Folk otpjevan u baroknoj, brokatnoj tišini.
itasca-music.blogspot.com/p/music.html
Kayla Cohen, a.k.a. Itasca, is a folk guitarist and songwriter from New York State. She has released several small press CD-rs and cassettes over the past five years, and began recording as Itasca after a move to Los Angeles in 2012. She records at home, taking inspiration from the fringes of LA's open space and natural land.
Splash Mountain, LA, and the definition of "psychedelic."
Kayla Cohen of Itasca. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Cohen offers more than just a heavy vibe on Unmoored however, with songwriting on standout tracks like “Nature’s Gift” that shows a mature writer with a firm grip on form as well as atmosphere. I spoke with Cohen—who lives in LA but was visiting her parents in upstate New York—about musical development, her “fanbase,” and, you know, the artistic process.
Andrew Aylward Can you tell me about some of your earliest memories of listening to or playing music?
Kayla Cohen
I can’t think of any childhood stories, but during high school I was
into going to New York City for shows. I liked independent rock music
from the ’90s, like Codeine and My Bloody Valentine. This is all
relatively embarrassing stuff for an interview, but—
AA Perfect!
KC (laughter)
When I was in high school I went to see Slint when they did their first
reunion tour, and that was a big deal for me as a teenager.
AA That’s awesome.
KC
At the time, I was into the early 2000s New York scene. I wouldn’t
obviously be able to find out about the more hidden shows, but I would
order CDs online from bands and just wait for the packages to arrive and
all that.
AA How did you start playing music, and then start writing music?
KC
I’ve been writing songs since I was a little kid, just playing around.
But I picked up the guitar when I was about twelve or thirteen.
AA Was music part of your family or social life growing up?
KC
I was in bands in high school. I went to a lot of shows with other
teenagers and I put on some shows too. Seems that was part of me trying
to assert myself as a young human and maybe try to do more than just
hang out.
AA To go beyond just being an audience member.
KC
Yeah. But also as a young person, I quickly became aware of the way
that people’s perception of you can change just based on you performing
in front of them. It’s a tricky thing to play live in front of your
peers at that age; it was a formative experience, though.
My first
guitar teacher was this guy named Chuck, who was originally from
Portland. I don’t even know where he is anymore; I haven’t kept up with
him. But he was the first person who taught me guitar and he was always
giving me CDs. He gave me a CD by Team Dresch. You know that band? I
guess you might say it’s a lesbian punk band.
AA I don’t. Sounds great though.
KC
I realize now he might have thought I was a closeted teenager and it
seemed like this was some secret way of trying to help me out, so that’s
something … (laughter)
AA Do you feel like LA is a good place for artists to live nowadays?
KC
Yeah, I do, especially over the past day or two that I’ve been back in
New York. I think that people can still live cheaply in LA, and have
houses, and music rooms and that sort of thing. In my time living in New
York, I couldn’t afford to have any of that, and I think that can be
important and fruitful. It’s cheaper than New York so you don’t have to
work as much. But it does in a way still lack the inspiration that a
place like New York can bring.
AA
That sounds great. New York is—that’s not the New York vibe. What role,
if any, does a sense of place or geography play in the records you’ve
made?
KC Well, in a way,
being in Los Angeles has given me a little bit more free space to work
out my songs. It’s important to have quiet areas and just let it unfold.
AA So for you to be creative, it’s important to have a quiet room to work in.
KC
Yeah, though sometimes I don’t and I will still, of course, work on
things. Lately I haven’t had time but last year I was going on a lot of
hikes, and there’s a point that your mind gets to when you’ve been
walking for a long time where everything is so clear that any song idea
can just come in, and you can write a song in seconds just standing
there. It takes a while to get my mind to that place. I would say that
having natural space and time to walk and be alone is important for my
music.
AA Do you consider songwriting to be a pretty solitary endeavor, and if so, do you enjoy it?
KC
That’s a pretty loaded question depending on what kind of day I’m
having. Right now, I have been working on a new record off and on, but I
haven’t really been heavy into it because I’ve been focusing on playing
shows. I’ve been separated from writing a little bit so that process
from afar seems much nicer and more relaxed. But yeah, it can get
complex.
It’s important to make time to just sit and practice,
make time every day to let ideas come in if they are floating around.
That’s something I’ve been thinking about a bit lately, if you don’t
slow down and work on things, a lot of ideas can just fly away
unnoticed. I was reading a book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
by Rachel Pollack. I’ve read a lot of her books, but this is one I go
back to often, because it’s well written and reads like a philosophy
book rather than a Tarot interpretation book. She writes that the
Magician card in particular shows that a human’s role is to translate
energy and ideas from the air into being in order to create something
out of what seems to be nothing. Is there a better way to describe it
than that? A feeling exists, and if you want it to be able to stick in
the world then you have to create something out of it, like a song or a
piece of art. Then it’s more than just a feeling, it’s something you can
go back to.
