loscil and vladislav delay

Hi all

Loscil and Vladislav Delay played Seattle on Thursday, May 24. There were two other acts on the bill - Phonographers Union and Son of Rose - but I missed them, too bad so sad, because they came on so blinkin early - Phonographers at 8 - I had just begun wetting my beak.

Loscil (pronounced law - sill, I think) aka Scott Morgan, played from his two latest records First Narrows and Plume (both on Kranky Records) at the Broadway Performance Hall. He was accompanied by a live human Vibraphonist whose name is unknown to me. They made the rich, rounded, sky-and-ocean inflected, melodic, transportative music that listeners have come to expect from Loscil. For those who are unacquainted, and totally simplifying things just for the sake of convenience, I'd say that Loscil's music is colored by tinges and subtle gestures toward the pulsing, Teutonic-style space music of early Tangerine Dream, the more "universally-understood-as-ambient" mood and place evocation of Brian Eno circa side 2 of Another Green World, and On Land, with skillfully-manipulated, understated and elegant touches of microscopic glitchy fractures and textures along the lines of the best of Alva Noto and Oval. Loscil makes nearly perfect ambient that is a very tasty and finely-realized synthesis of some of the most interesting things that have gone before and some of the more interesting things going on now. By turns cozily snuggled into a midrange vibraphone-enhanced burbling groove, with little excess or jarring frequencies, dynamics, or timbre, or drifting steadily along in a clickity/poppity fuzz-filled channel under a microfiber gauze - it all adds up to music that sounds like no one but Loscil. (Not easy to do, these days!)

On the surface the music sounds simple; but that's deceptive - like a beautifully executed card trick, it appears easier than it really is because it flows so effortlessly. With a closer listen I notice that Loscil's music is very complexly layered - there's a lot going on to create what pops out most, and more underneath besides. Aside from this live performance, which sounded great, I can say that Loscil makes excellent headphone music. What's more, his music has the disturbing ability to amplify or reflect in you what feelings you bring to it in the manner of a slightly distorted mirror. For example; if you're sad, it'll make you more sad, but in an unexpected way, altered and directed by the music. You will be surprised to discover unsuspected elements and nuances within your response to the music. Those of us with mental illnesses must use this music very carefully - taking the same care as when one responsibly medicates with any psychoactive substance. This is not party music and that's a Good Thing. This is quiet and personal music that can cause deep introspection and contemplation - with it you can easily access your built-in Soul-Searching function. It has a communicable palette that seems to range from slight and unfocussed apprehension, to a muted kind of absurd joy, to a blissfully carefree contentment in the mysterious (in the minor sense) and ineffable (in the major sense). I can say this too about Loscil's music: I have seen it act an as effective calming agent for people with A.D.D., and Asperger's disorders in a manner similar to results noted using Eno's Discreet Music. I don't know why that is, it just is! Because of those effects Loscil's music can be used as less toxic substitute for religion or magic!

Contemplating the juxtaposition between the beautiful ink-in-oil projections and the open, honest-looking Western European/Western Canadian features of the Lo' one and his contrasting, contrapuntal but complementary and mellow henchman (whose name I still can't discover), while being gradually immersed in deep warm sounds, I found myself closing my eyes and almost asleep (but not quite!) I was as thoroughly satisfied with the setting and the sonics as though I'd been opiated after one of those multi-course French meals. I was entranced actually, drugged and totally carried away with the music to another place, a dream far from the stifling hall, far from my pedestrian cares and concerns, to a better place - Vancouver B.C. perhaps? I imagined being a passenger aboard a ship - maybe a tugboat - in the a harbor passing under a great sweeping bridge, leaving, heading out into the rhythmic swells of the Ocean, approaching a shimmering wall of fog...

Vladislav Delay (Sasu Ripatti, from Finland, aka Luomo) played last. Vladislav's live set is tough to describe. It's quite different than his recordings. I would not call it "ambient", and I can't call it "IDM" either. Although it could be the soundtrack to accompany criminal activity in Rio de Janiero or traffic in Rome. His music is difficult, challenging - daring even. Indirect, full of half-made and cryptic references, and all of it through-and-through slathered and spiked in heavy dub. Most times the sound was extremely dense, but sometimes strikingly simple - brought up in a sudden startling halt to a single note or noise. Bad Vlad's dynamics were incredible, ranging as it were almost literally "from a whisper to a scream" within the space of seconds. Some music sounds to be composed of all round vowels, and some sounds mostly consonant, and most music incorporates both. On the other hand, Vlad the Delayer's music sounds to me as though it is all punctuation. It is as different from much other music as the !tchkung language in the Kalahari of Africa which is composed of clicks and whistles is different from French.

I have no idea what record he was playing from, or if his set was improvised. His 45 minute (approx) piece(s?) at this show made me think of a scenario in which the dub pioneers King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry carry huge silver platters laden with crystal glasses and covered dishes through small carpeted hallways and across huge open plazas - echo laden clinking and clanking, the occasional bong, splintered rhythms - choked off sounds and ridiculously huge sounds that scream off into inaudible. Here they come, first one, then the other. L Scratch P is too tall and stretched to fit easily anywhere and King T is of course, too heavy and wide. Then they would get to the stairs - which elbows and glares from Wolf Eyes and Pan Sonic compelled them to go down - of course they would fall - but exactly when and how far? And how disastrously? Gigantic beats, seemingly barely rhythmic, or detached parts of bigger but fractured rhythms, blasted through extreme fragmented and kaleidoscopic soundscapes of wild variety. The length of the fall and the degree of severity varied each time - Vlad the D would pull it back together somehow, cleverly obvious at times, other times subtle, invisible. At the bottom King Tubby and L Scratch P would pick it all up again and continue on until they got to another staircase...

Its always fun to watch and to hear interpretations of the juxtaposition of order and chaos - the finely-crafted but anarchic cartoons of Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, etc. and the impeccably-timed wild abandon of the comedy of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers are good examples that come to mind. Hearing Vlad the D, I was reminded of those contrasts and the entertaining tension therein. That tension is also what I like best in the music of Hal Willner, Carl Stalling, and Spike Jones - IMHO three of the best composers in the world of all time. Highly-trained and skilled musicians making complex music that reflects the idiotical in Bedlam. What's called a "method to the madness"

Vlad the Delayer overtly makes music perfectly suited to frenetic cartoons and madcap comedy. But its not quite as simple as that. Vlad's music really reflects and reinforces the confusing and discordant events in the manifest world around us. In that sense, he makes true ambient music for an eclectic, post-modern tabula rasa dominated by continuous, rapid and uncontrollable change and the post-traumatic stress and attention deficit disorders that result. His set left me with the feeling that I had heard every possible type of musical characteristic - the entire dynamic range and timbre and tone played out in almost every style of music known - a sprawling sound collage of sorts with elements of most of music's vocabulary embedded somewhere in it, if only fleetingly. What structure there was in his set was too fleeting to latch onto for relief, or too big to understand. My head was spinning.

On the other hand, Loscil makes music that uses the elements of chaos in small, subtle amounts only insofar as to reinforce a piece's order and balance, and suggest only the milder and perhaps more noble emotions by inferrence. His music only hints at the feral outside circling the gates, and it does so with restraint and control - this serves to further highlight the pervasive geniality, humanity, even-tempered reasonableness, well-engineered and elegant structure of his pieces.

It was a highly enlightening musical evening brought by two of the world's best electronic composers, and an excellent case-in-point of two ways to look at the world through music. One is the way of "Girls Gone Wild" - more fun, and arguably, more realistic; the other is the romantic, artful, beguiling way of "a well-turned ankle".