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Loscil, "Endless Falls"
Scott Morgan is something of an anomaly in the field of ambient music for having a simple and clear purpose: releasing a consistent stream of reliably good albums. He has no clear avant-garde pretensions, nor any reliance on high-concept philosophical underpinnings or improvisation. He just turns out dense, composed, and immersive washes of sound, year after year. Anyone that has heard Loscil before probably has a pretty good idea of what Endless Falls sounds like, but there is an unexpected surprise at the end that may signal a bold new direction.
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.
Samples can be found here.
