Recordings

Loscil

By martin turenne

Publish Date: 10-Jun-2004

First Narrows (Kranky)

No longer content to reside in the background, computer musician Scott Morgan (aka Loscil) steps out of the shadows on his latest album, First Narrows, adorning his subterranean bass tones with discreet riffs sourced from live playing. Where the producer's first two albums (2001's Triple Point and 2003's Submers) seemed to emanate from a subaquatic computer station, First Narrows resides in a more airy acoustic environment, a quality attributable to collaborations with Tim Loewen (guitar), Nyla Raney (cello), and Jason Zumpano (keyboards).

After sketching out a series of outlines, the composer called on the players to improvise to his material; he then stitched the results into the original tracks. The benefits of this strategy are in ample evidence on "First Narrows", which finds Zumpano's minimalist organ stabs flirting with Loscil's crackles and dronelike pulses to create a rich aural tableau. Later on, Raney's understated tones offer a fitting counterpoint to the jittery percussion of "Cloister", a relatively exuberant track by Loscil's sober standards. One can only hope that the producer continues experimenting with live players, for the results collected here prove him capable of eliciting beauty from the simplest of inputs.