AA How far do you go with Tarot? Do you know how to read very well?
KC
No, I’m definitely not a super New Age-y person. I’m interested in
reading about Tarot … well, yeah, I guess I’m more of a New Age-y person
than your average Joe.
AA Do you have any opinions on the use of the word “psychedelic” to describe music?
KC Well, this is going to be a stupid story, but recently I went to Disneyland.
AA Ok, nice.
KC
And I was in Splash Mountain. Do you know that ride? At the beginning
of the ride you’re in a boat going through a briar patch, and there are
all these animals, and they’re talking to each other and to you, and
it’s pretty crazy. But it’s not too unusual. You think, Okay, this could
happen, potentially. But then you go down a chute in your boat into
this black-lit area, and that’s really psychedelic. There are all these
turning dials and things jumping out at you, a lot of mushrooms made out
of cardboard or whatever. It’s all rainbow fluorescent colors. I was
like … “Yep.”
My senses were heightened, because I had never been
on the ride before and I knew there was a big drop at the end—and of
course before going to Disneyland I had read about people getting
aneurysms from the rides and accidents and all this terrible Internet
rabbit-hole stuff. But I’m experiencing this ride, and having an
amplified philosophical experience inside it, thinking about music and
how Disney could have accidentally tapped into some strange alternate
universe. At that time the idea of “psychedelic” became meaningful to me
again, just because the sets in the ride were the textbook definition
of it, but it was interesting and unusual at the same time.
AA
Your recordings have this really personal quality to them that I really
admire. Some of that probably comes from the simple home-recording
setup, but is there anything else that goes into creating an atmosphere
in the records?
KC I
record at home right now and I just use what I have. I’ve used tape
machines and Logic. I don’t really like how it sounds when it gets into
Logic or into digital stuff, but I also don’t like it being too analog,
either. I’d be into recording in a studio, but it’d have to be a studio
with the right atmosphere, I guess.What do you mean though? Like, do I
light candles?
AA Yeah, are there tapestries? (laughter)
KC
Yea, I’ve been getting into tapestries but they can be
cost-prohibitive. No I don’t have a very cool or unusual environment,
unfortunately. I’ve always hoped to own a church or a Masonic hall or
something like that to record in, though, so maybe in the future. I have
some friends who live in the Mojave desert and own a bunch of buildings
out there, so that can be a cool place to record. It does get very hot
there though so it makes it a bit difficult.
I used to live in
this house that was in Highland Park in Los Angeles, and it had a pretty
view but it was on a busy intersection, so it was loud. There were also
all these parrots that lived in the trees around the corner so they
would always be making noise. I would put sound-proofing blankets over
the windows in my bedroom and I just had this terrible cave to record
in. That’s the only way I could get silence. Or I would record only
after 3 AM.Now I live in a better place, on a quieter street, so I just record whenever. Leaf blowers are still a problem though. That’s a thing in LA, too—leaf blowers. Pretty terrible. I think that they should just leave the leaves alone so at least we would get a little bit of a fall atmosphere. I’ve thought about making petitions about, but then I realized that’s probably useless and I should just try to ignore it.
AA That’s one for the city government.
KC:
Yeah. It would be cool to record in a really nice house or place
somewhere, but I’m the kind of person who always thinks it would be
better to do this somewhere else and if I keep thinking that I’ll never
going to get anything done. So I just work with what I have.
AA In your view, does Unmoored by the Wind
break away from your last record? Do you write albums in such a way
that they could be dialed down to one or two overarching ideas?
KC
I think the next album I write will be more cohesive, because like most
people, I always think the next album will be better. Generally, if
you’re not really immersed in them, [the two albums] sound pretty much
the same. But there were two years in between releases and I wrote a lot
of songs. Most of them are terrible. It’s subjective, but, you know.
AA How many of the songs you write make the albums? Is the ratio 30:1 or 50:1?
KC (laughter)
I don’t really know how most songwriters work but that seems pretty
normal … I don’t finish most of the songs that I write. I’ll write a
verse and a chorus and I’ll record it and then I’ll listen to it the
next day and think, Ugh, not good. Or, it will get stuck in my head and
bother me for the next three days and I’ll think, Oh, I can’t use that
because it’s annoying. I always want to change something after it’s
done. I think everybody does. But you have to sort of step away from it
and be like, Okay, this is going to be what it is and some people might
be into it. But I’m into this record. I got a chance to listen to it
recently, even though the few months before that, I couldn’t listen to
it at all. I put it on when the test pressing came and I was like, Oh,
this sounds fine.
AA Is it correct to say Unmoored by the Wind is your first release on someone else’s label?
KC Yeah.
AA Was there a reason behind that or any kind of story about hooking up with New Images?
KC
Well, Matt Mondanile, who runs the label, lives in LA and he’s a good
friend of mine. We were hanging out and I was talking about this record I
had finished and he was excited about it, so we let the idea sit for a
little while and then he ended up wanting to put it out.
