this is album is just cool as hell. it's a little gloomy and portending but that's perfect because i live in seattle and it's "winter" here which means grayness, fog, drizzle yet under all that a pulsing urban rhythm driven by a subtle and sustained caffeination that keeps you just awake enough to help you realize you are on to something real and sublime.

Listen, I love ambient melancholy rock but what's the point if it all sounds the same. Where's the art if the whole album carries the exact same drone drab beat as the next with slight variations to attempt to trick you into thinking it's something new? If I create the exact same art piece 10 times and add a few objects strewn about within it, are you going to still come back and buy my art? Really ... cause if you're interested, I'd be happy to take your money!

My favavorite part of ambient is the mood and interesting sounds artists make while creating melody. The thing I hate is the silly electronica beats. Thankfully plume does not have any of that nonsense. Beautiful drifting swells and flows. A melodic swarm of resonating hums. It feels so nice.

Stellar from beginning to end. Beautiful minimal electronic ambient music. Steam and Zephyr are highlights. A must own.

I discovered Loscil through Pandora radio, and was hooked immediately. This is the only album I own as of yet, but I've heard tracks from all of his albums, and they are incredible. Each has its own feel, yet they all have a cohesive and distinct style. This record sounds like the cover, like a stark, steamy, smoky factory - but with a haunting, and relaxing beauty to it. There are several tracks on here that are among the best ambient I've heard, like "Bellow", "Steam", and "Chinook". This is a wonderful record, and I look forward to purchasing more of Loscil's releases.

Vancouver based Scott Morgan is a sound director within the video game industry. But that's his daytime job, and his contemporary ambient soundscapes constructed with looping oscillators (a similar function in Csound computer language is compounded to Loscil) don't have much in common with game music. In contrast, Morgan's fourth album Plume, on Chicago's Kranky Records, is a relaxing, atmospheric, and hypnotic trip unfolding layers of sound complimented by ethereal percussion, gentle xylophone taps, and strums of elbow guitar. For Morgan, the creation of music starts "with a harmonic root from which sounds [are] processed into a loose structure over which the live players could improvise". Each track within the album grows, transitions, and gradually develops into a piece bestowing a specific state of mind or a flashback to a concrete memory. A quote from Morgan's elaboration on a piece capturing the growth of family, if you will: " 'Charlie' was composed after seeing/hearing my daughter Sadie through ultrasound while she was still in the womb. The track was also partly composed as a womb-like sound experience for her to sleep to after she was born, hence the heart beats..." Recommended if you like his ambient label mates, Stars of the Lid, or other excellent artists in the modern classical genre, like Helios, Deaf Center, and Xela. Favorite track: Bellows.

I hate to give this 3 stars, but after starting with First Narrows, I found this album to be a slight letdown. Loscil goes in a different direction with this piece, but sticking with the beautiful haunting ambient foundation. This album is noticeably devoid of beats or drum machines. When this album starts out, it is incredibly beautiful, and I was very excited about the direction it was headed. But by the end of the album, and after several listens, I was disappointed in that I felt too many of the tracks merged together and the sound did not deviate a great deal from track to track. Don't get me wrong, this is quality music, but I do not think it is as good as First Narrows, which I started with. I think it is worth the $10, but I'd really recommend looking into some of Loscil's older works.

I found loscil just about 10 minutes ago and this has captured my attention I'm 13 years old and this album is one of the most relaxed and greatest albums ever made

Using minimalist elements, Loscil creates a multi-layered experience that is amazingly complex and captivating. On the surface, the elements are relatively simple - a pulsing bass pattern, a drone layered on top of that, with rhytmic and melodic elements added to those. Sometimes, percussive elements in the form of clicks, pops or similar sounds weave in and out of the mix. Any changes in these are generally very subtle and occur slowly, reequiring careful listening to hear them. The net result is an album of amazing depth and complexity, and it is part of the musicianship of Loscil to achieve this. Sometimes very alien, sometimes very remote, sometimes very personal, it is incredible music. Loscil's album generally have some overarching theme, but it is hard to tell what it is here. From the cover art and the titles of tracks such as Steam, it would seem to be some sort of factory, and indeed those summon for me the image of an alien factory devoted to some unknown task. But then there are winds, such as Chinook, a psychological test (Rorschach) and Charlie. I have no idea what Motoc refers to, but it doesn't matter. It's a great cut to open with. One of the marks of good music is that you discover something new every time you listen. For me, Plume clearly achieves that distinction.

I discovered Loscil through iTunes and what a discovery. Fans of Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Harold Budd, and Boards of Canada will find Loscil creates incredibly layered, seductive (and haunting) ambient music with a pulse. I've since bought everything the band (man?) has produced and "Plume" (seemingly named after winds?) immediately rose to the top, with their previous album "First Narrows" a close second. I've put tracks from this album into every mix I've made since its release and friends are constantly asking me: Who IS this band?