… where smoke obscures the horizon, and beauty emerges within…
I’ve always been fascinated with time. It flows toward increasing entropy, causing the inevitable destruction along its way. But this obliteration is not the end. It is part of an evolution, a renewal, a necessary unraveling to make space for something new. I have explored the topic of destruction as creation in depth, most recently in my review of Ben Chatwin‘s Verdigris. And here we are again. There’s something profoundly unsettling about witnessing beauty amidst catastrophe. On Lake Fire, Scott Morgan‘s first solo loscil album in four years, the Vancouver-based composer confronts this paradox head-on, creating his most emotionally complex work. Here is music that captures the sensation of “celebrating life while the world burns” (literally and metaphorically), emerging as a meditation on our increasingly precarious relationship with the natural world. Originally conceived as a suite for electronics and ensemble, the project underwent its own cycle of destruction and rebirth. Most compositions were abandoned, save for just one. The remaining tracks were reshaped and reimagined. The result is a phoenix, “an album burnt to the ground only to be reassembled out of its cinders“, built out of the remnants of the renounced to create something new, and inevitably beautiful.
There is some background to this conceptual framework, which was inspired by a road trip through British Columbia’s mountains during Morgan’s personal half-century milestone. Surrounded by wildfires and dense smoke, he experienced the strange irony that forest fires are often named after regional lakes — a linguistic contradiction that speaks to our complex relationship with environmental destruction. From the opening “Arrhythmia,” with its subtle rhythmic pulse and smoky textures, Lake Fire establishes an atmosphere of graceful tension. In the signature loscil style, the music builds layer upon layer, moving, breathing, throbbing, trembling, creating a familiar ambience, this time transported to higher elevations. The dynamic range is always impressive. Morgan tends to carefully fold the textures within their respective frequencies, where sounds shine like sunrays through the columns of the smoke. Sparkles of sinister and unsettling atmospheres are put out by the elegance of shimmering sounds, fragile and delicate, meditative and serene.
Less than a month after one of the most violent fire events in the history of the continent, new shoots had burst through the scorched hardpan, nourished by the still-vital roots of those flayed and blackened trees.
–John Vaillant, Fire Weather
While others [including myself] seem to want to reinvent their sound, Morgan continues to evolve the best elements of his own. As a result, his music becomes an ongoing evolution, even if there is some destruction along the way. On Lake Fire, this evolution reaches a new peak. The production showcases an advanced approach as the album ebbs and flows between quintessential loscil passages and striking new elements of deep-listening. Lake Fire stands as Morgan’s most ambitious work to date, demonstrating his ability to channel environmental and existential anxiety into music of profound beauty. Like the wildfires that inspired it, the album reveals how destruction and creation exist in constant dialogue — a truth that feels increasingly urgent in our current moment. A much-needed respite from all of this, indeed.
