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It is well worth learning how to listen to albums by loscil. As Scott Morgan's releases drift, drone and roam toward the future, and other spaces, we should want to feel some of the remarkable confidence he exhibits while taking us into the un-chartable. His Clara (70'00") provides a soft place in a hard world. These ten tracks are all their own in mood and power, yet each cannot escape the reality within which it exists. Penetrating and genuinely energized Clara hovers in some new no-space. With its withdrawn mood and a drowsy density of ideas, the music offers just enough substance for us to recognize something of ourselves in it. Everything happens slowly - such power from such deliberation - and though the narrative sometimes idles, the mood always remains absorbing. The character of the sounds range from the rounded and consonant to the brittle and bleak. Mechanized patterns of notes emerge and shift in assured meter and contrasting chord action. In the succession of tones, rhythms and ideas we find ourselves traveling in place. Luxuriating in these ambiguous sonorities it is an easy slide further into thought. Between the disarmingly gentle and the animated and unconfined we sink under the whirling atmosphere. Doom drones offer both vulnerability and resolve, while further in the sonics soften and slow - evoking the realm of the subconscious. Solemnly, this work unfurls beneath heaving shadows, which draw our imagination into their depths. Irregardless of the area being mined, Clara all fits together to create a cerebral experience devoid of EM's vapid image - encompassing darkly the luster of each creative spark.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 10 June 2021 |
