Loscil - Equivalents

Album: Equivalents

Artist: Loscil

Label: Kranky

Catalogue no: KRANK221

Tracklist:

     1.      Equivalent 1

     2.      Equivalent 3

     3.      Equivalent 6

     4.      Equivalent 5

     5.      Equivalent 2

     6.      Equivalent 8

     7.      Equivalent 7

     8.      Equivalent 4

My only other encounter with Loscil (aka Canadian Scott Morgan) has been with his 2011 album for Glacial Movements Records, Coast/Range/Arc, which I haven’t heard in an age (it’s in some box somewhere, remaining unpacked since we moved some years ago). Fortunate it was, then, that notice of this release came up on a Facebook group feed and in consequence my reacquaintance with this project is most welcome.

Eight tracks of deep glacial ambient and all numbered out of sequence; I can’t say why that may be, but I suspect there’s no particular reason behind the move. Then again it could just simply be that, after having composed the pieces and naming them, the artist decided that the suite as a whole flowed better in this way.

One thing that I can say without fear of contradiction is that this is an absolutely scintillating album, an exhibition of canvases depicting a multitude of moods and perceptions, ephemeral and long-lasting, shifting mists of ideas and concepts, some delineated more fully than others with some overt and others subliminal. Above all though is that it provides a metaphorical magic carpet ride, that it simultaneously energises and elucidates, that it informs us of new perspectives and points of view. It takes us on a trip through icy landscapes, through vertiginous chasms, and snow-covered alpine ranges. The air is clear here, unsullied and pure, the snow below us is completely unmarked, and the presence of man is minimal. It soars and flies gracefully and effortlessly, sometimes exhilaratingly skimming over ground and at others lifting us up above the clouds. It’s an enlightening aural experience, in the sense that it shines a torch on the beautiful wilderness below, a pristine kingdom of unblemished majesty and splendour.

Highlights for me include ‘Equivalent 1’, a slow, meandering kayak ride through high-sided gulleys and gorges on crystal waters, enlivened by waterfalls tumbling from the heights above, foam and rainbow-tinted spray hanging as if suspended in a moment of time. The sky is pure azure, without a cloud marring its gem-like clarity.

‘Equivalent 5’, a dizzying flight through the stratosphere amongst angelic visions and voices, an epiphanic experience bringing with it an intense clarity of connection with the natural world below. It’s almost as if the breath of Gaia can be heard, and its beating heart felt – a breathtaking and invigorating vision that transcends all boundaries and melts away unnatural classifications. ‘Equivalent 7’ is a slowly unfolding drone interspersed with gentle waves of icy-clear counterpoint, a pulsating, living, ebbing and flowing of time and movement. And to close out, a meditative trance-inducing drone floats in on wings of gossamer on ‘Equivalent 4’, and this time the journey focuses on the inward trip, and we become aware of ourselves and our connections to the endless flows of life and the patterns that keep the world in motion and ever-evolving. It’s a restful track to end on, an appropriate punctuation mark to conclude both the album and our explorations with – a fitting emphasis on the essential cycles of energy that ensure that the world and its systems continue working.

A triumph of an album: a painterly depiction of spectacular land- and mindscapes, a mesmerising flight through the frozen beauties of otherworldly places in the isolated regions of our home planet where the influence of man is still very limited. It stirs the imagination and the pulse, sparking off visions of incomprehensibly dazzling vistas, and staggeringly magnificent natural wonders. At a time when we’re becoming more and more aware of the fragility of the delicate balance between the systems helping to support the world and our ignorant interactions with them, this is perhaps an opportune reminder that we must keep fighting and acting.

Bedazzling.

Available as a download, CD, and a double vinyl album from here:

https://loscil.bandcamp.com/album/equivalents

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Purple Crow - Blue Grey.

Album: Blue Grey

Artist: Purple Crow

Label: Self-released

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Blue Grey

     2.      Pipe

     3.      Flowing

     4.      Blue Grey (Radio edit)

     5.      Pipe (Radio Edit)

     6.      Flowing (Radio edit)

You know you’re onto something when the first track (‘Blue Grey’) by this Canadian project opens with a shimmering plane of ebbing and flowing ringing tones that swing in from nowhere, hovers somewhere between your ears, and has the effect of transporting you outside yourself. You find yourself floating somewhere in the timeless interstitial spaces between being/non-being, knowing/not knowing, active/static. It’s a place where all states exist, and simultaneously where nothing happens. Here is where you swim, insensate and yet aware, existing in a condition of euphoria and beatitude, borne along by unfelt currents. All conditions pertain here: not only is there the feeling of bliss but it’s chased by an undercurrent tending towards chaos, a soft but insistent growling emerging through breaks in the roiling background. It’s not threatening, but it still carries a thrill of warning, signalling it shouldn’t be ignored.

‘Pipe’ steals in stealthily, a gentle humming occasionally broken by vibrating drones that hang suspended like motes in sunlight. As it progresses one imagines a blue sky against which white clouds drift past and evolve in slow motion, transforming, breaking apart, and reforming. Shapes and stories can read into the gradual billows and curls unfolding, expanding and contracting, revealing and hiding in a progressive unveiling. It’s a secret language, a natural one, the key to which could lift the obscuring curtain from our eyes to reveal the hidden things. Imperceptibly, however, the clouds grow greyer and darker, perhaps a note of caution that everything changes and nothing stays the same.

In the last offering ‘Flowing’, a low bass drone flies in as from a distance, a granular buzz that, swirls, gyrates, and propels itself through the stratospheric heights above our heads, perhaps an obscure call from the remote cold and frigid boundaries. It’s an all-pervasive blanket of sound, embracing and enfolding, energising and invigorating. It’s the species of drone that seeps into the skin and settles, suffusing the system with a thrilling intensity. One cannot help but feel carried along with its flow, a liberating cascade of thoughts and feelings, letting the streams propel us wither it wants to roam. It’s exhilarating yet precarious, comforting but simultaneously disconcerting.

These are scintillating creations, awash with subtle textural nuances and microtonic variations, always hovering somewhere between divine and earthy, free-flying and gravity-imprisoned. Each of the compositions lasts twenty minutes or longer, allowing each one to unfold gradually and logically, but never losing their focus or impetus. I found the suite as a whole strangely compelling, yin and yang in equal measure but with graduated shades in between. The art here though is that, despite an apparently limited palette, there’s still a sense of a broad spectrum of colour and detail, nuanced inevitably of course, but still there. I couldn’t have wished for a better introduction to the work of Purple Crow.

(The final three tracks are shortened, edited versions specifically engineered for radio broadcast, a précis if you like of the full track.)

Available as a digital download from:

https://purplecrow.bandcamp.com/album/blue-grey

Psymon Marshall 2019