I decided to treat my process like gathering tiny beach rocks -- nothing stands on its own initially but after a few months you find yourself with a collection,” says Chicago cellist, composer, and improviser Lia Kohl. She’s talking about beginning work on her album Too Small To Be A Plain, which began as experiments in creating small bits of music every day. For years, Kohl has worked in collaboration with artists, ensembles, and bands, either in projects of her own or lending her skill to others. Recently, though, she’s begun cultivating work in a solo capacity, spurred by the allure of continuous creation. “Every day I would go into my studio and make something,” she explains, “even if it was a one minute synth loop or a tiny cello improvisation.” The result is a surreal, moody assemblage incorporating cello, synthesizer, field recordings, and radio, a testament to both patient, layered building and tender attention to the people, instruments, and technology around us.
Part of Kohl’s process in making Too Small To Be A Plain is about being open to serendipity. Despite the collection’s apparent compositional tidiness, most of the sonic components are improvised. Oftentimes the artist will perform several spontaneous takes with similar ethos and then layer them on top of each other. The culmination is often unexpected - see the third and longest composition on the album, “Moon Bean,” in which layers of woozy, sighing cello subtly metamorphose over organ-like drones -- its dream-like quality mirroring the hazy playfulness of light waltzing across a ceiling. “I’m often shocked at the way things interact,” she admits, “That my sense of time stays the same over several takes -- it often sounds like I'm intentionally playing with a previous take but I’m not.” Kohl pairs this openness with an acute compositional impulse, often taking months to curate and arrange her improvisations, an unusual but effective combination of intuition and perfectionism.
Part of Kohl’s process in making Too Small To Be A Plain is about being open to serendipity. Despite the collection’s apparent compositional tidiness, most of the sonic components are improvised. Oftentimes the artist will perform several spontaneous takes with similar ethos and then layer them on top of each other. The culmination is often unexpected - see the third and longest composition on the album, “Moon Bean,” in which layers of woozy, sighing cello subtly metamorphose over organ-like drones -- its dream-like quality mirroring the hazy playfulness of light waltzing across a ceiling. “I’m often shocked at the way things interact,” she admits, “That my sense of time stays the same over several takes -- it often sounds like I'm intentionally playing with a previous take but I’m not.” Kohl pairs this openness with an acute compositional impulse, often taking months to curate and arrange her improvisations, an unusual but effective combination of intuition and perfectionism.
