Loscil is the

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductors * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic c ...

ambient music Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes Musical tone, tone and atmosphere over traditional Musical form, musical structure or rhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lacking Musical composition, composition, beat, and/or structured melod ...

project of Scott Morgan from

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada. Morgan launched the project in Vancouver in 1998 while a member of the multimedia collective Multiplex, which curated audiovisual events at an underground cinema called The Blinding Light. The name Loscil is taken from the "looping oscillator" function (loscil) in

Csound Csound is a domain-specific computer programming language for audio programming. It is named Csound because it is written in the language C, in contrast to some of its predecessors. It is free and open-source software, released under the GNU Les ...

. Morgan was also the drummer for the Vancouver indie band

Destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were conceived i ...

. As Loscil, he has also produced numerous special projects, remixes, and collaborations with other musicians, including

Ryuichi Sakamoto was a Music of Japan, Japanese musician, composer, keyboardist, record producer, singer and actor. He pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the Synthesizer, synth-based band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his ...

, Murcof/

Vanessa Wagner Vanessa Wagner (born 11 June 1973, in Rennes) is a French classical pianist. Biography She studied in the class of Dominique Merlet at the Conservatoire de Paris. At 17, she won the first prize, and went on to study with Jean-François Heisser. ...

Sarah Neufeld Sarah Neufeld (born August 27, 1979) is a Canadian violinist who is known for her work with indie rock band Arcade Fire, with whom she is a former core member and currently a touring member. She has contributed to each of the band's studio al ...

Daniel Bejar Daniel Bejar ( ; born October 4, 1972) is a Canadian singer and musician from Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the frontman of Destroyer (band), Destroyer, and was a member of indie rock band the New Pornographers. Overview In 2006, he join ...

bvdub Bvdub is an American electronic music producer originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2007 he has released more than 50 albums and EPs under this name and other pseudonyms including his birth name, Brock Van Wey. Residing in Shaoxing, ...

, Rachel Grimes, and Kelly Wyse.

Career

Loscil graduated from Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts, where he studied with computer-music pioneer

Barry Truax Barry Truax (born 1947) is a Canadian composer who specializes in real-time implementations of granular synthesis, often of sampled sounds, and soundscapes. He is credited with developing the first ever implementation of real-time granular s ...

2000s

A self-released album titled ''A New Demonstration of Thermodynamic Tendencies'' caught the attention of

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

label Kranky, which signed Morgan on to release his debut album ''Triple Point'' in 2001. The album features six tracks off his first independent release as well as four new tracks. Loscil followed up the release with '' Submers'', an aquatic-themed album. Each track on the album is named after a

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

. The last track on the album was produced in honour of the people who died on the

Russian submarine K-141 Kursk K-141 ''Kursk'' () was an Oscar II-class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine of the Russian Navy. On 12 August 2000, K-141 ''Kursk'' was lost when it sank in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 personnel on board. Construction K-141 '' ...

. Loscil's 2004 album ''First Narrows'' (a reference to the official name of the Vancouver bridge, also known as

Lions' Gate Bridge The Lions Gate Bridge, opened in 1938 and officially known as the First Narrows Bridge, is a suspension bridge that crosses the first narrows of Burrard Inlet and connects the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, to the North Shore municipal ...

) marked the incorporation of improvised performances by a number of guest musicians: Nyla Raney on

cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...

, Tim Loewen on

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

and Jason Zumpano on

Rhodes piano The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...

. Consequently, the music pieces (or

tone poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement (music), movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. T ...

s) on ''First Narrows'' are "more organic and looser in nature" than Morgan's previous work. Eight of Loscil's tone poems were featured on the film score of the 2004 documentary '' ScaredSacred'' by the award-winning documentary filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. In 2005, Morgan released ''Stases'', a collection of drones based upon the backgrounds of his work for Kranky. The album was made available as a free download-only release from One Records. The theme of Loscil's fourth major album, released in 2006, continued the conceptual ascent that each of his previous albums took, from the "subatomic level" and watery depths of ''Triple Point'' and '' Submers'', respectively, to the surface alluded to by ''First Narrows'' and the sky referenced in '' Plume''. '' Plume'' also continued Morgan's musical integration of other musicians' work into his ambient compositions, including those by Josh August Lindstrom on vibes and

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

and Krista Michelle Marshall and Stephen Michael Wood on EBow guitar, as well as

Zumpano Zumpano was a Canadian power pop group in the 1990s. The band, whose music style resembled such contemporaries as Sloan and The Super Friendz, consisted of vocalist/guitarist Carl Newman, keyboardist Michael Ledwidge, bassist Stefan Niemann, ...

again on piano.

2010s

In a 2014 interview with '' Exberliner'', Loscil described a facet of his 2014 album thus: "Vancouver is the ideal setting, and I say that in a sort of ironic way. The nature is so beautiful but it’s coupled with human intervention. y 2014 album''Sea Island'' is really inspired by that contrast. That area being a nature reserve as well as an industrial area and an airport is both beautiful and kind of horrific. I relish that contrast. There’s a balance there that I find interesting from a musical perspective. It opens the door to interpretation." In December 2016, American

webzine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to an online only magazine was the computer ...

''Somewherecold'' ranked Loscil's ''Monument Builders'' No. 4 on their ''Somewherecold Awards 2016'' list. In 2019, Loscil released ''Equivalents'', a reworking of piano samples inspired by

Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz (; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was k ...

