Sundaze 2106

 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.

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.

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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The drummer from Destroyer, a fellow named Scott Morgan, moonlights as Loscil. With Triple Point, it appears he's made a laptop ambient concept record about thermodynamics. Some hints: "Hydrogen," "Discrete Entropy," "Fuel Exergy," "Enthalpy," and "Vapour." Wait -- the record isn't even close to being that boring. (And at least Morgan uses actual pronounceable words as titles for his compositions, rqkght? Rqkght.) Snagging the listener early on with the sublime pulsing of "Hydrogen," Morgan regularly finds a central texture or rhythm and applies as little ornamentation as possible for maximum impact. Throughout the remainder of these 60 minutes, the listener is treated to finely detailed and rather glitch-free ambient. Aside from the relatively amiable and forward flow of the opener, Triple Point vacillates between the haunting and the soothing. It's almost a shame that the record doesn't bear the logo of a label that's more known for delivering this type of thing. Having been released by Kranky -- a label that's nonetheless established and as forward-looking as they get -- their logo probably won't be able to attract the attention of experimental techno fans who remain loyal to a few select labels and choose not to venture outside of that tiny realm. Pay no mind to the label and pay no mind to the producer's locale (Vancouver isn't Cologne or Detroit); Triple Point is one of the finest -- and most varied -- ambient techno releases of 2001.

<a href="https://multiup.org/33449b91c00f499c435daef35f5cab0a"> Loscil - Triple Point </a> ( flac 285mb)

01 Hydrogen 3:35
02 Ampere 7:27
03 Pressure 4:33
04 Zero    4:14
05 Discrete Entropy 5:20
06 Fuel Exergy 6:00
07 Enthalpy 5:01
08 Conductivity 7:37
09 Vapour5:09
10 Absolute 9:58

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Clearly a producer with an unapologetic love for the conceptual, Scott Morgan's second album for Kranky as Loscil takes on an aquatic theme -- each track is named after a submarine. However, not a whole lot has changed in Morgan's approach from his debut. These tracks sound only a little more aqueous than the ones on Triple Point, continuing to carry wide-open spatial qualities, with the odd hint of dub occasionally thrown in for variation (with its lathery suds of dubspace, "Le Plongeur" rivals Rhythm & Sound's best work). The only significant difference is the emphasis on waves of rhythm over thumps and pulses. "Triton" is the most wonderful thing Morgan has produced yet, an elegantly dramatic, filmic composition based on a submerged two-note bass hum, a series of rhythmic noise effects, and what sounds like a sampled and drastically altered orchestral arrangement. The notes are emitted lucidly, but they resemble a string arrangement as heard through some type of mildly muffling filter -- a body of water, perhaps? If the only track on the disc that follows it hadn't been produced in honor of the 118 people who died on the Kursk, a Russian sub, it would've been the perfect closing. Submers tops Morgan's impressive debut and provides further proof that the field of ambient techno continues to have plenty to offer. If Markus Guentner's In Moll was 2001's surrogate Gas record, Submers is the 2002 edition.



<a href="https://www.imagenetz.de/PEE52">   Loscil - Submers </a> ( flac 234mb)

01 Argonaut I 7:07
02 Gymnote 5:57
03 Mute    7:31
04 Nautilus 6:59
05 Diable Marin    4:13
06 Resurgam 7:35
07 Le Plongeur 7:07
08 Triton 6:43
09 Kursk 7:10


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Scott Morgan's -- aka Loscil -- third full-length is titled for the first gap in the entrance to the Burrard Inlet spanned by the Lion's Gate Bridge into Vancouver, his hometown, from the Pacific Ocean. The title is not an accident, as the notions of gap, time span, and movement in Morgan's new pieces offer a nocturnal view of the transition of fluid inner space. First Narrows also marks a first for Morgan: this is his first collaborative recording with live instruments. Morgan's generated sounds, from varied sources both organic and electronic, both musical and found atmospheres, were custom programmed and processed with the notion of time displacement built in -- the programs were designed as "flawed" so that no two performances of his sonic patches would ever be the same. Morgan then asked Jason Zumpano (Rhodes), Nyla Raney (cello), and Tim Loewen (guitar) to improvise over his aural constructions, and then edited and mixed the constructed electronic sounds with the live ones. The end result feels unlike anything he's ever done before, but retains his trademark moodiness -- in spades. Pulses and sequences flit by through the middle of washes of white noise and played sound, phrases become long passages and then disappear as gradually as they appeared, channels blend, drop out and shift, giving a form to the formless and then dissembling it into the ether. Over five tracks, this heartbeat ambience and alien soundscape architecture layer, dissemble, stretch, float, commingle, and undulate through the ears of the listener who is, in turn, taken out of her or his own time-space continuum. Spooky, lush, warm, watery, and even moving, First Narrows is a glorious experiment in aural atmospherics.



<a href="http://depositfiles.com/files/cetjy2k2i">   Loscil - First Narrows </a> ( flac 227mb)

01 Sickbay 6:13
02 Lucy Dub 7:19
03 First Narrows 10:19
04 Emma 7:31
05 Modo 5:42
06 Brittle 7:33
07 Cloister 8:59


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The immediately noticeable thing about Loscil's Plume is how engaging it is right from the first waves of quiet static that so aptly complement the smoke stack artwork. Instantly "Motoc" sets the tone for the remainder of the album, whose gentle percussion and pulses of static supply the rhythm bed, which other artists using organic instruments (xylophone, vibes, guitar, Rhodes piano) quietly improvise over. The band are disciplined in their freedom, playing melodic passages with sparseness and attention to timing. This creates a tranquil and melancholic mood music that not only runs throughout Plume, but helps to carry over some continuity from the serenity and density of Loscil's previous releases. The wispy nature of "Steam" is not unlike the sounds found on labelmate Christopher Bissonette's debut recording Periphery, while "Chinook" is the perfect soundtrack for a rainy spring afternoon. An impressive release from an artist who never fails to deliver the goods.



<a href="https://mir.cr/1NQ2H2S6"> Loscil - Plume  </a> ( flac 251mb)

01 Motoc 6:27
02 Rorschach 8:17
03 Zephyr 5:17
04 Steam 6:53
05 Chinook 6:55
06 Bellows 6:24
07 Halcyon 8:19
08 Charlie 8:47
09 Mistral 6:00



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