Loscil - Clara

Loscil aka Scott Morgan's latest collection is a stunning meditation on light, shadow and decay, based on a single three-minute piece performed by a 22-piece string orchestra in Budapest. The subsequent recording was cut to seven-inch disc, then "scratched and battered to add texture and color", from which all of Clara was sampled, reshaped and sculpted. Despite the limited palette, the compositions create a feeling of infinity, swell and float through luminous depths. Some tracks ooze over narcoleptic metronomes, while others slowly sink into a shimmering shadow play and at times sound like some noir music sphere.

Although Morgan's compositional premise for Clara was quite clear-cut, the resulting work is beautifully opaque and spatial, equal parts fresh and lurking, traced in fine-grained gradients and luminous silences. The album's title comes from the Latin for "bright": a fitting muse for this masterpiece of celestial electric currents and interstellar ether, where "shadows are amplified and bright spots are dimmed."