INTERVIEWS

+FIFTEEN QUESTIONS

Lola de la Mata talks about Tinnitus as a Creative Spark:

"I've been fighting against my body for most of my 20s. Now I make music in order to … befriend it?"

+DIGITAL IN BERLIN

‘KOH - Klee - uh’ engages with experiences of tinnitus, as a non-emitted sound phenomena. Unlike usual sounds which one hears through the ear mechanism, tinnitus is unique to each person and cannot be heard outside of the ear or by anyone else. It can be a symptom from various causes and is widely misunderstood as it has no known cure. The piece was Lola’s first dive back into music after a medical break she had to take due to tinnitus.

Based on the cochlea, ‘KOH - Klee - uh’ was inspired by the Rhine and Weber’s hearing test method which uses C2 and C4 tuning forks for air and bone conduction when creating the sound. Although incredibly electronic in its sound, ‘Koh - Klee - uh’ is mostly acoustic, featuring the Canna Sonora, the double bass and medical tuning forks + fleeting moments of granular synthesis.

The single features an impressive line up of collaborators with the unusual instrument, the Canna Sonora being played by renowned percussionist Joby Burgess*, whose work can be heard in Black Panther, Rocketman, Ad Astra amongst others. In addition to this, Marianne Schofield, playing the double bass, is a member of the award-winning contemporary collective Riot Ensemble as well as running critically acclaimed The Hermes Experiment, whose debut album HERE WE ARE made the Guardian’s top 10 contemporary albums of 2020.

Drowning out our connection to time, the piercing, rattling and booming sounds of
‘Koh - Klee - uh’ engulf the listener in a dark environment where tinnitus reshapes our hearing, collectively sharing an experience that usually sounds to an audience of one.

*in all live performances, Lola de la Mata is the Canna Sonora player and Gwen Reed is the second double bassist.

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