Name: isomonstrosity
Members: Yuga Cohler, Johan Lenox, Ellen Reid
Nationality: American
Occupation: Producer (Johan Lenox), composer, sound artist (Ellen Reid), conductor (Yuga Cohler)
Current release: isomonstrosity's self-titled debut album is out via The National’s Brassland.

If you enjoyed this interview with isomonstrosity and would like to know and hear more, visit the project's Instagram profile. Or head over to the official homepages of the individual members of the project: Yuga Cohler; Johan Lenox; Ellen Reid.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Johan Lenox: For me, most of the time it comes from other music. I hear something I like and start asking, what if my favorite elements of X could exist in the context of Y, something like that.

It’s good to have constraints when you’re trying to be creative, so for me setting a couple hard rules for what I’m doing give me something I can work on solving. In this case, if the question is “how do we make 10 vocalists from various styles of music coexist with chamber music written by various contemporary composers”, that’s an exciting challenge which sets the whole process in motion and offers a guiding light as we’re working through the details.

Yuga Cohler: Whereas Johan and Ellen are composers, I am a conductor. So while they are in the business of creating new music entirely, my usual job is to bring already-created music to life. I tend to think of it as an inherently less creative, but more structured, job.

Given that frame, I generally view opportunities to create works of art as attempts at communication. The goal is to nudge the perspective of the audience, however slightly, away from wherever it was originally.

It doesn’t have to go exactly in the direction you wanted it to; it’s more about having an impact - emotionally, intellectually, philosophically, etc. - in some way.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Yuga Cohler: Form is super important to me. Structure is the basis of all meaning; conversely, art without structure is meaningless. While I don’t necessarily set out to make sure that everything I create conforms super rigidly to a pre-existing form, I am always tracking to make sure that there is a sensible shape to what’s being output.

This was critical in the development of isomonstrosity, both in terms of the individual tracks as well as how the whole album was laid out.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

Johan Lenox: This is a great question. In the case of isomonstrosity, we did actually demo a few tracks out using scraps of music we had lying around before we began the process of commissioning new excerpts from our group of composers.

This was really important because what we’re making doesn’t have a lot of precedent and we wanted to make sure we were all on the same page about what this would sound like. It was also helpful for us in bringing vocalists into the project to be able to show examples of what we were making and how we envisioned it working.

This isn’t always necessary for me personally but in this case it’s hard to imagine the process really working if we didn’t do those initial tests.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

Yuga Cohler: Coffee, ice water, and incense are a great combination.

Ellen Reid: Since the creative work I’m doing most days is unstructured, I enjoy a structured routine around my work day. I start the day with a cup of tea, I take the dog for a walk, then I meditate before diving into work.

I have a bright yellow light that shines on a disco ball in my studio. I turn that light on to signify the beginning of creative time. At the end of the day I usually take a walk or jog before winding down for the evening.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

Johan Lenox: In this case it was really nice that the three of us took on the role of “producer”, which I think reflected somewhat of a break from our usual work of creating music from scratch. Here our process was really about bringing other people’s voices into a project and figuring out how to weave them together.

So our starting point for most of this project was music that other composers or vocalists had created for us, and most of the work was figuring out what to do with it, rather than a lot of staring at an empty page.

Ellen Reid: There is nothing more daunting or more exciting than an empty page. Sometimes an empty page is a fun challenge and at other times, it’s too overwhelming. I usually try to find some kind of shape, color, inspiration to latch onto. From that visual stimulus, I respond musically.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Ellen Reid: The emergence of every single work is totally different.

isomonstrosity grew in bursts, in fits and starts. Some long form instrumental pieces form slowly, and other ones come pouring out.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Ellen Reid: When I’m composing long form creative work, in the beginning, I’m building the world.

At a point, the piece starts telling me what it wants to be, and it’s my job to listen to it and guide it in the most powerful direction.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Yuga Cohler: There was a lot of this happening in the creation of isomonstrosity, very naturally because the entire creative process happened during COVID quarantine, and as such, it was all online. Ellen, Johan, and I worked really collaboratively - over email, Zoom, etc. - and did a lot of iterations on most of the tracks to get the album to where it ultimately ended up.

Some of the changes were ideological while others were way more pragmatic - for example, which vocal artists were available when, for example. Ultimately, one has to accept that an art project is very different from, say, a public works infrastructure project: if things don’t go exactly according to plan, it’s totally fine, and in fact, might make things better.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

Johan Lenox: It can definitely be tough! Particularly with this project, which was so open-ended it really could’ve gone on forever because we weren’t necessarily after a preconceived result.

I honestly don’t remember how we decided when to end it, but I think we had a length of around half an hour in mind for the piece and we each had particular things we wanted out of it (a range of vocal styles, enough purely instrumental moments, a range of musical forms). So to balance all that out involved a bit of compromise and each of us saying eventually “ok I can live with this”.

Which is a very important and underrated part of collaboration!

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

Ellen Reid: I think that without a deadline, the process of writing a piece could go on forever. At some point, it’s your job as the artist to push the piece off the cliff and see if it can fly.

For live works, I believe in workshopping them before premiering them. The feeling of music played by real live people in space is always different than I imagine. I enjoy sitting with people and listening to drafts of work. That workshopping experience helps clarify what needs more room and what needs to move faster.

Once a piece is done, I do my best to leave it. The piece then becomes a marker of one moment in time.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Johan Lenox: Well, this entire project was really a production job, so I would say production was very important here. I think the mixing and mastering, which were done by Madeline Leavitt, came out really good as well.

I tend to not be super particular about that stuff, I would personally rather focus on having good ideas than on having the mix be perfect technically. There are plenty of great or influential songs throughout history which actually had pretty bad mixing or engineering and I think that’s a good lesson in terms of what’s truly important to focus on.

In this case the mix process was interesting, because there was so much detail in the productions themselves that even slight adjustments in the final mix could cause you to completely lose an element which might only occur for 3 seconds, but which we had all grown very attached to.

So we ended up opting for very slight mix adjustments rather than reinventing the wheel once we got into that process.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Yuga Cohler: I find that creation can be exhausting, and it can be good to take a break.

My 92-year-old grandmother writes Haikus and Senryus (Japanese poems) every week, and she describes the process as similar to “a bird laying an egg - it just happens.”

I really like this imagery and I tend to believe that for the best works of art, it rings true.