Mute Branches
Got this on a bit of a whim off the back of the Quietus review and I can already tell it's going to be a musical highlight of 2023. Fantastic album that drifts between indeterminacy and structure in a really intriguing way
Favorite track: when glass is there, and water,.
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Cassette + Digital Album
Art object cassette designed and hand printed by Sonnenzimmer (Nadine Nakanishi and Nick Butcher) in Chicago. Includes a blue balloon printed with track titles.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Ceiling Reposes
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
$20USDor more
Limited Edition Black Vinyl
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Art object LP designed and hand printed by Sonnenzimmer (Nadine Nakanishi and Nick Butcher) in Chicago. Includes a blue balloon printed with track titles.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Ceiling Reposes
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Curiosity for its own sake: this is at the heart of Lia Kohl’s work, which finds meaning where others might find none. Whether collaborating with some of independent music’s biggest names (Steve Gunn, Whitney, Makaya McCraven), improvising music around the world, or exploring intimacy with multimedia performance art, Kohl builds webs of connections along paths less traveled. The Ceiling Reposes builds upon her solo releases Too Small to be a Plain, on Shinyoko/Artist Pool, and Untitled Radio (futile, fertile), on Longform Editions. Here, Kohl expands her twin practices of layering improvisations to create music and incorporating these layers within found sounds. She took hours of live radio samples recorded primarily on Vashon Island in Washington State, choosing select moments – bits of weather reports, prayers, talk shows, ads, and music – to elaborate on with her own recordings.
The world of radio is ripe with possibility, holding both the mundanity of ads and news with moments of profound beauty or weight. Near the end of track 1, “in a specific room,” a snippet of Bobby Vinton’s “Roses are Red (My Love)” is followed by a voice saying, “we don’t know how much time we have left on this earth”; their juxtaposition forms an oddly touching love song. Later in the album, a twanging banjo and a medieval lute give lively dueling performances, one station away from each other. Kohl’s samples speak to each other in uncanny ways as she deftly weaves between stations, crafting a web of meaning that’s just out of reach. She uses the radio as an instrument, certainly, but also as a way of reaching toward the unknown. There’s an oracular, searching quality to the way she moves through radio stations and invites us to search with her.
While the radio is the point of departure, The Ceiling Reposes is rich with layered instruments – cello, synthesizers, voice, kazoo, piano, drums, bells, wind machine and more. Kohl recorded some instruments in the studio, elaborating on or mimicking the radio or each other. Others she captured outdoors, adding birdsong, rehearsal chatter or the sound of waves to the music. Albums are often made in layers, but Kohl holds these layers up for us to hear clearly, reminding us that every sound – whether radio waves, train horns or the direct output of a synthesizer – is in its own space and time. These layers elide and collide, creating a cohesive picture or blurring into double vision, giving the sense that we are in multiple times and spaces at once.
Kohl invites us to time travel. Collecting sounds from multiple moments – a truck backing up, blaring a persistent, repetitive C, layers perfectly on a man whistling on the radio – she orchestrates a chamber music of layered experiences, like a map of time made of fruit roll-ups. Kohl revels in the coincidences she finds, making one now into many and back into one.
credits
released March 10, 2023
The Ceiling Reposes was recorded between November 2021 and May 2022 on Vashon Island, in Chicago and in New Orleans.
All music created and performed by Lia Kohl
Lia Kohl: live radio, cello, synthesizers, voice, kazoo, concertina, wind machine, piano, drums, bells
Recorded by Lia Kohl on Vashon Island, New Orleans, Chicago,
and by Zach Moore at Not Not Studios
Mixed and Mastered by Matt Mehlan at the Stuudio
Artwork by Sonnenzimmer
Art direction and image generation: Lia Kohl & Sonnenzimmer
Track titles by Elizabeth Metzger
The album title is from "Touch the Air Softly", a poem by William Jay Smith
"or things maybe dropping" contains a field recording of Mars Williams warming up his soprano saxophone, and is dedicated to him in loving memory.
supported by 74 fans who also own “The Ceiling Reposes”
Magic in its purest form. I love Floating Points, I love Pharoah Sanders, I love The London Symphony Orchestra. It's a match made in heaven, and the result is absolutely gorgeous. I have loved this record since its release, and realized I don't own it for some reason. So its time to change that. 9.5/10 honestly could become a 10/10 on an indepth vinyl relisten. angrypizza98
supported by 68 fans who also own “The Ceiling Reposes”
Nothing feels hidden in Kohl's music. Sounds may combine, but their individuality remains, along with their strong sense of purpose. Everything feels as if it was meant to exist together, without the need for cheats. Some of it has an explanation, like the audio-to-midi mixtures on 'Join Me, Everybody'. But some of the ways that this music functions goes beyond any attribution, and it is simply glorious. Alex Tripp
With only processed, layered vocals and one moody, swirling synthesizer, AnnaOtta and La.Fumero build a gorgeous and unique world together. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 27, 2023