Endless Falls (Kranky, 03.2010)
For: Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker, William Basinski
Byline: Loscil's Endless Falls is to rainy spring days as Fennesz's Endless Summer is to summer sunsets.
Loscil may have given away too much by the rainstreaked windshield that adorns their newest release Endless Falls. Aside from the obvious mood of the album; quiet, building drones for quiet, rainy days; the rain obscuring the photographs object creates an effective metaphor for the buried, other-room effect of Loscils subdued output. After trading the perennial moodiness of the pacific northwest for the cut and dry seasons of the high country I have found myself really missing the rain and overcast skies of Seattle. Endless Falls was the perfect background music as I drove Addy around doing saturday errands during an all to uncommon rainy day. All to uncommon for these parts. It is not a stretch to say that this album was made for moments like these, Scott Morgan's drones border on the ethereal, muted tones of gray and green that blend together in some unmarked vanishing point. Rain, bookending the album, also serves as a perfect analogy for the overall effect of Morgan's music. Boomkat's excellent review of this album put it like this, "in the photograph a form of interference displaces the content of the picture as its true subject, and so it goes in Loscil's music. While Morgan's string sections and looping melodic gestures make up the fabric of these recordings it's the muffling and masking of them that draws the true beauty out of this music." Truth. Morgan's looped piano lines pulse up from the ether like sound filtering through a decibel ravaged eardrum. Percussion comes in surging orbs of shimmering electronics like the beats from a house-party next door, barely audible enough to make their presence felt but not enough to fully show their hand. Neo-classical washes of staticy synths and lilting violins overlay match the rhythmic lapping of gossamer electronic production. On the album's last track "The Making of Grief Point" Daniel Bejar from Destroyer (whom Morgan is the drummer for) shows up to deliver a spoken word piece. Loscil's Endless Falls is to rainy spring days as Fennesz's Endless Summer is to summer sunsets. Perfect addendums, immediately transportive masterpieces of time and place. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this ends up on my top 10 this year.
For: Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker, William Basinski
Byline: Loscil's Endless Falls is to rainy spring days as Fennesz's Endless Summer is to summer sunsets.
Loscil may have given away too much by the rainstreaked windshield that adorns their newest release Endless Falls. Aside from the obvious mood of the album; quiet, building drones for quiet, rainy days; the rain obscuring the photographs object creates an effective metaphor for the buried, other-room effect of Loscils subdued output. After trading the perennial moodiness of the pacific northwest for the cut and dry seasons of the high country I have found myself really missing the rain and overcast skies of Seattle. Endless Falls was the perfect background music as I drove Addy around doing saturday errands during an all to uncommon rainy day. All to uncommon for these parts. It is not a stretch to say that this album was made for moments like these, Scott Morgan's drones border on the ethereal, muted tones of gray and green that blend together in some unmarked vanishing point. Rain, bookending the album, also serves as a perfect analogy for the overall effect of Morgan's music. Boomkat's excellent review of this album put it like this, "in the photograph a form of interference displaces the content of the picture as its true subject, and so it goes in Loscil's music. While Morgan's string sections and looping melodic gestures make up the fabric of these recordings it's the muffling and masking of them that draws the true beauty out of this music." Truth. Morgan's looped piano lines pulse up from the ether like sound filtering through a decibel ravaged eardrum. Percussion comes in surging orbs of shimmering electronics like the beats from a house-party next door, barely audible enough to make their presence felt but not enough to fully show their hand. Neo-classical washes of staticy synths and lilting violins overlay match the rhythmic lapping of gossamer electronic production. On the album's last track "The Making of Grief Point" Daniel Bejar from Destroyer (whom Morgan is the drummer for) shows up to deliver a spoken word piece. Loscil's Endless Falls is to rainy spring days as Fennesz's Endless Summer is to summer sunsets. Perfect addendums, immediately transportive masterpieces of time and place. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this ends up on my top 10 this year.
Ryan H.
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