Menu

Lawrence English

a2470618657_16

loscil // lawrence english, “Colours Of Air” (Kranky, 2023)

, , ,

This stellar collaboration springs from a conversation that Scott Morgan and Lawrence English once had about especially “rich sources” for electronic music composition. Unsurprisingly, that discussion led to the inspiration behind much of English’s recent solo work: a 19th century pipe organ housed at the Old Museum in his native Brisbane. Colours Of Air is often quite different from English’s drone-inspired solo fare, however, as he and Morgan sifted “the swells and drones of the organ for every shivering shade of radiance” and found “flickering infinities in ancient configurations of wind, brass, stone, and dust.” In less poetic terms, that means that these eight color-themed pieces “reduce and expand” English’s pipe organ recordings into a hallucinatory fantasia enhanced by Morgan’s talents for elegantly textured sound design and submerged, slow-motion dub techno pulses. Obviously, promising-sounding collaborations between electronic music luminaries are a dime a dozen, but this is one of the rare ones that feels like an inspired departure from expected terrain and something greater than the sum of its parts. While I suspect my perception is at least partially colored by the album description and the timeless majesty and religious nature of old pipe organs, the best moments of this album beautifully evoke what I would imagine light filtering through stained glass would sound like if I had been blessed with synesthesia.

The opening “Cyan” is the album’s masterpiece, as it slowly builds from the “suspended animation” feel of a single looping organ chord into a slow-motion loscil-style dub techno piece with a gorgeously warm, alive, and shimmering ball of light at its heart. While the remaining pieces admittedly feel a bit less supernatural and transcendent than that initial statement, “Cyan” is nevertheless an ideal illustration of the “rich source” notion that guides the album: the piece is basically just a few chords and a simple bass pattern, but Morgan and English do one hell of a job at luxuriating in the glimmering details of those chords. That is not the duo’s only trick, however, as the rest of the album features a number of compelling variations on their sacred-sounding minimalist deconstructions. For example, “Aqua” gradually evolves from a seesawing bed of melancholy yet dreamily aquatic-sounding chords into a smeared, Noveller-esque melody that evokes the haze of a comet slowly streaking through the cold night sky over a mountain range.

Elsewhere, the coldly throbbing and futuristic “Magenta” feels plucked from a sci-fi nightmare, as its machine-like and insistent pulse provide the stark backdrop for plunging tones that evoke burning wreckage falling from the sky in extreme slow-motion. It feels like it would be the perfect score to a Lessons In Darkness-style documentary devoted to the smoldering landscapes of ruin and burning metal portrayed in the dystopian future of the Terminator films, so aspiring documentarians should definitely keep that in mind when our artificial intelligence inevitably turns on us and reduces our cities to cinders. “Black” is yet another highlight, as its deceptively straightforward drone foundation acts as the shore for heavy, slow-motion waves of quivering psychotropic magic. I suspect there may be some gems lurking among the remaining four pieces as well, but it will probably take a bit more deep listening before I am attuned enough to their time-stretched wavelength to realize what I have been missing, as it definitely took me a few listens before the sublime sorcery of “Black” fully revealed itself. While those other pieces may be eluding my desire for instant gratification at the moment, the ones that I have connected with thus far easily rival the past glories of either artist. I suspect I have only begun to penetrate the full depths of this immersive, inventive, and emotionally rich union.

listen here

a2395614970_16

Lawrence English, “Cruel Optimism” (Room40, 2017)

,

In recent years, my expectations of what a new Lawrence English album might sound like have gotten increasingly blurry, as he has an admirable tendency to explore new concepts and collaborations that lure him far away from the classic drone fare that initially put him on the map. Cruel Optimism is arguably a return to English’s more straightforward drone work in some ways, but it feels like quite a corroded and scorched return, which certainly fits nicely with English’s somewhat dark conceptual inspiration. Needless to say, it is a characteristically fine album and quite a distinctive one as well, evoking a kind of bleak orchestral grandeur flourishing amidst crumbling ruin and decay.

Cruel Optimism takes its title and some of its inspiration from Lauren Berlant’s book of the same name. I am sure Berlant’s book would be quite hard to succinctly summarize even if I had read it, but English was most fascinated by how she addressed trauma, observing “it was a jumping off point from which a plague of unsettling impressions of suffering, intolerance, and ignorance could be unpacked and utilized as fuel over and above pointless frustration.” 

Wresting beauty from a plague of unsettling impressions is not an easy task, but English had plenty of help from a slew of talented collaborators including Mats Gustafsson, members of Swans, Chris Abrahams from The Necks, and a full choir (Australian Voices). On paper, a drone artist teaming up with (almost) a couple dozen vocalists, trombonists, pianists, and saxophonists sounds like a perfect recipe for a wildly misguided and overblown mess, but most of the contributors are only present in simmering and understated form. 

In fact, it almost sounds like English made two albums: the first was a sweepingly dramatic quasi-symphonic epic, then the second (and final) one was an obliteration of that material. Aside from the uncharacteristic brass and choral textures, Cruel Optimism sounds a lot like an unusually dense album that English could have made on his own (given enough time…and maybe a trombone).

That said, however, density is definitely one of Cruel Optimism‘s defining characteristics, as is its stark and foreboding mood. There are occasionally lulls and crescendos, but Cruel Optimism mostly feels like a sky choked with slow-moving black clouds with only the merest flickers of sunlight breaking through. Or perhaps like a creeping flow of unpredictably bubbling magma. The latter image is most strongly evoked by the album’s glorious centerpiece, “Object of Projection,” where an elegiac procession of lush synth chords is enhanced by surging washes of hiss. 

