12 Oct 2012 — Henning Lahmann
Ages ago, when the world was still young,
we wrote about the enigmatic, Brooklyn-based one-woman drone folk project
Sultan, which had just released a marvellous tape via
Chocolate Bobka's
Curatorial Club. We'd never heard anything else ever since, but last night we suddenly got hit up by Kayla Cohen, the artist behind Sultan, who's moved to Los Angeles and is now recording as
Itasca, a project that she herself calls "a bit more focused and polished than Sultan". This self-assessment that generally seems correct, however though the tape hiss, the salient drones, and the compositionally open structures that signified
The Moon may not be as prominent as before, and Cohen's remarkably strong and clear voice has been put to the forefront, her folk is still haunting and immersive like a foggy October morning, and comes just in time for the most magical, most melancholic days of fall.
Itasca's first full-length work
Grace Riders on the Road is out today, and it's a little, unexpected masterpiece that we cannot recommend enough. You may listen to two songs below and order a cassette or a CD directly via the artist. The necessary details to do so are available
over here.
