Loscil - Submers
One hour of submarine music. This is so tailor-made for me. Loscil's second disc for Kranky continues Scott Morgan's fascination with deep spaces. Focusing more on man-made underwater craft than the minutia of thermodynamic theory and activity (as he did with last year's Triple Point), Submers' nine tracks are all thematically linked their namesakes. The songs are lietmotifs -- miniaturized soundtracks -- to accompany a retrospective of man's efforts to move through the dark parts of the ocean.
Now I'm not going to turn this into a history lesson for each of these underwater behemoths, but it is quite apparent that Morgan has done his homework. Each track distinctly captures the texture and physical sonic environment of the specific vessel, whether it be the resolute machinery drone of "Argonaut," the single ping pulse and Morse code clicks which perambulate through "Mute 3," the dry percussion of "Nautilus," or the rapid precision of "Diable Marin" (irony here, since that vessel was actually oar-driven when it was in service). Morgan closes the disc with an elegy to the ill-fated Russian vessel Kursk, a moving tribute to those lost at sea.
At times minimally ambient, filled with lo-fi drones, cryptic with glitch messages, or heartbeat athrob micro-techno pulses, these submarine excursions sink the listener into dark, watery environments. Tone patterns rise and fall over the rumble of intense machinery, pistons and pipes chatter and click with steam. Tiny electrical impulses drive complex machinery, moving these massive bulks through miles of heavy water.
Elements of micro-house, static-charged dub, glitch, and ambient drones pervade all the tracks on Submers. If Porter Ricks redid Wolfgang Voight's work or Basic Channel started to remix Pole, those aquatic treatises would stand right behind Loscil's work. Loscil lays down a thematically-powered sonic history lesson, focusing not so much on the dry historical record, but rather dives into the wet and tactile experience of being submerged. Lose yourself in the deep-end with a pair of waterproof headphones. You too can be a submarine captain.
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