Tag Archives: Scott Morgan

Switched On – Loscil: Lake Fire (Kranky)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Loscil’s music has always spoken vividly of its surroundings, bringing the wide-open panoramas of Vancouver and British Columbia to vivid life on even the smallest sound system. Here, Scott Morgan’s alias brings sonic despatches from the front line with a striking account and observation of the recent wildfires in the region.

What’s the music like?

As dark and thick as the clouds of smoke that were hanging over British Columbia when this album was made. Ash Clouds is the most explicit expression of the darkness that developed, with a deep chord that barely moves, hanging over the ground.

That isn’t to say that Lake Fire is depressing, mind, as there are shards of bright colour that draw the attention in spite of the thick, uneasy ambience behind. This is evident in the closing of Spark, where dark chords, low in the spectrum, are at odds with brighter chimes at the top, suggesting light peeking through the clouds.

There are some incredibly deep textures on Arrhythmia. Bell Flame flickers, with sonorities similar to a pipe organ in the treble but again with thick, almost oppressive drones beneath. Candling has an improvisatory feel, melodies rising out of the mists like peaks of a flame before subsiding again. Most moving of all is the closing title track, barely audible at first as it steals in on a breath of wind but soon growing in power, the dense cloud sweeping all before it – before retreating and fizzling out as soon as it began.

Does it all work?

It does – and in the process offers an affecting counterpart to the clarity of albums like Sea Island.

Is it recommended?

It is. If you take in the album with its accompanying images and video content, Lake Fire is an intensely moving experience, a tale of man-made and enabled destruction that is truly heart-rending. And yet within the depths of this music there is still some elemental hope, and that shines through in Loscil’s remarkable music.

For fans of… Tim Hecker, Stars of the Lid, Machinefabriek, Fennesz

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Published post no.2,540 – Wednesday 21 May 2025

Arcana @ 10… Musical moments: Loscil

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As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.

Editor Ben Hogwood, after much consideration, has chosen a piece of immersive ambience from the Pacific coast.

“Getting to know new music is one of life’s joys – but it does bring with it a danger that the listener does not return to their successes as often as they might or should do. When I was thinking through my musical highlights from the last 10 years it was difficult to bring one specific artist or event to mind. There have been several from my work elsewhere, writing for musicOMH – discovering Bruce Hornsby’s new direction, or following the music of Erland Cooper and its Orcadian connections. Western classical music has provided some memorable moments too, few more so than Sir Simon Rattle conducting Mahler at the BBC Proms.

Yet the one I settled on for Arcana’s 10th anniversary is a thread running through the site’s whole decade, my love of the extraordinary music of Loscil. This is the alias used by Scott Morgan, a Canadian who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia – and whose music is like none other.

Perhaps it’s the fact I have been to Vancouver on several occasions, visiting relatives, that I feel such a strong connection to Loscil’s music. But there is something primal about it that really tugs not just at the heart but at the very fibre of our being, a connection formed between music and the earth. It is the deepest ambience you can imagine in music, an extraordinary achievement when you examine the relatively simple tools used in its construction.

The best example for this is the third section of the Equivalents album from 2019 – a timeless wonder that is deep as the ocean, as wide as the sky. There are clouds on the horizon, and the music paints all these and more in its extraordinary span.

In a memorable interview for Arcana, Scott summed it up. “There is a way of using the creative process and the creation of music to express that which you can’t express in other ways, and that’s what ends up coming out a lot of the time.” Later he noted, “a lot of my work accidentally plays with the spectrum between the natural world and the industrial world…ultimately I think I’m after some sort of balance of what it is to be human, and what it is to be human inside of this natural world we live in.”

I saw Scott perform this music live, at Rich Mix in the heart of Shoreditch – and it was only seconds before we were transported away. In my head I was stood on a beach at the far west of Vancouver Island, experiencing the weather with all its primal force.

You can listen to the album on Tidal below:

Published post no.2,439 – Saturday 8 February 2025

Switched On – Loscil: ALTA (self-released)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

On his Bandcamp page, Loscil describes this self-released single track as ‘a generative music piece originally part of an audiovisual installation at the Libby Leshgold Gallery on the Emily Carr University campus in Vancouver BC, in March 2023. The installation was designed as a 4-channel piece of endless music. Presented here in stereo, it can be thought of as a long exposure capture of the otherwise continuous music from the installation.’

Moving on, he says, ‘ALTA is an addition to the ADRIFT series of generative music pieces named after abandoned sea vessels. Originally released in 2015 as a mobile application, and redesigned as a Max patch for the installation, ALTA/ADRIFT uses structured random selection, mixing and panning to weave together the sonic phrases and layers.

The MV Alta was abandoned at sea and set adrift in 2018 near Bermuda, eventually reaching the shores of Ireland in 2020 where she remains shipwrecked.’

What’s the music like?

Few artists have the ability to capture a listener’s mind as Scott Morgan does. Only a second or two into ALTA and his music as Loscil has cast its own inimitable spell, setting out its considerable structure and declaring – in that instant – that it’s time to slow down.

ALTA certainly takes its time, the single track running for just over 42 minutes, but in that period it calms the mind, slows the thoughts, and pans out to take a broad overview of its watery panorama.

