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Recording:
  Triple Point  
 
Artist:
  Loscil  
 
Label:
  Kranky  
 
Release Date:
  9.October.2001  
 
Reviewed by:
  PostLibyan  
         
 
Rating:
   
         
 
Review:
 

A few months back i read something that described this album as being "some of the best ambient dub i have heard in a while". The writer was some Western Canadian on a mailing list. Canadians are always pushing their bands on the Internet, and i have enjoyed many of the recommendations. So, in fact, when somebody says "Hey, they're good, eh?" i take notice.

Loscil is a one man electronic act consisting of Scott Morgan, who is from Vancouver. This is his ambient electronic project, and normally he is the drummer in a band called Destroyer. I don't know what kind of music Destroyer plays, but with a name like that i am thinking intense metal. RAWK!!!!

Loscil is far from rock. It is quiet meditative groove music. I am so glad that i was able to track down this album. Finally.

You see, i had a lot of trouble finding Triple Point, and that trouble was based on two text-based issues. Firstly, i kept thinking that the band was called "Locsil". I have no idea why, but i had the "c" and the "s" backwards. (Perhaps there was a typo in the email in which i initially read about his album?) I must have hassled every employee at Criminal Records in Little Five Points about this: "What do you mean you don't have the Locsil disc? They're on Kranky! You have Godspeed!"

I even searched on-line and came up with nothing. Then, after a frustrating while i actually WENT to the Kranky website and looked up the artists name. Armed with knowledge of my screw-up, i searched the web again. CDNow did not list any artists named "Loscil", but they had one called "Ioscil"....

So anyway, i finally tracked the damned thing down at Amazon, and when i recieved the CD i realized why it was listed wrong at CDNow: the font used on the cover is really subtle, so that it's hard to tell an "I" (capitol i) apart from a "l" (lower case l). Personally, i hate fonts that do that, but other web folk argue with me that they are easier to read. I don't see how they can be easier to read when you can't tell individual letters apart, but, whatever....

Not only am i ranting about this just for the sake of ranting, it is also to warn you about the difficulties associated with obtaining this album. Repeat after me: L O S C I L. Pronounce it "loss kill".

So why should you obtain this album?

Well, for starters, Loscil creates a wonderful combination of mellow washed out drones and mid-tempo meandering beats. It's very releaxing and, i have found, induces a lovely meditative trance. It is, in short, some of the best ambient dub that i have heard in quite some time! (See, once again the Canadians were right!)

Loscil constructs his songs out of great waves of muted sound that undulate almost subconsciously, and that undulation has a slow and steady rhythm. There are echoey beats and throbbing keys layered on top of this undulating drone. The drone itself varies in texture and tone from song to song, but it is pretty consistent throughout the album. That's what makes it so nice and meditative.

There are some lovely effects done with the percussion on this album that actually makes me want to hear Destroyer and see what Mr. Morgan does when he is really drumming. At any rate, Ampere has an awesome (but really low-key) drum breakdown. Discrete Entropy adds Lee Scratch Perry levels of echo to the drums, and Fuel Energy adds throbbing keys into the mix. These are standouts tracks in an album on which i can find no track i dislike.

Another standout track is the closer, Absolute, which is almost 10 minutes of pure ambient drone. It's really mellow, and fades out while leaving you perfectly relaxed.

Supposedly Triple Point combines two previously released EPs from Loscil. That's kind of amazing because all of the music really flows well together. However, it does lead me to beleive that the Loscil sound is somewhat set and developed, and that perhaps anything else we hear from this artist will be similar.

And that's fine with me. I have listened to this disc a lot since i finally tracked it down. And i recommend that fans of drone and ambient music also find it. It's quite lovely.

 
         
 
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