Loscil is the

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

/ ambient music project of Scott Morgan from

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Canada. Morgan launched the project in Vancouver in 1998 while a member of the multimedia collective Multiplex, which curated audiovisual events at an underground cinema called The Blinding Light. The name Loscil is taken from the "looping oscillator" function (loscil) in

Csound Csound is a domain-specific computer programming language for audio programming. It is called Csound because it is written in C, as opposed to some of its predecessors. It is free software, available under the LGPL-2.1-or-later. Csound was o ...

. Morgan was also the drummer for the Vancouver indie band Destroyer. As Loscil, he has also produced numerous special projects, remixes, and collaborations with other musicians, including

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto i ...

Murcof Murcof is the performing and recording name of Mexican electronic musician Fernando Corona. Corona was born in 1970 in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in Ensenada. He was for a time a member of the Tijuana-based Nortec Collective of electronic musicians ...

Vanessa Wagner Vanessa Wagner (born 11 June 1973, in Rennes) is a French classical pianist. Biography She studied in the class of Dominique Merlet at the Conservatoire de Paris. At 17, she won the first prize, and went on to study with Jean-François Heisser ...

, Sarah Neufeld, Daniel Bejar, bvdub, Rachel Grimes, and Kelly Wyse.

Career

Loscil graduated from Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts, where he studied with computer-music pioneer

Barry Truax Barry Truax (born 1947) is a Canadian composer who specializes in real-time implementations of granular synthesis, often of sampled sounds, and soundscapes. He is credited with developing the first ever implementation of real-time granular s ...

2000s

A self-released album titled ''A New Demonstration of Thermodynamic Tendencies'' caught the attention of experimental music label Kranky, which signed Morgan on to release his debut album ''Triple Point'' in 2001. The album features six tracks off his first independent release as well as four new tracks. Loscil followed up the release with '' Submers'', an aquatic-themed album. Each track on the album is named after a submarine. The last track on the album was produced in honour of the people who died on the

Russian submarine K-141 Kursk K-141 ''Kursk'' (russian: Атомная Подводная Лодка «Курск» (АПЛ «Курск»), Romanization of Russian, transl. , meaning "Atomic-powered submarine ''Kursk''") was an Oscar-class submarine, Oscar II-class nucle ...

. Loscil's 2004 album ''First Narrows'' (a reference to the official name of the Vancouver bridge, also known as

Lions' Gate Bridge The Lions Gate Bridge, opened in 1938 and officially known as the First Narrows Bridge, is a suspension bridge that crosses the first narrows of Burrard Inlet and connects the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, to the North Shore municipal ...

) marked the incorporation of improvised performances by a number of guest musicians: Nyla Raney on

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G ...

, Tim Loewen on

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

and Jason Zumpano on Rhodes piano. Consequently, the music pieces (or

tone poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...

s) on ''First Narrows'' are "more organic and looser in nature" than Morgan's previous work. Eight of Loscil's tone poems were featured on the film score of the 2004 documentary ''

Scared Sacred ''Scared Sacred'' is an independent film produced in 2004 and released in 2006 by director Velcrow Ripper. ''Scared Sacred'' is a feature-length documentary that takes viewers to many of the places in the world that have experienced great sufferin ...

'' by the award-winning documentary filmmaker

Velcrow Ripper Velcrow Ripper (born October 20, 1963, in Gibsons, British Columbia) is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, writer, and public speaker, best known for his Genie Award-winning 2006 film ''Scared Sacred'' and his newest feature documentary, '' Fierce ...

. In 2005, Morgan released ''Stases'', a collection of drones based upon the backgrounds of his work for Kranky. The album was made available as a free download-only release from One Records. The theme of Loscil's fourth major album, released in 2006, continued the conceptual ascent that each of his previous albums took, from the "subatomic level" and watery depths of ''Triple Point'' and '' Submers'', respectively, to the surface alluded to by ''First Narrows'' and the sky referenced in '' Plume''. '' Plume'' also continued Morgan's musical integration of other musicians' work into his ambient compositions, including those by Josh August Lindstrom on vibes and

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in ...

and Krista Michelle Marshall and Stephen Michael Wood on EBow guitar, as well as Zumpano again on piano.

2010s

In a 2014 interview with ''

Exberliner ''Exberliner'' is an English-language magazine published in Berlin that was launched in 2002. It is published monthly (except for the July/August double issue) and available for €3.90 at newsstands around the city or by subscription. The magazi ...

'', Loscil described a facet of his 2014 album thus: "Vancouver is the ideal setting, and I say that in a sort of ironic way. The nature is so beautiful but it’s coupled with human intervention. y 2014 album''Sea Island'' is really inspired by that contrast. That area being a nature reserve as well as an industrial area and an airport is both beautiful and kind of horrific. I relish that contrast. There’s a balance there that I find interesting from a musical perspective. It opens the door to interpretation." In December 2016, American

webzine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer maga ...

