Whitney Johnson and Lia Kohl will release their collaborative album, For Translucence, on March 28 via Drag City. It’s a record of unspoken dialogues, conversations among instruments: the nonverbal soliloquies traded between Kohl’s cello and Johnson’s viola. But the two musicians aren’t limiting these songs to the reverberations of their chosen instruments – they’ve filled the tracks with layers of acoustic strings, synthesizers, radio and sine waves, and field recordings. The interplay between these sounds is at the heart of the album, a beautifully realized confluence of memory and experience.
Their first single, an excerpt of “73/74”, is breathtaking in its fluidity, a discussion between creativities that speaks to their shared affection for liminal spaces. Strings warm to their environment, shiver and spread out in all directions. We get a glimpse of the ambient nature of their work, though the music holds out attention as burbles of field recordings slink into the background as the song progresses. As a snapshot, it’s gorgeous and immersive, but as a promise of what’s to come, it offers only a hint of the grandeur in which we’ll find ourselves.
Listen below.
For Translucence is due out March 28 via Drag City. You can pre-order it here. Follow Whitney Johnson on Instagram and keep up with Lia Kohl on Instagram as well.
