It seems that Vancouver ambient producer and composer Loscil is making a habit of starting each new year with a new, and breathtaking, body of work. Last year gave us The Sails, a collection of sound pieces designed specifically for dance, and the year before saw the tranquil and triumphant Clara leave a lasting impression. On his latest record, Loscil partners with composer Lawrence English, a meeting of minds that has been touted as “long overdue.” The concept behind the duo’s Colours Of Air sounds painfully trite on paper; a collection of ambient compositions inspired by and named after the tonal hues and atmospheric qualities they bring to mind. However cliche this may sound, the results are anything but. For starters, the ‘air’ in question is the sound of a centuries old pipe organ housed in a museum in Brisbane, Australia, which Loscil and English manipulate and transform into the electronic ambience heard on the album. This methodology arose from a conversation between the two composers about ‘forging’ electronic music from organic instruments, and this can be felt in the quality of the sounds they create. There’s an inherent resonance, an unmistakable timbre that distinguishes the organ spine of Colours Of Air from a drone synth. On Cyan, it undulates and echoes, drawing itself out like the smooth strokes of an amphibian through water. On Yellow, it radiates with a feverish glow, ecstatic and ravenous.
Download and stream Colours Of Air here
The qualities that both composers identify in the ‘hues’ they extrapolate are often surprising. Black, for instance, opens deep and abysmal, but soon pierces through the bleak chasm with a divine sort of ambient hum that feels infinite, its grandiosity bringing to mind the vast majesty of the cosmos. Violet emanates along a steady percussive heartbeat, spewing out in syncopated crashes of sound that quickly become despairing, and anxiety inducing. Loscil and English’s exploration of electronic sounds by way of the natural world result in truly gorgeous and brilliantly textured compositions. The concept of colours and synesthesia feels a touch stale for the sort of music that the duo create here, which transcends its nomenclature entirely. This is an active body of work. You can almost feel the ‘forging’ that takes place here, how the composers explore the qualities of the sounds they produce to its full extent, then take it even further by intertwining the technological with the organic.
Listen to Black from Colours Of Air below.
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