I think
his label is great because he covers a lot of ground with his releases,
it’s not really relegated to just one genre. I thought that this record
would fit in well with the group of releases that he’s done. He was
really excited about it and I was happy because no one else, including
myself, was really excited about it anymore. I was like, Oh, maybe I
should just write another record. But it worked out well.
AA I imagine it must be encouraging to have other people be stoked about it.
KC
If you’re going to put a record out with somebody, you should be happy
about it and excited about it. If no one’s excited about it, either just
put it out yourself. Or don’t at all, I guess. I’m looking forward to
where Matt’s label goes in the future because he’s certainly excited
about putting out more records and helping people book shows and other
stuff.
AA How do you perceive your audience?
KC
I used to play shows and nobody would know who I was at all. Nowadays
I’ll play shows and maybe one or two people will know who I am, or will
have listened to songs. So that is something, and it is cool for me. I
played a show in Wisconsin recently with a bunch of bands—do you know
what the neo-folk scene is? Kind of like Aquarius Records-style, playing
unamplified in the woods, etcetera. But there were some people there
that were into that style, and were also into my music, and it was
interesting to see my sound through that lens rather than the attitude I
usually have in LA.
AA So, what’s next for you?
KC
I have a tape coming out on Perfect Wave, which is a label run by
Camilla Padgitt-Coles and Ka Baird in New York. I also am playing live a
lot, and working with some people on live accompaniment. And then
working on a new record too.
AA Do you enjoy making the records versus playing shows? Do you have a strong opinion either way on that one?
KC
It sort of depends. Each can be very rewarding or difficult in its own
way. I had one weekend recently when I played two shows that were
opposite in environment, one had a very positive response and then one
was just somewhat uncomfortable. I know that’s pretty normal, and you
can’t depend on the crowd to boost you up. I’m tempted to say you can’t
really control your atmosphere; but then I think about some musicians
that do that well, and it’s something that can be learned. In theory, I
like recording more than playing shows but lately I’ve been playing a
lot so that’s sort of taken over. In November and December I’m going to
make it a point to really set aside some time to finish the next record.
Unmoored By the Wind is available now from New Images. For more on Itasca, visit her website.
Andrew Aylward http://bombmagazine.org/article/2000026/itasca http://itasca-music.blogspot.com/p/music.html
Grace Riders on the Road 2012
TO PURCHASE: paypal $11 for tape, or $13 for CD (both postage included) to cohenkayla@gmail.com,
and send an email with your paypal name/address. To purchase an mp3
download send $7 and an email. Purchase of a tape or CD automatically
comes with a download link, if you'd like. If you are international send
me an email for a shipping quote.
music written and recorded by Kayla Cohen in Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA. Mastered by Sean McCann.
Also available at Other Music in New York City, Academy Records in Brooklyn, Volcanic Tongue in the UK, and Meditations in Japan.
Here's what Volcanic Tongue had to say about it:
"Gorgeous
privately released acid folk reverie from the solo project of Kayla
Cohen in a hand-numbered edition of 300 copies, mastered by Sean McCann:
this is a heady slice of lysergic ladies of the canyon, with the feel
of tropical microdots that dominated the These Trails and Linda Perhacs
sides given a slightly more baroque dream-time feel. Kayla sings in a
blasted, lonesome style that is somewhere between Kendra Smith, Judee
Sill, Christina Carter and Collie Ryan and her music is thick with
atmosphere and mystery. Some of the guitar stylings have the kind of
courtly appeal of Current 93 circa Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre but
when she gets into more complex vortices of steel strings she comes over
like Robbie Basho circa Basho Sings, power-crying into the void with
the kind of lost, lamenting style that has caused many a heart to
quiver. This one came out of nowhere and knocked us sideways.
Recommended."
C-40 Cassette EP, 6 tracks
released on April 9, 2013
released on Sloow Tapes
edition of 80 cassettes
Music written and recorded by Kayla Cohen in Los Angeles, in the winter of 2012/2013.
Available at tomentosa and through me in the US, and from Volcanic Tongue and the label in Europe.
"Inspired acid folk visions by Kayla Cohen: solo guitar with lonesome vocals calling up the spirits of Nico or Judee Sill. Amazing songwriting spacing out in timeless metaphysical acoustics. 80 copies.
Great new set of haunting acid folk from Kayla Cohen aka Itasca: we were all pretty much blown away by Kayla’s CD-R debut that we stocked at VT and this is another mesmerising set of acoustic guitar and vocal reveries, with great overdubbed backing vox and an atmosphere to compare to Linda Perhacs or These Trails. Her vocals are fantastic, a moody/high-flying hybrid of Judee Sill and Kendra Smith and her guitar work is just as dazzling, combing the kind of homeblown string work of the early Six Organs recordings with a flowing, arpeggiated style that is pure Stone Angel. Edition of 80 copies."
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