LA’s musical magic realist reveals her loud city songs: “There’s sorrow and ecstasy and all the feelings”

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LINDA PERHACS

Parallelograms

KAPP RECORDS, 1970

One of the first shows I ever played was a big Linda Perhacs event in 2009. I met her there, and I got really deep into her music. I loved how she was just her own person. Even though she was part of a scene in Topanga Canyon, she was on her own plane. Her sense of melody and harmony is kind of incredible, and she made this record out of nowhere. There are definitely elements of the harmonies of that period, but I think Linda’s always been a visionary. I worked with her for a long time and her music has inspired me in a lot of ways. It has a very unique sensitivity to tone, to sound, to timbre, and her lyrics are so evocative.

SIMONE FORTI

Al Di Là

SALTERN, 2018

I’ve become acquainted with Simone Forti through Tashi [Wada, Holter’s husband and collaborator]. She’s an important dancer and choreographer and writer and artist. She’s not known principally as a musician by any means, but these recordings have been very influential on me. She sings some Italian folk songs from her past, and she uses handmade instruments, like this thing she calls a molimo, which is a flute-like instrument made out of plumbing material. Then there’s other things like , where she’s responding sonically to a line that is drawn of someone’s face. I don’t even know how to explain it, it’s just really good, very moving. Check it out.

FAIROUZ

Maarifti Feek

RELAX-IN, 1987

Fairouz is a very famous Lebanese singer and I’ve been listening to lots of different tracks of hers over the past few years. But there’s some really great ones on this album, and it inspired my most recent record – not in a direct way, just that when you listen to something a lot, it gets in your head. This record took on a funky sound, which I think was a shift for Fairouz, as she started working with her son. The song “Li Beirut” is very moving to me right now, because of what’s going on in Lebanon. It’s like her love song to Beirut, written during the civil war, and it’s kind of devastating.

TASHI WADA

Duets

SALTERN, 2014

You probably think it’s funny that I put this record of my husband on here, but it was an important one for me. I actually heard this before we were dating, and it was very influential on me, both poetically and sonically. It’s very minimal compared to his current music – it’s just two two cellos playing in unison in various ways. It brings out the impossibility of the unison, which I find really moving, because obviously you don’t ever have perfect unisons. Do we talk about music conceptually together? Yeah, definitely. I mean, we talk about really stupid things in music too – it’s not always about the poetic aspects of the unison!

JEANNE LEE

Conspiracy

EARTHFORMS, 1975

I came across this record a few years ago, and it’s become very foundational to me, particularly her use of language. The track “Yeh Come T’ Be” is an example of how she works with words and the deconstruction of the words into sounds. The way she’s exploring the sounds and the layering of the vocals is really great to me, it feels very elemental. She was coming from a jazz background and she has a great record with Ran Blake where she sings jazz standards – they do an incredible version of “Laura” on that. But she also did a lot of undefinable, experimental sound-work. She has this very strong sense of giving things space, which is always important to me in music.

TIRZAH

Devotion

DOMINO, 2018

It’s something I come back to again and again. It’s very lulling and hypnotic, the way she uses repetition in her work. Her singing feels intimate and conversational, in a calming way. When I listen to Tirzah’s music, there’s this overwhelming feeling and emotion that feels kind of unique. It’s one of those things where it sounds effortless, but you know a lot of work was put into it. It’s very delicate and intricate in its own way, but the approach feels very genuine, whereas a lot of music in this crazy, Spotify-playlist-obsessed pop world sometimes feels a little calculated. So much music has been fussed over to the minute detail, whereas this just feels like someone’s poem.

JOANNA NEWSOM

Have One On Me

DRAG CITY, 2010

I’ve probably talked about this for the last 14 years, but it’s a really good record. Every time I listen to it, it just feels so good. And it’s also massive, so you don’t really get tired – you can revisit it, and it changes. I used to love talking about the arrangements, which are so great, but now what moves me a lot is the way she tells a story, and the trajectory of each song. It’s something that I admire because I’m not so good at it, being able to evoke characters and tell a story. But I love how Joanna Newsom does it in a surreal style where it twists and turns and meanders, so it’s not like a folk ballad in a traditional sense, it’s more literary.

JESSIKA KENNEY & EYVIND KANG

Azure

IDEOLOGIC ORGAN, 2023

For my last one, I thought I’d talk about a more recent record. I’m a big fan of these two humans, they’re just really great musicians. Sometimes they’re doing the most minimal things, but it’s so powerful because they’re so skilled and so sensitive and such interesting artists. There’s a track called “Ocean” where they’re exploring the ring modulations of two simultaneous frequencies, and Jessika is singing this crazy, very wide vibrato, over and over again. She’s studied Persian singing extensively, and has incredible control of her voice. Again, it’s hard for me to explain this record, but it has an incredible depth of emotion in it. There’s sorrow and ecstasy and all the feelings – it’s so good.