As Loscil, composer/producer Scott Morgan creates ambient music that drifts between the intuitive and the intellectual with deceptively easy grace. Since his thermodynamics-themed debut album, 2001's Triple Point, he's shaped his layered atmospheres and delicate, almost subliminal melodies with conceptual frameworks. The history and striking geography of southwestern British Columbia -- especially his hometown of Vancouver -- inspired some of his finest albums, including 2004's First Narrows (his first work to blend live instrumentation with electronics) and 2012's Sketches from New Brighton. As Morgan expanded his focus with 2016's ecologically minded Monument Builders and 2023's meditative Lawrence English collaboration Colours of Air, the vast yet intimate feel of his music remained.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Morgan moved from the city's eastern suburbs to Courtenay on Vancouver Island as a boy. In his teens and twenties, he grew bored of the island's stillness, and channeled his restlessness into the bands he played with, which later included a stint as the drummer for Destroyer. However, studying communications and music at Simon Fraser University opened Morgan to the possibilities of experimental and electronic music. As he trained to be a sound designer and director, he learned about the fundamentals of computer music as well as the work of 20th century experimental composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Morgan's education shaped the music he was making on his own. Taking the term "loscil" (a combination of "loop" and "oscillate") from the audio programming language Csound, he began performing his minimalist dub/techno/ambient-inspired tracks at a friend's independent theater. He made a demo album, A New Demonstration of Thermodynamic Tendencies, named after and inspired by a physics textbook Morgan found at a used bookstore. After a friend suggested he send the demo to Kranky, the label signed him and, following a few tweaks, released it as Loscil's debut album. Arriving in October 2001, Triple Point introduced the conceptual basis of Morgan's music and his abstract yet vivid style. Following a European tour with Stars of the Lid, Morgan started work on Loscil's second album. This time, he looked to underwater craft for his music's emotional and thematic coherence and used heavily processed samples of classical music to convey its aqueous depth. Submers, which appeared in November 2002, included a touching requiem for the crew of ill-fated Russian nuclear vessel Kursk.

For his next album, Morgan used a much wider range of sound sources. Along with samples, found sounds, and computer-generated tones, he also incorporated live instrumentation into the work. Inspired by Vancouver's Lion's Gate Bridge, May 2004's First Narrows featured Fender Rhodes courtesy of Zumpano's Jason Zumpano, along with contributions from Destroyer guitarist Tim Loewen and cellist Nyla Raney. At this point, Morgan was still Destroyer's drummer, and his remix of the band's 2006 album Destroyer's Rubies, "Loscil's Rubies," appeared on its vinyl release. That May, Morgan also issued Plume, which reunited him with Zumpano and featured xylophonist Josh August Lindstrom alongside guitarists Krista Michelle Marshall and Stephen Wood.

Loscil returned in 2009 with Strathcona Variations, an EP for Ghostly International that ranged from minimalism to orchestral heights. With March 2010's somber Endless Falls, Morgan took another step forward; the album's final track showcased the vocals of his Destroyer bandmate Dan Bejar. The Italian label Glacial Movements issued Coast/Range/Arc, a piece inspired by the Coast Mountains, as a limited-edition release in June 2011. Morgan's next pair of albums showcased different sides of his hometown. Appearing in September 2012, Sketches from New Brighton took its name from an oceanside park in Vancouver that was considered to be the city's birthplace. The album spawned the following year's Intervalo, a reworking of several Sketches from New Brighton tracks with pianist Kelly Wyse. In November 2014, Morgan and Wyse reunited for Sea Island, which drew inspiration from the isle that is home to Vancouver's international airport. That year, Loscil also appeared on a split EP with Fieldhead.

Morgan's 2015 works included the For Greta EP, a benefit release for a friend's daughter who was battling bone cancer, and the interactive smartphone EP Adrift, which incorporates the elements of each track differently each time it plays. A warped VHS copy of Koyaanisqatsi, as well as the writing of philosopher John Gray and the photography of Edward Burtynsky, shaped Morgan's vision for November 2016's pensive full-length Monument Builders. The next year, collaborations with Seabuckthorn and Lost Trail arrived. In 2018, Morgan self-released Bannockburn, an extended version of one of the tracks from Adrift. In August 2019, he issued Equivalents, an album inspired by a series of moody, early 20th century photographs of clouds by renowned photographer and artist Alfred Stieglitz. The following April saw the arrival of edited versions of the Adrift pieces that Morgan offered as a free download, and in May 2020, he released Faults, Coasts, Lines, a photo booklet/EP project inspired by pictures and field recordings of Tofino and Ucluelet, British Columbia.