Another stand-out is the brief “Exquisite Human Microphone,” as Gustafsson’s subdued and throbbing sax drones unexpectedly erupt into erratic brass swells amidst a drifting haze of strangled howls and processed piano textures. I was also quite fond of “Somnambulist,” which builds to a wonderful crescendo of roiling hiss and buried guitar shimmer. 

For the most part, however, Cruel Optimism feels like ten variations upon a single dark theme rather than a suite of individual songs. Unsurprisingly, that aesthetic choice has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, the whole album blurs together into a somewhat monochromatic and glacially unfolding reverie without much in the way of dynamic variation or melody. On the other, Cruel Optimism feels achieves a kind of bleakly monolithic majesty. Now that I say that, it belatedly occurs to me that this album is kind of Lawrence English’s own Monoliths and Dimensions.

As striking as it is, trying to assess how Cruel Optimism fits into English’s oeuvre is a somewhat tricky endeavor, as I do not think it is quite on the same level as his best work if judged by strictly by “entertainment” considerations such as beauty, listenability, or immersiveness. Viewed as an artistic statement, however, Cruel Optimism is quite a bold and focused move forward. 

For one, it is both distinctive and devoid of any obvious outside (musical) influences: it does not sound like a traditional Lawrence English album and it certainly does not resemble anyone else either. English could easily keep revisiting familiar territory and probably churn out a wonderful, yet straightforward and unchallenging, drone album every year. Instead, each of his recent albums has felt like an artist restlessly stretching and pushing the boundaries of his aesthetic and some of those experiments work better than others. 

To English’s credit, Cruel Optimism leaves his comfort zone much farther behind than most of his other recent albums. Lawrence English is clearly not a man who is content to repeat himself at this stage in his career. That said, he is also not a chameleon: all of the expected Lawrence English tropes are still in place here, but they are presented in almost unrecognizably scorched and blackened form. That might not be the easiest and most satisfying way to experience English’s vision, but this is not the easiest and most satisfying time to be alive and Cruel Optimism is a compelling honest and artistic refraction of that reality.

Listen here.

a3199436616_16

Lawrence English, “Wilderness of Mirrors” (Room40, 2014)

,

I hate to use the phrase “return to form” to describe this album, as I have enjoyed most of Lawrence English’s divergent recent efforts quite a bit, but Wilderness of Mirrors reminds me favorably of the darker, heavier albums that brought him to my attention in the first place (such as Kiri No Oto and It’s Up To Us To Live). Characteristically, English also offers an intriguing concept on Wilderness, but the primary appeal is simply that it is wonderful to finally get another substantial offering of what he does best. That said, this effort does offer a few surprises, as Lawrence has picked up a few neat tricks from folks like My Bloody Valentine and Swans since he last surfaced in heavy drone mode.

Wilderness of Mirrors borrows its name from a line from T.S. Eliot’s darkly ruminative “Gerontion,” but in sort of a second-generation way, as the phrase was re-purposed during the Cold War to describe campaigns of deliberate misinformation. That second use is what inspired the structural aesthetic of Wilderness, as each piece features a buried motif that has been fed back into itself to the point of unrecognizability. 

That said, neither those endlessly mirrored loops nor English’s increased appreciation for the power of volume and density were particularly conspicuous or revelatory parts of my actual listening experience, except in the case of the crushing and ominous “Another Body,” which sounds like the slow-motion collapse of a mountain or a city. For the first few minutes, I could not believe that such seismic ruin could be coming from a Lawrence English album, but “Body” gradually becomes more traditionally English-esque as it progresses and the rest of the album does not depart all that much from Lawrence’s previous work (though it is noticeably scarier in places than I would have expected).

Of course, I still enjoy that traditional “Lawrence English aesthetic” very much, so I was not disappointed that the remaining surprises were comparatively minor. That is not to say that English has not evolved noticeably—rather, bluntness just is not a Lawrence English trait, so the enhanced sizzle and frequency-saturation of pieces like the wonderful “Forgiving Noir” are probably only apparent to those of us actively looking to notice such things.

In most other respects, Wilderness is simply an enjoyable return to the rich vein of previous excellent Lawrence English drone albums, offering up a heavy, slightly distorted thrum that vibrantly pans and undulates and never sinks into dull stasis or straightforwardness. To his everlasting credit, English is never content with simple oceanic, immersive density: there is always something deeper happening melodically, harmonically, or texturally. 

A prime example of English’s mastery in this regard is the opening “The Liquid Casket,” which evolves from ominous feedback to a restrained shoegaze roar that gradually fills with uneasy dissonances and harsher metallic sounds, evoking a pile of rusty knives being dragged by a slow-motion tidal wave of molasses (or especially viscous blood).

If Wilderness has a flaw, it is that it moves a long a bit too quickly for my taste, as there are several 2- or 3-minute pieces amidst these 8 songs. For example, the title piece feels like just a brief extension of “The Liquid Casket” and the following “Guillotines and Kingmakers” is a mere 2-minute interlude of dark ambient atmosphere. While the segue between “Guillotines” and “Another Body” is admittedly quite a deft and striking one, it still basically feels like Wilderness goes right from the opening piece to already being halfway over, barreling through two transitional pieces before I even realize that they are happening.

While I do think English did a fine job with the sequencing, I also feel like Wilderness is basically just three (or so) great, fully formed pieces and a whole lot of transitional, incidental music and falling action. As a result, Wilderness feels more like a stretched EP than a truly solid album, so it does not quite stand with English’s best work as a whole. When taken on a song-by-song basis, however, Mirrors boasts some of the most powerful and distinctive individual pieces of Lawrence’s career.

Listen here.