Loss

Loss is the long-awaited and anticipated follow-up to Marcus Fischer’s acclaimed Monocoastal (12k1063, 2010). Fischer created Loss over several years, finding inspiration to complete it during his time at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida, in early 2017. The album is a particularly emotional work as Fischer explored what loss means to him and how to cope with the permanence of absence. The result is decisively somber and perhaps one of the darkest, most emotional albums in the 12k catalog. Fischer manifested the concepts of loss in his compositions through the use of generation loss from reel-to-reel tape, re-recording sounds through various speakers in physical spaces, layering, and the use of sounds that have been physically displaced from their source. Conceptually, he listened inside the degradation of sound, pulling out chance moments of beauty and hope amid the rubble. While Loss has a bleak and lonely tone, the music is characteristic of Marcus Fischer with fragile tape loops on the edge of falling apart, distant haunting melodies and a physicality that grounds the album’s human spirit.