By Jason Boucher

Scott Morgan is a Vancouver-based ambient and electronic music composer also known as Loscil. His newest release, Colours Of Air, was co-created with composer Lawrence English. It’s now available on CD or digitally from Kranky Records. 

This album is a collection of recordings from an antique pipe organ found in Brisbane, Australia. The two modern composers processed and transformed the organ recordings into eight solemn electro-acoustic tracks for us to enjoy. The composers describe the album as “an iterative project, a reduction and eventual expansion.” The sounds heard totally refine what I thought an organ sounded like and the protruding drone-like babel is mesmerizing and mysterious — it’s hard to understand that all eight colorful tracks come from the same original instrument albeit they’ve been processed. Deep listening is required and in my opinion, and it’s best to use your noise-canceling headphones. 

Looking for more? Some of my favorite music by Loscil goes back to March 2020 where he released Adrift, a four-part piece based on infamous ghost ships like the SS Baychimo for example — a ship that sailed the Canadian arctic and became trapped in the ice near northern Alaska in the early 20th century. The vessel was left adrift for over 30 years and is nicknamed a ghost ship because no one knows exactly what happened. All the ghost ship pieces from Adrift are meant to be listened to as seascapes of sound and the music also seems to drift and flow with the tides making one feel misplaced, or forgotten.