Review Summary: Let it rain.
Loscil has been honing the craft of electronic and ambient music for nearly a decade now, but never before has it been so resonating and touching. That being said, don’t expect loscil (the drummer from Destroyer) and his latest,
Endless Falls, to spill out from the headphones. Fluid as it may be, thematically and aurally,
Endless Falls remains a weighty and substantial experience. The ambient experience delivers a visceral experience far from stagnant, though, even if it does drag on rather slowly from time to time.
Endless Falls, as you may have guessed by my diction, is almost entirely based on the theme of water. Submarines, bridges, and steam have all graced loscil’s releases before. It’s in
Endless Falls that everything comes together.
Beginning and ending with the lamentful pitter-patter of raindrops, loscil makes the feeling of
Endless Falls placid. Instead of a bubbly atmosphere or grandiose build-ups, loscil relies on consistency through fluid strings and ever-adjusting base, primarily. Pulsating and melodic at times, the looped drones hold a very relaxing quality. The individual songs, without exception, seem to last exorbitantly long, enough to lull you into an unwanted daze. Though, while the length can be a bit daunting, the overall tenor of Endless Falls is anything but morbid or haunting. Despite the abundance of more minimalist passages, loscil makes
Endless Falls seem very natural. This being true even if it is seemingly devoid of emotion. During the addition of a spoken-word section in “The Making of Grief Point” (a la Destroyer’s Dan Bejar), loscil remains relatively neutral towards anything human. The result is an entirely natural experience that refuses to exhibit an ounce of humanity. This takes us back to the over-arching theme that is ever-present on
Endless Falls... the raindrops, the water. I find it uncanny that I have such interest in music so devoid, so empty, but
Endless Falls serves as the perfect foil to the emotional and the passionate, the sugary and the sweet; it provides us with the pureness of H2O to cleanse our palate.