There is an otherworldly presence in the treble tones that cross the sound picture from one side to the other, and also in the held middle ground sounds that give such a detailed and focussed perspective. Once again the listener can zoom in to forensically examine the properties of each sound, or they can draw back to take in the vast panorama, which the music does frequently.

As the single movement progresses, so the music starts to follow the pattern of breathing – with long inhalations, full of consonant harmony, followed by silence – and then a similar, sonorous exhalation. This supports a meditative process for the listener, shutting out the noise outside. By the end the timbres are like the softest panpipes, given the longest possible sustain.

Does it all work?

Yes – as one track that ebbs and flows over a vast span, switching between detailed close-ups and big, spray-painted panoramas.

Is it recommended?

It certainly is – an addition to the Loscil discography showing once again his ability to hold the attention for longer spans. ALTA might be the length of a romantic symphony, but it has a similar impact in its subtle but intense means of expression, simultaneously inward and outward looking. An essential encounter for fans, and those new to Scott Morgan’s music.

If that hasn’t convinced you, head over to Bandcamp, where the music is available at whatever price you wish to pay!

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Switched On: Loscil – The Sails p.1 & 2 (Bandcamp)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The Sails is a two-part collection of music written by Loscil for dance projects over the last eight years. It brings together a number of specially commissioned projects, many of which were performed only once – and the Vancouver producer has arranged them into two collections of nine pieces each. These available on Bandcamp at a ‘name your price’ rate for the digital files, or as a double CD edition with special artwork.

What’s the music like?

This is a very interesting insight into Loscil’s creativity, and is a more animated complement to the serenity and vastness of his artist albums.

The two collections work well when listening back to back. There are the flickering messages of Wells, and it soon becomes apparent that there is more nervous energy in the foreground than we are used to in a Loscil set of pieces. This movement it is counteracted by slow, measured steps that are beautifully poised, sometimes acting as drones or operating with slowly shifting harmonies.

Some of the pieces are structured like an arch, with a composition like Still progressing from bare elements to richly textured loops with more movement, and then panning out again. Wolf Wind, a striking evocation, has a settled backdrop of a single held drone that changes colour thanks to the subtle movement in the middle ground.

Loscil also uses beats in a subtle but meaningful way. In Never they ricochet across the stereo picture, increasing their dominance over the slower musical processes going on behind. By contrast a work like Century has a stately beauty, like the opening of a flower.

Does it all work?

It does. The music has a different ambience to it from Loscil’s through-composed albums, but the use of more animated musical figures against a background stillness is still immensely reassuring, panning out into some richly shaded scenes.

Is it recommended?

Yes – the ideal complement if you already own a good deal of Loscil’s music. If you don’t, the ‘name your price’ option gives you no excuse not to get acquainted!

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Switched On – Loscil: Clara (Kranky)

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loscil

reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

‘Clara’ is the Latin word for ‘bright’. It is employed by Vancouver’s Scott Morgan to describe his latest album under the Loscil moniker. Morgan is a highly productive musician known for making minimal material stretch a long way, but with Clara he has outdone himself.

Taking a three-minute piece for a 22-piece string orchestra, Morgan recorded the output but then subjected the recording to heavy treatment. The master was purposefully damaged, introducing surface noise to give the impression of recordings made outside in the field, with gravelly scratches and frissons of white noise.

To match this, Morgan took snapshots of the score, stretching them into almost unrecognisable, broad canvases – rather like the detail you would find on a set of micro-models. The effect, as he says, is that “shadows are amplified and bright spots dimmed.”

What’s the music like?

Too often music is described as immersive, but the music of Loscil cannot be seen as anything else. As it unfolds, Clara has the reassuring regularity of a tidal system, its rich colours mixed together in a slowly moving but utterly compelling cycle. The tracks work on their own terms but are best experienced as part of the whole, as material from the original three-minute track stretches out to 70 minutes.

Although this is the first time Loscil has explicitly taken the orchestra for his inspiration, his music has always had suitable dimensions for these large-scale arrangements, and so Clara represents more of a shift in colour than a change in textural depth. With this in mind, Lucida paints pastel shades while a single chime tolls, but while that track has a metronomic regularity, Stella reaches a beautiful stillness, the ebb and flow of just two repeated chords providing the ultimate ambience over a ten-minute structure. From here Loscil naturally segues into Vespera, where a regularly turning mechanism sounds like the onward motion of a boat. Aura exhibits a more remote beauty, looking farther afield after the slowly bubbling Sol. Darker tones are used for the title track, in spite of its Latin meaning, a rich chord building with purpose from the bass strings before we glimpse the light in the violins. Eventually it fades over the horizon like the setting sun.

Does it all work?

Emphatically. Morgan makes ever-more meaningful and powerful music, which remains by turns simple and incredibly pictorial. His music gives the listener a wider perspective, a grasp of the earth’s vast spaces from their own little corner of the world. It reminds us how, in an age of technology that moves faster than ever before, nature has not quickened its pace to follow suit, proceeding where possible with its same sure-footed and inevitable progress.

As Loscil, Morgan gives us the reassurance that despite those supposed human advances, the progress of geology and nature is unlikely to ever be fully checked.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Clara is another very strong addition to the remarkably consistent Loscil canon, which continues to evolve and develop without repeating itself. It provides another reminder of just how far Scott Morgan is able to stretch the barest of musical material, resulting in an album of awesome depth and presence.

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