Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl & Macie Stewart - BODY SOUND (Limited Edition on Grapefruit Vinyl w/ Obi-Strip)

Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart are a trio of improvisers individually rooted in deep sound exploration, multi-disciplinary composition, and all manner of cross-genre collaboration. The musical ground covered by their solo practices is correspondingly expansive, and their individual recording and performance credits read as a veritable who's who, ranging from DIY darlings to household names of experimental avant-garde, electronic, indie rock, and more. Their collective sound is based in improvised performance automatic, intuitive composition via their three voices and three string instruments: viola, cello, and violin, respectively. Influences here are vast, dispatched with more playful ease than a trio of string instruments is typically approached with, and just as likely to be found in the cloud-obscured mountains of Donegal, the low-rent cacophony of a midwestern basement, or the revelatory expanse of the Nurse With Wound list as in the storied hals of the academy. Touchstones and areas of interest aside, the main thing that Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart engage with on BODY SOUND is listening and reacting. As a recording unit, the trio hones and transforms their performance concept with careful post-production, using multiple tape machines and outboard effects to reimagine their improvised material into meticulously crafted compositions. It's all a response to the spaces they are collectively engaged with, and the use of a highly physical medium like analog tape deepens that spatial engagement with striking, organically psychedelic results. The resultant album is deep, melancholic, and triumphant, coming across like a kind of lost or amalgamated folk music. It’s certainly part of an ongoing creative continuum, even boasting track titles adapted from Yoko Ono’s classic book of text scores Grapefruit.