave their notable fingerprints on digipak's packaging. "Coast/ Range/ Arc" was my first exposure of Loscil's sound sculpting, but this album explores the beauty of the Pacific coastal range with all its majesty and grace, a must have for all drone experts!!!



<a href="https://bayfiles.com/F36d2bI4p1/Lscl_Cst-Rng-Arc_zip">   Loscil - Coast-Range-Arc </a> ( flac 207mb)

01 Black Tusk 10:02
02 Fromme 7:33
03 Stave Peak 6:38
04 Névé 8:05
05 Brohm Ridge 11:24
06 Goat Mountain 0:31

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Scott Morgan spent the two albums he made prior to Sketches from New Brighton, Endless Falls and Coast/Range/Arc, expanding on his subtle ambient approach. On this collection, however, he pulls in a bit, using the experience from those explorations to craft something just as rich as those albums in spite (or perhaps because) of its simplicity. As with all of Morgan's work, Sketches from New Brighton establishes a striking sense of place within its music, not just because it was inspired by an actual location -- in this case, an oceanside park near the Vancouver Port Authority -- but because it has so much depth. Over the course of the album, a handful of sounds combine in ways full of hushed beauty and creativity, emphasizing the sculptural nature of these tracks. "Khanahmoot" begins things with gentle but engaging gradations that prepare listeners for the more ambitious explorations to come. One of these is the eight-and-a-half-minute-long "Second Narrows" (whose name makes this album's connection to Loscil's 2004 album First Narrows more explicit). It's one of the most expansive showcases for Morgan's almost imperceptible shifts, as the dark pulse that makes up the album's heart is joined by delicately layered beats and synths that get more fractured and active as the song nears its close. On this song and the rest of Sketches from New Brighton, a watercolor softness and transparency to the sounds pull in listeners ever so gently and give an almost subliminally soothing effect to many of its tracks, such as "Container Ships," which feels nearly amniotic in its weightless intimacy, or the lulling warmth of "Coyote." However, not all of the album is so cozy: "Hastings Sunrise" boasts a sharply metallic tone that recalls a shakuhachi flute in its insistent loneliness, which envelops the rest of the track with a noir-ish glamour and mystery that make it all the more striking, and "Collision of the Pacific Gatherer"'s bassline adds an ominous undertone to the rippling electronics that overlay it. Yet these changes in mood are as subtle as everything else on the album; all the better to discover the different ways these songs flow into each other. Sketches from New Brighton may not be as immediately gripping as Endless Falls or Coast/Range/Arc, but its never-showy refinements are just as impressive in their own way.



<a href="https://www.imagenetz.de/zVq3q"> Loscil - Sketches From Brighton  </a> ( flac 231mb)

01  Khanahmoot    5:10
02  Hastings Sunrise    6:52
03  Second Narrows    8:37
04  Container Ships    4:50
05  Coyote   5:02
06  Collision Of The Pacific Gatherer    05:11
07  Cascadia Terminal    6:00
08  Fifth Anchor Span    5:51
09  Prairie Trains    7:48

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