''Somewherecold'' ranked Loscil's ''Monument Builders'' No. 4 on their ''Somewherecold Awards 2016'' list. In 2019, Loscil released ''Equivalents'', a reworking of piano samples inspired by Alfred Stieglitz’ black-and-white photographs of clouds. ''Pitchfork'' described the album as "full of wispy high pitches that swirl around waves of

pink noise Pink noise or noise is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (power per frequency interval) is inversely proportional to the frequency of the signal. In pink noise, each octave interval (halving ...

and slowly moving tone clusters."

2020s

In March 2021, Loscil announced the May 28 release of a new 10-track album called ''Clara''. As basis for the tracks, Loscil used a short orchestral recording, which is from a single three-minute composition performed by a 22-piece string orchestra in Budapest. Upon its release, ''Clara'' was met with critical acclaim, attaining on reviews aggregator

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

a score of 85, indicating "universal acclaim".

Discography

Studio albums

*1999 ''A New Demonstration of Thermodynamic Tendencies'' *2001 ''Triple Point'' ( Kranky) *2002 '' Submers'' (Kranky) *2004 ''First Narrows'' (Kranky) *2006 '' Plume'' (Kranky) *2010 ''Endless Falls'' (Kranky) *2011 ''Coast / Range / Arc'' (Glacial Movements) *2012 ''Sketches From New Brighton'' (Kranky) *2013 ''Erebus'' (with Bvdub) (Glacial Movements) *2014 ''Sea Island'' (Kranky) *2016 ''Monument Builders'' (Kranky) *2019 ''Equivalents'' (Kranky) *2019 ''Lifelike'' (Frond) *2020 ''Faults, Coasts, Lines'' (bandcamp) *2020 ''Adrift'' *2021 ''Clara'' (Kranky) *2022 ''The Sails'' (Frond)

EPs and other releases

*2001 ''Involve Ep02 ( Involve Records)'' *2005 ''Stases (Drones 2001–2005)'' (One) *2009 ''Strathcona Variations EP'' (

Ghostly International Ghostly International is an American independent record label founded in 1999 by Samuel Valenti IV and currently headquartered in Brooklyn, New York City. Chief artists include Matthew Dear, Dabrye (a.k.a. Tadd Mullinix), Com Truise, Tycho, Go ...

) *2010 ''Versions EP'' (bandcamp) *2010 ''Untitled EP'' (bandcamp) *2012 ''City Hospital'' (Wist Rec) *2013 ''Intervalo'' (featuring Kelly Wyse) (Frond) *2014 ''Fury and Hecla'' (with

Fieldhead Fieldhead are a British band formed in Leeds, England, in 2008 and led by Paul Elam, a member of The Declining Winter. Paul currently resides in London, whilst violinists Elaine Reynolds and Sarah Kemp (both also of The Declining Winter) reside ...

) (Gizeh Records) *2015
ADRIFT
' (app for iOS and Android) (Frond) *2016 ''Suns'' (Frond - cassette only) *2016 ''The Air at Night (Live at Subtrata)'' (with Rachel Grimes) (Mossgrove Music) *2016 ''Lodge'' (1631 Recordings)

Tracks featured on

*2003 '' Saturday Morning Empires'' ( Intr Version) *2003 '' The Corporation'' documentary film soundtrack *2004 ''ScaredSacred'' documentary film soundtrack *2006 '' Idol Tryouts: Ghostly International Vol. 2'' (

) *2008 ''The Sleep Machine'' contributed to Chequerboards online Relay project *2009 ''

Osmos ''Osmos'' is a 2009 puzzle video game developed by Canadian developer Hemisphere Games for various systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, OnLive, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android. Gameplay The aim of the game is to propel o ...

'' computer game *2013 '' Hundreds'' iOS game *2014 ''

Divergent (film) ''Divergent'' is a 2014 American dystopian science fiction action film directed by Neil Burger, based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Veronica Roth. The film is the first installment in '' The Divergent Series'' and was produced by Lucy ...

'' *2014 '' From the Sky (film)'' *2017 '' Suburra: Blood on Rome (Netflix) - Sturgeon Bank + Bleeding Ink (from 2014 Sea Island) / Anthropocene (from 2016 Monument Builders) *2019 '' Lifelike'' iOS game

References

External links

Official website
*

at Kranky
"Environmental Music: Loscil's Impressionistic Portraits

CBC Radio 3 CBC Radio 3 is a Canadian digital radio station operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which plays a relatively freeform mix of indie rock, indie pop, alternative hip hop, folk, country and electronic music. The service, which la ...

Live Concert Session {{Authority control Living people Ambient musicians Canadian electronic musicians Musicians from Vancouver Year of birth missing (living people)