Lia Kohl seems eager to relinquish at least some of her secrets on Normal Sounds, her third full-length solo effort which follows up on the acclaimed albums The Ceiling Reposes and Too Small to be a Plain. What’s that cicada-like hum which pierces through like a laser her elegantly-bowed arcs of cello across the duration of the record’s opening track? And as that hum grows ever more intense on the heels of a few helically oscillating, synthetic squiggles what is the precise nature of that percussive slosh and sludge which sounds like footsteps, loose shakers or wire-brushed drums?
One need only glance at the tracklist and the song’s title, which is ‘Tennis Court Light, Snow’ and we are furnished with not only the answers but a couple of distinct images: those of tennis court floodlights, season undetermined but without an audible grunt or a yellow tennis ball in sight; and snow boots with their rubberised soles as they trudge through the snowy stuff. What hangs between is a kind of furry or crystalline ellipsis. Have the court lights been turned on in the winter time, and whence walks the figure sheathed in boots of rubber?
Field recordings tend to carry a sense of place, but on Normal Sounds they are unusually transparent and eloquently rendered. In fact Kohl is also engaged in a process of mimicry, as she harmonises the sound of those tennis court floodlights with cello overtones or on ‘Car Horns’ pairs those loud honks with the squawks of Patrick Shiroishi’s saxophone. If the lines between sounds found and made, acoustic and synthetic become blurred, the phrase hardly captures the purity of tone and the consistency of outlook which makes all of these pairings and juxtapositions feel seamless.
Even profound, as the cellist and sound artist Kohl is one of the few musicians around who not only strives but dares to capture the essence of mundanity, without imbuing every moment with either a noncommittal gauziness or an epiphanic thrust. She says that in focusing on otherwise unnoticed or under-documented sounds, she hopes to live more in the moment, engaging in ‘a practice of trying to be more alive’. The conceit and the resulting atmosphere of Normal Sounds reminds me of Thomas Knak’s turn-of-the-century glitch classic Objects for an Ideal Home, though the sound palette here is more organic.
This is the train of thought for Kohl, who has increasingly foregrounded such field recordings in her work ever since her debut album Too Small to be a Plain, where a collection of short improvisations wound together to form lapping waves and light waltzes of languorous and woozy cello, even as she also incorporated midi translations of her pizzicato strings and bursts of radio static, while field recordings in the nature of birdsong and wind chimes served to add an atmospheric affect.
That album arrived in the spring of 2022, but in the couple of years since Kohl emphasised the drones and pops of live radio static on Untitled Radio (futile, fertile) which was created at the ACRE residency in rural Wisconsin for the digital platform for Longform Editions. Meanwhile onĀ her full-length record The Ceiling Reposes she flicked between stations and embraced a few apt moments from an otherwise incongruous blend of weather reports, talk show segments, advertisements and musical interludes which she captured out on Vashon Island in Washington State, curating transitory quivers as she interspersed her bowed strings and these radio missives with snatches of birdsong, gushing waves and layered instrumentation on synthesizers, kazoo, concertina, piano and wind machine.
Variations on a Topography for the Radia network and the international transmission arts organisation Wave Farm on WGXC 90.7 FM was constructed in stratified layers of sound, with each layer containing ‘a recording of a full scan of the AM/FM spectrum from bottom to top and back down again’, reiterating her attempt to define the geographic specificity of the radio. And earlier this summer she shared Movie Candy with the guitarist Daniel Wyche, as a poignant blend of cello and guitar, synthesizers, voice and field recordings saw her dive headlong through the dusty and sometimes clingy ephemera of the cinema.
The instrumental palette is sparser on Normal Sounds, which gives way more than ever before to the mundanity of field recordings while also highlighting a couple of fellow travellers. On the second track ‘Car Alarm, Turn Signals’ it is Ka Baird’s winding and pulsating mesh of flute and electronics which leads us out before a turn signal briefly keeps time and a sublimated car alarm throbs like the climax to a science fiction drama or romantic film, stretching out into space as Kohl begins to pluck away on her cello. Overlayed by the swaying bows of her strings, by the end of the track we find ourselves plonked back in the car seat for some nineties smooth jazz, the drab surrounds offset by the velvety brass of ‘In the Groove’ by the saxophonist Richard Elliot.
The click of seatbelts and some pre-flight chatter introduces ‘Plane’ before the brisk bows and aerated overtones of Kohl’s cello depict a whirl of motion. There is something whimsical and slightly nostalgic about some of the tracks on Normal Sounds. At the height of the action, ‘Plane’ wouldn’t seem too far out of place on the Home Alone soundtrack, but Kohl never stays in one spot for too long, and soon enough we appear to be coming in under a cover of darkness as the airplane announcer advises all passengers to buckle up, turn off all of the requisite electronics and return their seats to an upright position, even as those selfsame passengers seem to have one eye on the luggage compartments and a hasty exit. A warmer tone suffuses the fading moments of the piece as the last passenger picks up their bags and everyone drifts faintly homeward.
A wind begins to rustle at the start of ‘Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren’ but does that accompanying wail emanate from the truck, the siren or the whirling of the tornado itself? A portentous whistle like the boiling of a kettle or perhaps the whirring of a soft serve machine cuts through patient albeit slightly downcast keys and a voice asks ‘Do you want chocolate?’ before the whirligig sound of the ice cream truck puts us on firmer footing. If the more pensive moments of the track might evoke the Coen Brothers surmise A Serious Man, by the close of ‘Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren’ that queasy but promising tune has segued into the distinctive melody from ‘The Happy Wanderer’.
‘Airport Fridge, Self Checkout’ is more obscured, based around the murky hum of an overheated fridge and the staggered bleeps of scanned supermarket items, with some background chatter and mallet percussion thrown in for good measure before the automated checkout, in a bid to ease the encompassing tension and its own air of menace, reminds the purchaser not to forget their receipt and offers a cheery ‘see you again soon’. ‘Car Horns’ makes a symphony out of those horns as Kohl harnesses their percussive qualities for her own ends, before Patrick Shiroishi bursts in on a burnished saxophone which flits between and melds with the dewy headlights and the wafting steam of the evening traffic.
‘Ignition, Sneakers’ is more propulsive, abounding in bird calls and bouncing sines over a kind of scuffled or musty old typewriter percussion. A rumbling swell of noise makes for a riper atmosphere as Kohl drags in downward arcs on her cello, but those bounding sine tones persevere and even gain a certain rotundity and resonance as the initial pottering of the track builds into a more industrial palette of fraying strings and welded sparks. It is only after this noise dissipates that we again discern the sheer materiality of the piece which is just as it says, the insistent beep of a needy automobile whose keys have been left in the ignition.