’ black-and-white photographs of clouds. ''Pitchfork'' described the album as "full of wispy high pitches that swirl around waves of

pink noise Pink noise, noise, fractional noise or fractal noise is a signal (information theory), signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (power per frequency interval) is inversely proportional to the frequenc ...

and slowly moving tone clusters."

2020s

In March 2021, Loscil announced the May 28 release of a new 10-track album called ''

Clara Clara may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Clara'' (2018 film), a Canadian sci-fi drama * ''Clara'' (2019 film), a Ukrainian animated fantasy film * ''Clara'' (TV series), a German TV series * Clara the Cow, mascot of the Greek TV show '' P ...

''. As basis for the tracks, Loscil used a short orchestral recording, which is from a single three-minute composition performed by a 22-piece string orchestra in Budapest. Upon its release, ''Clara'' was met with critical acclaim, attaining on reviews aggregator

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

a score of 85, indicating "universal acclaim".

Discography

Studio albums

*1999: ''A New Demonstration of Thermodynamic Tendencies'' *2001: ''Triple Point'' ( Kranky) *2002: '' Submers'' (Kranky) *2004: ''First Narrows'' (Kranky) *2006: '' Plume'' (Kranky) *2010: ''Endless Falls'' (Kranky) *2011: ''Coast / Range / Arc'' (Glacial Movements) *2012: ''Sketches From New Brighton'' (Kranky) *2013: ''Erebus'' (with

Bvdub Bvdub is an American electronic music producer originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2007 he has released more than 50 albums and EPs under this name and other pseudonyms including his birth name, Brock Van Wey. Residing in Shaoxing, ...

) (Glacial Movements) *2014: ''Sea Island'' (Kranky) *2016: ''Monument Builders'' (Kranky) *2019: ''Equivalents'' (Kranky) *2019: ''Lifelike'' *2020: ''Faults, Coasts, Lines'' *2020: ''Adrift'' *2021: ''

'' (Kranky) *2022: ''The Sails p.1'' *2022: ''The Sails p.2'' *2023: ''Colours of Air'' (with

Lawrence English Lawrence English (born 1976) is an Australian composer, artist, and curator from Brisbane. His work is broadly concerned with the politics of perception, specifically he is interested in the nature of listening, and sounds' capability to occupy ...

) (Kranky) *2023: ''ALTA'' *2024: ''Chroma'' (with Lawrence English) *2024: ''Umbel'' *2025: '' Lake Fire'' (Kranky)

EPs and other releases

*2001: ''Involve Ep02 ( Involve Records)'' *2005: ''Stases (Drones 2001–2005)'' (One) *2009: ''Strathcona Variations EP'' (

Ghostly International Ghostly International is an American independent record label founded in 1999 by Samuel Valenti IV and currently headquartered in Brooklyn, New York City with team in Los Angeles, and London. Artists include Matthew Dear, Dabrye (a.k.a. Tadd Mu ...

) *2010: ''Versions EP'' (bandcamp) *2010: ''Untitled EP'' (bandcamp) *2012: ''City Hospital'' (Wist Rec) *2013: ''Intervalo'' (featuring Kelly Wyse) (Frond) *2014: ''Fury and Hecla'' (with Fieldhead) (Gizeh Records) *2015:
ADRIFT
' (app for iOS and Android) (Frond) *2016: ''Suns'' (Frond - cassette only) *2016: ''The Air at Night (Live at Subtrata)'' (with Rachel Grimes) (Mossgrove Music) *2016: ''Lodge'' (1631 Recordings) *2017: ''Untitled EP'' (with Seabuckthorn) (THESIS Project)

Tracks featured on

*2003: '' Saturday Morning Empires'' ( Intr Version) *2003: '' The Corporation'' documentary film soundtrack *2004: ''ScaredSacred'' documentary film soundtrack *2006: '' Idol Tryouts: Ghostly International Vol. 2'' (

) *2008: ''The Sleep Machine'' contributed to Chequerboards online Relay project *2009: '' Osmos'' computer game *2012: ''

Prototype 2 ''Prototype 2'' (stylized as '' ROTOTYPE2') is a 2012 action-adventure video game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision, and the sequel to 2009's ''Prototype.'' First announced at the 2010 Spike VGA Awards, it was release ...

'' computer game *2013: '' Hundreds'' iOS game *2013: '' The Bling Ring (film)'' *2014: ''

Divergent (film) ''Divergent'' is a 2014 American List of dystopian films, dystopian Science fiction film, science fiction action film directed by Neil Burger, based on the Divergent (novel), 2011 novel by Veronica Roth. The film is the first installment in ''The ...

'' *2014: '' From the Sky (film)'' *2017: '' Suburra: Blood on Rome (Netflix) - Sturgeon Bank + Bleeding Ink (from 2014 Sea Island) / Anthropocene (from 2016 Monument Builders) *2019: '' Lifelike'' iOS game

References

External links

Official website
*

at Kranky *
"Environmental Music: Loscil's Impressionistic Portraits

CBC Radio 3 CBC Radio 3 is a Canadian digital radio station operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which plays a relatively freeform mix of indie rock, indie pop, alternative hip hop, folk, country and electronic music. The service, which la ...

Live Concert Session {{Authority control Living people Ambient musicians Canadian ambient musicians Musicians from Vancouver Year of birth missing (living people) Kranky (record label) artists