Over the past couple years, I’ve found myself becoming more and more acquainted with and invested in the mystical wonders of ambient music. I remember a time way back when I thought ambient was the most boring thing ever and that it could barely even qualify as music because there was ‘nothing’ going on; oh, how naïve I was. Thankfully, as I have aged and matured, I have learned the errors in my own ways and have now fallen headfirst into the bottomless ambient rabbit-hole. Making the rounds through all the highly acclaimed records and revered artists within the genre, I would eventually come to discover loscil, the ambient electronica/techno project of the immensely prolific Scott Morgan.
My first loscil exposure was through Colours of Air, one of Morgan’s collaborations with the equally-as-enigmatic-and-iconic Lawrence English. From that point onwards, I’ve kept a keen eye out for every loscil-related release (and Lawrence English as well but that goes without saying). Now whenever I am in the mood for anything ambient, my mind and media player immediately jump to these two artists before anyone else. I’m not typically the kind of person that will listen to a single album/artist on repeat as variety is indeed the spice of life, but a new release from loscil isn’t something that happens every day as much as we want that to be reality. As such, I’ve been spinning Lake Fire round the clock which is unheard for me to do, especially with an ambient album.
The first thing that jumps out about Lake Fire is the artwork, which directly reflects a change in mood compared to the visually vibrant Chroma and Colours of Air for example. The color palettes and abstractly geometric waveforms presented on those aforementioned artworks parallel the lusciously dense soundscapes contained within their respective tracks. Meanwhile, the grayscale Lake Fire is more of a gloomy homage to the inherent beauty and vast expansiveness of Mother Nature with more ‘natural’ sonic textures as opposed to the abstract. The thick and juicy atmospheres found herein are immensely mysterious and melancholic; precisely what the doctor ordered.
What makes Morgan’s take on the genre stand out from his contemporaries is the balance of atmospheric subtlety and an incredibly minimal musical scaffold. Understandably, too many ambient/drone records indulge entirely into texture and tone, whereas loscil threads in just enough musical ‘meat’ in the form of muted bass pulses/rhythms, fluttering synths, and dynamics to lend these tracks a sense of internal motion. It’s never forceful, but it gives the individual songs a delicate tether that adds a touch of compositional direction without breaking the ethereal spell that is expected from ambient in the first place. Normally around here is where I’d refer to specific passages and tracks in the album, but this is the type of record that is best experienced blindly with your full undivided attention; so dive in!
Ambient/drone is inherently an amorphous style of music, yet loscil masterfully utilizes his background in electronica/techno to craft alluring soundscapes filled to the brim with musical ‘sprites’ that take your hand and guide you from one movement to the next, all with precalculated purpose. Rather than simply drifting into the ethereal, Lake Fire ebbs and flows with quiet intent, offering a sense of motion that feels both organic and meticulously designed; a slow burn that never quite feels like a slow burn. The end result is a musical entity that isn’t purely ambient nor electronica, but caught betwixt in its own little irreplicable niche.
