Lia Kohl - Voting Line, Downtown Chicago (Dauw) [Ambient / Field Recordings]

The Slow Music Movement
5 days ago
2 min read

The cover art for Lia Kohl's Various Small Whistles and a Song album, showing busts on display behind a large curved window, set against a concrete wall. Black and white image, with a calm, architectural mood.

Lia Kohl is an open minded cellist, composer and multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, who resides somewhere in noise celebrating, post ambient, neoclassical realms. Her releases over the last five years have been critically well received, not to mention recognised by dint of collaborative requests from all the right names - Makaya McCraven, Circuit des Yeux, Steve Gunn, claire rousay and Steve Hauschildt, amongst others. Oddly though, she is taking time to seep into the global consciousness, perhaps due to the experimental nature of her works, although there is certainly an accessibility and nothing to be scared of in her boundary probing releases.

Lia Kohl in a white sweater holds a lit match, set against a dark background, creating a focused and contemplative mood.

A new album of sorts is on the horizon, this time via the ever respectable Dauw label operating out of Belgium, and "Voting Line, Downtown Chicago" is the latest single to tease the forthcoming release, Various Small Whistles and a Song. The album is inspired by Ed Ruscha's photo book and "wondrous celebration of ordinariness", Various Small Fires and Milk, and takes the form of sixteen one minute soundscapes. This particular single sees three of them collected together - "Voting Line, Downtown Chicago", "Walking Home, Los Angeles" and "Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, Illinois".

Chicago offers up what sounds like echoing voices from a large hall drifting up from below whilst someone, a cleaner perhaps, whistles whilst they work on the balcony overlooking the scene, as the tinkling of a piano floats under rather than over the ambient noise. Next up the ubiquitous Patrick Shiroishi sends a sonic postcard from the glitzy yet unforgiving streets of Los Angeles, Kohl infusing the sound of traffic and (presumably) Shiroishi whistling as he approaches then enters his home or studio, with some playful bubbling synths. Finally it's off to a tallgrass prairie apparently, although the blades seem to be glitching as layered, reverberating whistles permeate what sounds like the sound of an overhead jet powered synthesizer.

All the six snippets released so far raise more questions than they answer; seek joy in mundanity; encourage you to pay more attention to life's ambient soundtrack as you go about your business and straddle some sort of real and imaginary fence that is rarely sat on, but probably should be. I'm looking forward to sinking into the full collection next week when it's released.