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Drag City are really cranking out the releases this year, and they have just shared the news of another: Chicago-based Whitney Johnson and Lia Kohl will be releasing their debut album, For Translucence, on March 28th. The announcement is accompanied by their new single and video, “73|74“, a mindbending and sublime offering that sounds like it’s travelling backwards and forwards simultaneously. The accompanying press shares that their goal is “for translucence”: for each successive part to add clarity to its others; something that’s visually captured in the overlapping imagery of Whitney’s music video.
They began playing together in 2018, initially experimenting through free improvisation on viola and cello with their shared tuning one octave apart, their sound has since evolved adding instruments — Whitney’s ARP Odyssey synthesiser, Lia’s Teenage Engineering OP-1 synthesizer and AM/FM radio. As suggested by the dual-numbered track titles, the songs, like 73|74, are two improvisations superimposed over each other, the titles derived from the two fundamental frequencies in which they improvise.
Their new album arrives on the heels of three entrancing works released in 2024 by Whitney Johnson (Hav), her alter ego Matchess (Stena), and Lia Kohl (Normal Sounds, Moon Glyph).
Pre-Order on Bandcamp: https://whitneyjohnson.bandcamp.com/album/for-translucence
