Loscil - Sketches From New Brighton

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Khanahmoot
	2	Hastings Sunrise

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Second Narrows
	2	Container Ships

Side 3

		Track Name	Length
	1	Coyote
	2	Collision Of The Pacific Gatherer

Side 4

		Track Name	Length
	1	Cascadia Terminal
	2	Fifth Anchor Span
	3	Prairie Trains

Photos

Videos

No Video

Information/Write-up

Scott Morgan makes a welcome return with his seventh album of amorphous ambient drift as Loscil. Since 2001 the Vancouver resident has eked out a special niche with his much-loved Kranky releases, a sound that's equal parts dub techno momentum and tenderly organic sound design, one which consistently and carefully treads a fine line between crepuscular, chamber-like melancholy and widescreen optimism. 'Sketches From New Brighton' is an impressionistic collection inspired by his time spent watching the ships drift by from an ocean side park in Vancouver. It unfolds as gracefully as that imagery evokes; massive abstract shapes serenely, quietly cut across rippling rhythmic patterns, distant fog horn like sonorities ricocheting across the bay with the noirish, North Western elegance of a Badalamenti theme for a Twin Peaks. This is a really lovely album, do check if you're into The Sight Below, Biosphere, Yagya...

Loscil is one of those electronic artists, to me, that feels like a hit or a miss. While Endless Falls was a hit, First Narrows, Plume and almost every other album he’s made felt like a miss. What made those albums unsatisfying was his use of repetition of a certain melody or rhythm that would just drone on and on and while repetition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the kind of repetition that is displayed through a song like Sickbay on the album, First Narrows, made the track seem aimless as if it wasn't developing anything as it progresses, but just kept this same uninteresting, however relaxing, sound throughout and it made Loscil sound kind of amateurish. His 2006 album, Plumes, while being a relaxing and pretty album, was pretty uninteresting with almost no song being captivating or memorable at all. This album, however, is the biggest hit he’s ever had.

Loscils style of music can be described as ambient/glitch with subtle bits of IDM. Little reverberated beats (or “clicks and cuts” as some people like to call them) echo in the different channels and washy, warm and airy synths drone around them. To put it more abstractly, Loscil is like the walk on an empty long road in the dead of night that nobody drives on and the streetlights are changing color with each step you take. After hearing this album, there are quite a few more visions about Loscil that have entered my mind and that is the pure state of euphoria and bliss you get from floating in a warm bubble across the world.

Sketches from New Brighton is certainly a fantastic solemn and captivating journey as we end this long and hot summer. Right from the start we are introduced to a different feeling that most Loscil albums seem to lack and that is an engaging opening track. Khanahmoot introduces us to a couple of droning and delayed synthesizers; one of these synths has quite a heavy bass to them, choppy micro-beats and echoed sound effects that give the song a hypnotic feel and it’s captivating for the duration of the track as it almost brings you to sleep because of its such calm nature. Unlike his previous albums, the arrangement of synthesizers and placement of notes doesn’t have that amateurish quality to them and they sound full, warm and relaxing while still keeping you interested. Hastings Special, the second track on the album, is the Bohren & der Club of Gore equivalent to glitch and IDM. It has a slow tempo and overwhelming jazz and brooding low end sound to it and it really showcases Loscils new side of music. The eighth and third track on the album, Second Narrows, and, Fifth Anchor Span, also feature a very lounge, jazzy and ambient feel as well with the addition of a Rhodes Electric Piano sound on almost every song presented. Second Narrows is quite possibly the best song on this album as it starts out strong and then around the middle of it, undergoes an elaborate and beautiful change almost as if it was going to change into an ambient techno track.

Another thing that’s quite immersing about this album is the beats. They are actually very interesting, hypnotic and sound as if they belong in the songs, unlike the album First Narrows or Plumes where the beats sounded monotonous, repetitive and hard to absorb. Fantastic use of these beats are in songs like, Collision of the Pacific Gatherer, where they are absolutely booming and clicking along with the incredible bass heavy and relaxing synthesizer in the background. While the bass drum booms in the background of this incredible track, around a minute and thirty seconds of the track is where the choppy microsounds come in and swarm the track adding so much depth to the track. The song has a much darker vibe than the rest of the album and it is clearly one of the strongest on the album as it shows Loscils evolution with his new and majorly definitive sound.

Also, what makes this album different from his previous work is that there are a lot more pure ambient songs while, even then, still maintaining a mild glitchy tone to them. Warm, spacey and reverberated beats and melodies are filtered and muffled in the song, Container Ships, as it feels as if the song was recorded underwater. Glitchy melodies spring out randomly as we feel a lush, but bitter mist in our ears in the song, Coyote, and bass heavy synthesizers imitate the sound of a melodic bass drums and the breezy, algid and eerie synths drone in the song, Prairie Trains, which makes this song the perfect closing to an album of this genre. As the album comes to a finish, one must come back to reality as this album has you immersed in one of the most euphoric states of consciousness to ever have experienced.

While my opinion of Loscils music, as a whole, is very mixed, this was extremely impressive and he should keep this style of music creating the next album(s). It is by far his strongest work to date with far less amateur production, a warmer and more ethereal vibe, an interesting array of different styles and sounds. It is, overall, very enjoyable, intriguing, captivating, relaxing, perplexing and is without a doubt Loscils strongest album to date and could, potentially, be contender for the ambient album of year.
Jake, Sputnik Music

‘You’ll never get it, if you don’t slow down my friend, I mean your hardly even looking at the pictures…’ so says Paul Auster’s Augie Wren in the 1995 film Smoke as he shows yet another album of photographs all shot in the same spot at the same time everyday, a hobby which he calls ‘his project’. Wren is fascinated with the simple things; the light, the shade and the hidden detail that goes unnoticed in everyday scenes. The prolific Scott Morgan aka Loscil is an electronica producer similarly driven by themes of memory and location. His latest set Sketches from New Brighton evokes a small park overlooking the port authority in Vancouver, a ‘dialogue with the environment’ that is stuffed with memory, all passing ships and morning mist.

The opener Khanamoot is a gorgeous glitchy soundscape chock full of melodic changes which provides our first engagement with Morgan’s locale. The sense of the everyday made epic continues into Hastings Sunrise where filter shifted minor progressions provide a rich evocation of harbourside atmospheres and the architecture of memory. The track has an elemental beauty not too far distant from Burial, and something of the earthy sensuality of The Cinematic Orchestra. The tracks are long but do not feel overlong, developing sonically and thematically, the consistent pulses propelling us forward, allowing the listener to become fully immersed in the reflections.
These shifting soundscapes and tonalities conjure emotion from seemingly few actual sources. The gorgeous Cascadia Terminal is a case in point. A gradually building drone piece is punctuated by gently phasing textures suggesting melodies and changes which eventually emerge and transform the piece– diaphanous and dreamlike but underpinned by purpose. The secret lies in the stories told by the sounds, the details of their evolution, and an execution that resists over embellishment. There is a real sense of place here and that is what sets these very contemporary tone poems apart. Highly individual, evocative and personal, they hit just the right balance and are the more resonant as a result.
-Mark Williams

Comments