Loscil returned to Kranky for May 2021's luminous Clara, whose source material came from a short composition performed by a string orchestra in Budapest, recorded onto a 7" that was distressed, then sampled and reconfigured by Morgan. Lux Refractions, a limited-edition book of photos accompanied by tracks created from the same sources as Clara, appeared that September. In 2022, Loscil issued The Sails, a two-part collection gathering nearly a decade's worth of music composed for dance projects. For his next project, Morgan collaborated with Australian composer, curator, and writer Lawrence English. Appearing in February 2023, Colours of Air used recordings of a century-old pipe organ as the source material for the duo's flickering and shimmering meditations. ~ Heather Phares & John Bush

Lawrence English is an artist, composer, engineer, writer, and curator based in Brisbane, Australia. Often described as ambient music or drone, his recordings and performances typically utilize field recordings and found sounds in order to explore the politics of perception. English first gained a wider audience with 2008's dense, subtly shifting Kiri No Oto. Some of his later work (such as 2014's acclaimed Wilderness of Mirrors) is heavier and noisier, expressing bleakness, desolation, and loneliness through waves of distortion. In the 2020s, the pipe organ that played a foundational role in many of his pieces came to the fore on works such as 2021's Observation of Breath and 2023's Loscil collaboration Colours of Air. Along with releasing dozens of solo and collaborative recordings on labels including 12k, Line, and Touch, he runs the Room40 label (which has issued recordings by Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Mike Cooper, and many others) as well as its related labels Someone Good and A Guide to Saints. In addition to creating audio-visual installations for galleries and art spaces across the world, he has written for publications including The Wire and Cyclic Defrost.

English began making music during the '90s, working with a few industrial and alternative rock bands. He founded Room40 in 2000, and began releasing his experimental recordings, including music commissioned for his installations. In 2002, he released Calm under the name I/O, and he performed as part of trio I/O3, which worked with David Toop, Scanner, and DJ Olive. In 2003, Quatermass released Pandemic, an experimental hip-hop album English recorded under the name Object. His first solo works under his own name were Transit (Cajid Media) and Happiness Will Befall (Crónica), both in 2005. For Varying Degrees of Winter appeared on Baskaru in 2007, and collaborations with Domenico Sciajno (Merola Shoulders) and Ai Yamamoto (Plateau) were both released on Phono-Statique Records that same year. English collaborated with Tujiko Noriko and John Chantler for an album titled U, released by Room40 in 2008. Also that year, English's album Kiri No Oto was released by Touch, earning him more exposure and acclaim. A Colour for Autumn (featuring contributions by Fennesz and Dean Roberts) was released by 12k in 2009. Also released that year were HB (with Francisco López) on Baskaru and It's Up to Us to Live on Sirr. Both A Colour for Autumn and Kiri No Oto were subsequently issued on vinyl by Digitalis.

In 2010, English collaborated with Minamo for an album titled A Path Less Traveled (Room40), and Touch released his single Incongruous Harmonies as part of their 7" series. The Peregrine, inspired by J.A. Baker's novel of the same name, appeared on Experimedia in 2011. A collaboration with Stephen Vitiello titled Acute Inbetweens was released by Crónica that year. In 2012, English released For/Not for John Cage on Richard Chartier's Line label. He also released two digital-only albums of field recordings (Songs of the Living, And the Lived In) on Room40. In 2013, Important Records issued English's vinyl-only drone album Lonely Women's Club. He also released a split LP with Alberto Boccardi, a split 7" with Xiu Xiu, a collaboration with Akio Suzuki (Boombana Echoes), and a self-titled LP by Slow Walkers, his collaboration with Grouper. Wilderness of Mirrors (Room40) and collaborations with Stephen Vitiello (Fable, Dragon's Eye Recordings) and Werner Dafeldecker (Shadow of the Monolith, Holotype Editions) were released in 2014. English's Viento album was issued on vinyl by Taiga Records in 2015. His album Approaching Nothing was released by Baskaru in 2016. Later in the year, English and Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart released Factory Photographs under the name HEXA. English's solo album Cruel Optimism appeared on Room40 in 2017. The following year, he delivered a pair of collaborations: That October's Selva Oscura paired him with William Basinski on compositions they recorded simultaneously in Brisbane and Los Angeles, while November's Immediate Horizon documented English and Alessandro Cortini's performance at the Berlin Atonal festival.

For his first release of the 2020s, English turned his focus to the century-old pipe organ housed at the Old Museum in Brisbane, which had also featured on Wilderness of Mirrors and Cruel Optimism. Arriving that May, Lassitude consisted of two pieces inspired by and dedicated to Éliane Radigue and Phill Niblock. His other works that year included October's eerie Field Recordings from the Zone, which drew from recordings made in Queensland, Australia in the wake of devastating bushfires as well as the stillness of COVID-19 global pandemic lockdowns. The following September, the Swiss label Hallow Ground issued Observation of Breath, a set of organ-based compositions that expanded on the themes and sounds of Lassitude, while October brought Material Interstices, the second album from English and Stewart's HEXA project. In April 2022, English released a completely remixed and remastered edition of Viento. That June saw the arrival of Eternal Stalker, an unsettling collaboration with Merzbow that grew from recordings of a factory complex; September's Approach was informed by the influential manga Grey as well as English's adolescence; and October's Russia 1985-1999 TraumaZone provided the score to Adam Curtis' series of films. On February 2023's Loscil collaboration Colours of Air, the duo used the Old Museum pipe organ as the source material for the album's flickering and shimmering meditations. ~ Paul Simpson & Heather Phares