Since the late 1990s, Loscil—Vancouver’s Scott Morgan—has amassed a sprawling discography numbering dozens of ambient releases. Brisbane, Australia sound artist and Room40 founder Lawrence English is an equally prolific creator of musique concrete that typically falls on the fringes of ambient. On Colours of Air, their first album together, Morgan’s naturalistic nuance coaxes out English’s elusive ethereal side, often glimpsed in passing but rarely explored at length. Across 49 minutes of muted soundscapes peppered with warm energy, the two musicians use manipulated organ tones to patient, meditative ends.
A conversation about the nature of “rich sources” inspired Colours of Air and its verdant palette, which is unlike the jagged, minimalist toolkit that defines much of English’s work. The two recorded material on a 132-year-old pipe organ housed at the Old Museum in English’s hometown and then warped those recordings into these cuts, all named for a different color. “Yellow” commands patience, built around chirruping melodies peeking out from behind vast chords that dominate the mid frequencies. Opener “Cyan” is metallic yet cozy, thanks to airy, filtered leads that ride atop an elongated drone. “Black” is hypnotic and shimmering, less sinister than the darkness that its name implies. While the Colours of Air tracklist evokes a diverse range of hues, all the pieces seem to rest on individual shelves in the same soft-lit, jasmine-scented room.
English’s distorted experimentation is fairly subdued on Colours of Air, which favors the overcast trappings of the classic Loscil sound. But the Australian musician makes his penchant for graininess and intensity felt in intriguingly offbeat ways. Closer “Magenta” is brooding and cinematic, centered on bassy tremolo pulses and a descending lead that wouldn’t sound out of place on a tasteful club banger. “Pink” ebbs and flows, contrasting challenging, silvery swells with balmy moments of serenity.
This isn’t English’s first foray into the pipe organ; he’s toyed with its textures on a few albums. Most recently, on 2021’s Observation of Breath, he used the same instrument heard here to create floor-shaking noise. But more than any other installment in English’s unpredictable body of work, Colours of Air plays like a spiritual companion to his 2018 record Selva Oscura, with William Basinski. Both albums put English’s austere signature to an uncharacteristically harmonious backdrop.
In recent years, the organ has become a tool for modernist soundscaping in the hands of artists like Kali Malone and Sarah Davachi. Loscil and English’s album is in a similar vein, and it reinforces how rewarding it can be to hear centuries-old tones and timbres in new contexts. “That which lies beyond our comprehension—a bird call, an animal whimpering, a mountain whispering as wind licks its edges—this is the stuff that has fuelled our mythologies,” English once said, contemplating the link between sound, perception, and meaning. On Colours of Air, the off-putting noisiness of his formula is cast in the gentle glow of Morgan’s hospitable quietude. The album is lush and oblique—an approachable standout in two daunting catalogs.
