Loscil: Endless Falls

Loscil

Label: Kranky

The way I see it, ambient music should accomplish one of two things, if not both. It should be able provide the perfect kind of white noise: tranquil, mellow and organic, able to play comfortably in the background while taking a backseat to a wandering mind and other activities. Yet, if put to a critical ear or even just a dedicated one, an ambient album should prove to be thoughtfully composed. In other words, ambient should be just as good when you actually listen to it. So in a canon of music ruled by its ability to be pleasantly ignored, the genre’s highlights are often all people really need – those works being rare and well-known to accomplish both of those essential musical feats. Erik Satie covers the classical camp, Brian Eno’s groundbreaking sounds are definitive among contemporary artists, Moby made ambient for the dance-floor junkies and Eluvium (who just released another solid album this year) has pleasantly exhausted every way to inject melodies into the genre. So why do Loscil’s computerized experiments deserve attention? Because even though Endless Falls is yet another pretty package, it’s sculpted almost perfectly and pairs the metallic sheen of Loscil’s digital stylings with a general attempt to compose music with a bit more to it than simple beauty.

As much as Endless Falls plays buttery smooth, in a fashion amorphous enough to suggest Loscil is merely the skilled Csound equivalent of an abstract painter, it is also an album that frequently finds direction and purpose. And perhaps it’s the computerized nature of Loscil’s execution, but his records rev up slowly and deliberately like a high torque vehicle to Eno’s streetlights-and-Ferrari Michael Mann sound. Loscil’s discography is full of titles like Submers, First Narrows and Plume, a roughly directional gaze at the physical world – the rain pattering at the beginning of opener “Endless Falls” another variation on that theme. And Loscil apparently does variations pretty damn well. Sounds rise and fall with gradual changes, ebbing and flowing with a subtlety that invites meditative listening, but careful pacing builds fluttering openings to more ominous finales. Beats pop and crackle with changing rhythms and textures recalling many different aquatic sounds, the lively pattering of rain on tin, the wash of runoff down a smooth city street and the crushing tones of celestial fury. These artificial-natural mash-ups might not be apparent on first listen, but damn is it exciting when the beautiful photography of the front cover suddenly makes sense. Loscil is Destroyer drummer Scott Morgan’s project; it may come from a completely different vein of songwriting than Dan Bejar’s indie rock, but it still sounds like a drummer is plotting its course. The beats matter, and the sounds they recall matter even more. This is definitely ambient music for the attentive listener.

But whether or not the subtitles of Endless Falls ever come through, it still wraps up with a surprising twist. Loscil’s thoughts on the creative process are delivered in a closing spoken-word track, voiced wonderfully by guest reader Bejar. The Destroyer frontman’s unique vocal tone and cadenced delivery mixes well with Loscil’s wandering keyboards. Yet it’s really the words that shine. Closing an album with thoughts on the convergence of traditional genre forms and innovation is surprisingly clever when ambient music is the topic of those thoughts. Loscil clearly puts both time and thought into his somewhat delicate creations. Explaining that in such an explicit fashion manages to frame Morgan’s creativity for this interested critic, but also reinforces my belief that ambient with character and depth is something worth another listen.

by Michael Merline