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The opening eight minutes of LINES+, loscil’s installation for Sound Space—the spatial sound music festival presented by Lobe Studios and New Forms Festival at Performance Works across the next week—is slow-moving, textural, and intended for deep-listening. It’s from a portion of his 2020 EP, Faults, Coasts, Lines, on which he took field recordings in Tofino and Ucluelet in a mediation on the Pacific. The drone-based sounds inform the rest of the nearly 45-minute set, which also includes new and complementing pieces that allows for a continuous flow that rises, falls, and changes direction dynamically. Any rhythm or melody has been stretched right out, except for where the water comes in, drizzling like a gentle storm. 

loscil—the moniker of Vancouver-based artist and composer Scott Morgan—wanted to create the feeling of entering a world of sound that is warm, safe, and allows for some respite. 

“I’ve always felt that instrumental music—and, certainly, music that slows down tempo and takes you out of the very fast-paced world that we're in—can be a kind of gift to people to offer that space,” Morgan tells the Straight. “And for me, as a creator, too, it is a space to go and disappear into.” 

Morgan has been a prolific sound artist for over 20 years, releasing his debut album, Triple Point, in 2001 on the iconic experimental Chicago imprint Kranky. His work as loscil—the name inspired by a function in computer music language Csound (“Looping oscillator was what it stood for, and I thought, well, that pretty much sums up what electronic music is!”)—began in the late ‘90s, shortly after he graduated from Simon Fraser University. Morgan co-formed a multimedia collective, the Multiplex Grand, which curated regular experimental audio-visual events at an underground Gastown cinema, the Blinding Light!! 

The West Coast, particularly the mountains and ocean, is a recurring theme in his work. “It’s an inevitable part of me, and it always seems to come back in my practice somehow,” Morgan says. 

Take 2004’s First Narrows, for example, titled after the mouth of the Burrard Inlet that the Lions Gate Bridge stands over. Processing computer-generated sounds with live improvisations of instruments like the cello, Morgan creates an intricate and expansive sonic atmosphere that seems to breathe. 

He enjoys working mostly with samples, preferring recorded sounds to synthesized sounds. “I find that organic sounds have a kind of richness about them and you can shape them in so many different ways,” he says. 

Morgan’s next project, Colours of Air, a collaboration with Australian composer Lawrence English out in February, also explores organic sounds: this time, with a century-old pipe organ that suggests sonic colour by way of the shapes of air moving through the instrument.  

For LINES+, Morgan wanted to experiment with 4DSOUND technology, the hardware and software that powers the various experiences and environments at Sound Space. It uses 40 speakers assembled from floor to ceiling, all pointing  towards the centre of the room.

“I think it really highlights the immersive quality of the audio,” he explains. “It's quite different than two stereo speakers pointing at you from a stage, where the sound is very one-directional. I mean, we're so used to that and that's how most venues are set up. But I think this creates an environment which is more in tune with a kind of internalized listening, such as headphone listening.” 

Morgan fell in love with music as a teenager growing up on Vancouver Island. He was into the Clash and the Velvet Underground. At 13, his uncle gave him his first guitar. Morgan started playing in punk bands and, later, after moving to Vancouver, joined his friend Dan Bejar’s experimental alternative outfit, Destroyer, as its drummer. It was during Morgan’s time at SFU, though, when he discovered an entirely new world of electroacoustic music that changed his life. 

Through sound ecologist Hildegard Westerkamp—a professor at SFU’s School of Communications—Morgan was introduced to the idea of soundscape ecology and listening to sounds in a natural environment. It redefined his understanding of what music is, what its role can be, and how it connects to our physiology, as well as the natural world around us. He began studying under Barry Truax, a pioneer of granular synthesis, which layers samples at different speeds, volumes, and frequencies. Truax made a profound and enduring impact on Morgan.

“Barry was huge for me in my life,” Morgan emphasizes. “I learned so much from him. [Granular synthesis] is still used quite often in electronic music today and I'm using it in my set [at Sound Space]. 4DSOUND has granular synthesis built in. His legacy is everywhere. I can't really underscore it enough.” 

Morgan laughs as he remembers a serendipitous thing that happened a few years ago at a show in Milan. A woman approached him after his set and insisted he needed to meet someone. “She pulls me aside and takes me over to meet Barry Truax. He was there on a speaking engagement at the university next door, and they had convinced him to go see this concert from some, you know, Canadian. It turns out I was his student. It was really an awesome moment. We took a photo.” 

Sound Space will be another full-circle moment for Morgan, as Westerkamp is also featured on the festival lineup. Morgan has long been considered a luminary in his field, but as he stands among the figures who influenced his music, it’s impossible not to think about the ways in which his own work will impact the next generation, what it will offer them, and the new pathways it may carve. 

For his part, though, Morgan just hopes that those who experience LINES+ are able to truly get lost in the sound. 

“I think that's kind of the objective, is that you give someone that ability to lose themselves,” he says. “It takes a bit of an effort, as a listener, to reach that. It's almost like meditation...And I don't meditate that often, but I've reached that point of deep concentration and of being swept away by the sound where you feel really like you've gone somewhere, on some kind of journey. And I hope people get that out of it.” 

Lobe Studios and New Forms Festival present Sound Space from December 14 to 18 at Performance Works. loscil’s installation, LINES+, takes place on December 16.