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A few months back i read something that described this album
as being "some of the best ambient dub i have heard in a while".
The writer was some Western Canadian on a mailing list. Canadians
are always pushing their bands on the Internet, and i have enjoyed
many of the recommendations. So, in fact, when somebody says
"Hey, they're good, eh?" i take notice.
Loscil is a one man electronic act consisting of Scott Morgan,
who is from Vancouver. This is his ambient electronic project,
and normally he is the drummer in a band called Destroyer. I
don't know what kind of music Destroyer plays, but with a name
like that i am thinking intense metal. RAWK!!!!
Loscil is far from rock. It is quiet meditative groove music.
I am so glad that i was able to track down this album. Finally.
You see, i had a lot of trouble finding Triple Point,
and that trouble was based on two text-based issues. Firstly,
i kept thinking that the band was called "Locsil". I have no
idea why, but i had the "c" and the "s" backwards. (Perhaps
there was a typo in the email in which i initially read about
his album?) I must have hassled every employee at Criminal Records
in Little Five Points about this: "What do you mean you don't
have the Locsil disc? They're on Kranky! You have Godspeed!"
I even searched on-line and came up with nothing. Then, after
a frustrating while i actually WENT to the
Kranky website and looked up the artists name. Armed with
knowledge of my screw-up, i searched the web again. CDNow
did not list any artists named "Loscil", but they had one called
"Ioscil"....
So anyway, i finally tracked the damned thing down at Amazon,
and when i recieved the CD i realized why it was listed wrong
at CDNow: the font used on the cover is really subtle, so that
it's hard to tell an "I" (capitol i) apart from a "l" (lower
case l). Personally, i hate fonts that do that, but other web
folk argue with me that they are easier to read. I don't see
how they can be easier to read when you can't tell individual
letters apart, but, whatever....
Not only am i ranting about this just for the sake of ranting,
it is also to warn you about the difficulties associated with
obtaining this album. Repeat after me: L O S C I L. Pronounce
it "loss kill".
So why should you obtain this album?
Well, for starters, Loscil creates a wonderful combination
of mellow washed out drones and mid-tempo meandering beats.
It's very releaxing and, i have found, induces a lovely meditative
trance. It is, in short, some of the best ambient dub that i
have heard in quite some time! (See, once again the Canadians
were right!)
Loscil constructs his songs out of great waves of muted sound
that undulate almost subconsciously, and that undulation has
a slow and steady rhythm. There are echoey beats and throbbing
keys layered on top of this undulating drone. The drone itself
varies in texture and tone from song to song, but it is pretty
consistent throughout the album. That's what makes it so nice
and meditative.
There are some lovely effects done with the percussion on this
album that actually makes me want to hear Destroyer and see
what Mr. Morgan does when he is really drumming. At any rate,
Ampere has an awesome (but really low-key) drum breakdown.
Discrete Entropy adds Lee Scratch Perry levels of echo
to the drums, and Fuel Energy adds throbbing keys into
the mix. These are standouts tracks in an album on which i can
find no track i dislike.
Another standout track is the closer, Absolute, which
is almost 10 minutes of pure ambient drone. It's really mellow,
and fades out while leaving you perfectly relaxed.
Supposedly Triple Point combines two previously
released EPs from Loscil. That's kind of amazing because all
of the music really flows well together. However, it does lead
me to beleive that the Loscil sound is somewhat set and developed,
and that perhaps anything else we hear from this artist will
be similar.
And that's fine with me. I have listened to this disc a lot
since i finally tracked it down. And i recommend that fans of
drone and ambient music also find it. It's quite lovely.
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