(05.02.04) It’s not until “Cloisters,” the final track of First Narrows, that I really hear the live instrumentation that Scott Morgan has begun to weave into his work as Loscil. Maybe I’m just dense or maybe it’s the masterful way that he integrates the piano, guitar, and cello into his electronic compositions that they haven’t been identifiable as distinct instruments until this point. For his third record on Kranky, Morgan has evolved from his deep water dub excursions and begun to experiment with customized patches and software triggers which generate random soundscapes. Over these minimal glitch inflected landscapes and dub atmospheres, he’s added the work of the live musicians in an effort to craft a record that is organic and vitally alive.
It’s no heartbreak to start this record over again. In fact, it runs on endless
loop quite often during the day, a placid stream coursing through my headphones waiting for me to dip into it again. Loscil’s work is like the warm pulse of an ocean current drifting lazily about the world, carrying with it all sorts of tiny elements. There are gentle rhythms –hints of percussive elements that dapple the current like tiny crustaceans — and there are tender melodies like gaseous jellyfish that ebb and flow with the current, their color and texture changing as they are caressed by the moving water. The opening track, “Sickbay,” begins mid-stream as if we have just plunged into the current and are swiftly carried along like the
opening moments of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. “River run, past Adam and Eve…”
Through the metallic dub echo and the fine grained static of “Lucy Dub,” you can
hear the chatter of Tim Loewen’s guitar against a careful arpeggio from Jason Zumpano and the fender rhodes piano. Change occurs slowly as rounded drones begin to drift across the musical landscape. The title of the record, First Narrows, refers to the gap at the entrance of the Burrard Inlet which leads to Vancouver harbor from the Pacific Ocean, and a great deal of this record hangs on the edge as if it just about to cross a threshold. “First Narrows” unspools like a sentimental journey, a wanderer returning to a place he had once forsaken
and thought he would never see again. The interplay between the guitar and piano creates a melody both wistful and hopeful, filled with yearning and a sense of closure. The guitar whines with just a hint of the mythology of the Old West like a theme song for the aged gunslinger returning home.
Loscil’s work is like an underwater recording of a love fest between Pole and the Basic Channel sound; it is an aquatic marriage of dub and static. First Narrows finds Scott Morgan branching out and expanding the methodology he uses to create his sounds, both through the fabrication of customized sound programming and the mixing in of improvised instrumentation.
First Narrows is ambience caught between the sea and the sunrise and makes you feel like you are floating on one and being warmed by the other. Fantastic.
First Narrows is out now on Kranky. Buy it at Amazon.com.
