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LOSCIL

Loscil / Lawrence English

Colours Of Air - 2024 Reissue

    The union of composers Lawrence English and loscil aka Scott Morgan is seamless, sublime, and long overdue.

    Born of a conversation centered on the notion of “rich sources” as a forge for electronic music, Colours Of Air is a collection of recordings of a century old pipe organ housed at the historic Old Museum in Brisbane, Australia, which were then processed, transformed, and elevated into eight majestic electro-acoustic threshold devotionals. The timbre of the instrument and spatial fluctuations of room tone infuse the music with a subdued, sacred feel, like vaulted light in a nave of stained glass. They describe the album as “an iterative project, a reduction and eventual expansion,” sifting the swells and drones of the organ for every shivering shade of radiance.

    The tracks are named for the hue each piece suggests – from the gauzy levitational miasma of “Yellow” to the pulsing melancholic mirage of “Violet” to the seething twilit sandstorm of “Magenta.” Morgan and English are both adept at conjuring moods of muted grandeur, like landscapes veiled in dusk, still looming and luminous. 


    TRACK LISTING

    1. Cyan
    2. Aqua
    3. Yellow
    4. Grey
    5. Black
    6. Pink
    7. Violet
    8. Gold
    9. Magenta

    Loscil

    Clara

      The latest collection by Cascadian resident loscil aka Scott Morgan is a stunning meditation on light, shade, and decay, sourced from a single three-minute composition performed by a 22-piece string orchestra in Budapest.

      The subsequent recording was lathe-cut on to a 7-inch, then “scratched and abused to add texture and color,” from which the entirety of Clara was sampled, shape-shifted, and sculpted. Despite their limited palette, the compositions summon a sense of the infinite, swelling and swimming through luminous depths. Certain tracks percolate over narcoleptic metronomes while others slowdive in shimmering shadowplay, sounding at times like some noir music of the spheres.

      Although Morgan's compositional premise for Clara was quite defined, the resultant work is wonderfully opaque and spatial, equal parts lush and lurking, traced in fine-grained gradients and radiant silences. The album's title comes from the Latin for ‘bright': a fitting muse for this masterpiece of celestial electric currents and interstitial ether, where “shadows are amplified and bright spots dimmed.”


      STAFF COMMENTS

      Barry says: I love a bit of Loscil. 'Sketches From New Brighton' and 'Plume' get a heavy workout on my home stereo, and 'Clara' is sure to go the same way. It's a beautifully rewarding and rich collection of textural washes and shifting soundscapes, perfectly in line with the rest of Loscil's impressive canon, but standing entirely on its own. Beautiful stuff as ever.

      TRACK LISTING

      1.Lux
      2. Lumina
      3. Lucida
      4. Stella
      5. Vespera
      6. Sol
      7. Aura
      8. Flamma
      9. Orta
      10. Clara 

      Loscil

      Coast/Range/Arc//

        Named after the geographic formations of the seismically volatile Cascadian coastal mountains, the coast/range/arc// reissue features new artwork and an additional track.
        Remastered by James Plotkin and available on vinyl for the first time. 


        TRACK LISTING

        1. Black Tusk
        2. Fromme
        3. Stave Peak
        4. Névé
        5. Brohms Ridge
        6. Goat Mountain
        7. Black Tusk (descent) 

        Loscil

        Equivalents

          Canadian composer Scott Morgan’s 12th long-player as loscil takes its title from an influential series of early 20th century photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, abstracting clouds into miasmic, painterly canvases of smoke and shadowplay.

          It’s a deeply fitting analog for Morgan’s own musical process across the past two decades, fraying forms and tones into widescreen mirages of opaque texture and negative space.

          The name Equivalents referred to Stieglitz’s notion of the photographs as being equivalent to his “philosophical or emotional states of mind;” the same could be said of these eight weighty, shivering chiaroscuros of sound. Each piece unfolds and evolves enigmatically, adrift in low oxygen atmospheres, shifting dramatically from pockets of density to dissipated streaks of moonlit vapor.

          The entirety of the record was created specifically for the album with the exception of “Equivalent 7,” which began as a dance score for frequent collaborator Vanessa Goodman.

          The album version of this track was reworked with Vancouver musician Amir Abbey aka Secret Pyramid.Cloud photographs taken by Scott Morgan at various locations throughout Cascadia in 2018.


          STAFF COMMENTS

          Barry says: Scott Morgan has always excelled at dynamic ambient music, infused with a barely perceptible electronic drive rather than a slowly drifting cloud of sound. What we have here more all-encompassing electronic drone, subtly infused with latent dub atmospheres and tender plucks of acoustic strings or piano. Stunningly immersive, and hypnotic to the end.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Equivalent 1
          2. Equivalent 3
          3. Equivalent 6
          4. Equivalent 5
          5. Equivalent 2
          6. Equivalent 8
          7. Equivalent 7
          8. Equivalent 4

          Monument Builders is the new album from Loscil, the ambient/electronic project of prolific composer Scott Morgan.

          It was primarily created on sample-based instruments in Morgan’s century-old Vancouver home. Like that aged space, this music is also rough-hewn, with rickety samples of boiling kettles and resonant moving air. Recordings from a vintage micro-cassette recorder contribute distortion, rattles and textures that serve as both percussion and abstract aural colour.

          According to Morgan, the genesis for the album may have begun as he viewed an old VHS copy of the American experimental film Koyaanisqatsi . “Something about the time-tarnished visuals and the pitch warble on Philip Glass’s epic score added a new layer of intrigue for me,” says Morgan.

          “Glass has always been an influence but lo-fi Glass felt like a minor revelation, as if the decay was actually enhancing the impact of the film’s message.”

          The investigations on Monument Builders also took inspiration from the anti-humanist writings of influential philosopher John Gray, as well as photographer Edward Burtynsky’s iconic aerial photographs of pollution and environmental destruction. “Gray’s writing, particularly his book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals , reinforced a bleak notion I had that we humans don’t have much say in how it all turns out,” says Morgan. “With Burtynsky, I was struck by the fact that something so strikingly beautiful could be the result of large-scale waste and exploitation.”

          Monument Builderswas composed during a period in which the life-and-death battles of close friends and family forced Morgan to examine his own feelings on mortality. In the course of that introspection, Morgan found himself buoyed by a feeling of celebration and a stubborn sense of survival – an acknowledgement of what it means to be able to breathe and create amidst the clash of love and chaos. Ultimately, Morgan hopes the music here can offer listeners solace while leaving room for exploration and surprise.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Drained Lake
          2. Red Tide
          3. Monument Builders
          4. Straw Dogs
          5. Deceiver
          6. Anthropocene
          7. Weeds

          Loscil

          Plume

            This is the first vinyl issue of the classic fourth Loscil album , originally released in May of 2006.

            Scott Morgan notes: Compositionally, many tracks on Plume are similar in approach to First Narrows; they started with a harmonic root from which sounds were processed into a loose structure over whcih the live players could improvise. There was substantially less editing this time around with the live tracks. I opted to choose the better improvised passes and merely mix them in and out rather than cut them up. I think this leaves a lot more natural space and balances the heavily structured and repetitive electronic elements with more organic performed layers.

            Jason Zumpano returned from the First Narrows ensemble and I aslo recruited long time friend Steve Wood and my partner Krista to play some ebow guitar as well as Josh Lindstrom to play some xylophone and vibraphone which added some new elements into the mix.

            Thematically, I stuck with things that are quintessentially loscil; flow, subtle movement, gradual transition, growth. Also of significance to this album is the family connection. "Charlie" was composed after seeing and hearing my daughter Sadie through ultrasound while still in the womb. The track was also composed as a womb-like sound experience for her to sleep to after she was born, hence the heart beats.

            Loscil

            Sea Island

              Sea Island is a collection of new material composed and recorded over the past two years. While many of these compositions were performed live extensively prior to recording, others were constructed in the studio and are being heard for the first time here.

              Musically, the album represents a range of compositional approaches. Murky, densely textured depths of sound are explored with subtle pulses and pings woven within, contrasted with composed or improvised moments of acoustic instrumentation making a move into the foreground. Certain tracks on Sea Island such as album opener Ahull make rhythm their focus by exploring subtle polyrhythms and investigating colliding moments of repetition and variation.

              Though staunchly electronic at its core, instruments such as vibraphone and piano make appearances, and layers of live musicality, improvisation and detail appear in the looped and layered beds of manipulated sound recordings.

              A varied cast of players appear in the loscil “ensemble”, some familiar collaborators from the past such as Jason Zumpano on rhodes and Josh Lindstrom on vibraphone, and others new to the mix such as Fieldhead?s Elaine Reynolds who provides layered violin on Catalina 1943, and Ashley Pitre contributing vocals on Bleeding Ink. Seattle pianist Kelly Wyse, who collaborated with loscil on his 2013 edition of piano-centric reworks Intervalo, performs on the tracks Sea Island Murders and En Masse.


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