Itasca is the musical identity of Los Angeles-based guitarist, singer, and songwriter Kayla Cohen. Just as the name itself is ambiguousâa 19th-century pseudo-Ojibwe place name and portmanteau of the Latin words for âtruthâ (veritas) and âheadâ (caput)âso too is Cohenâs musical project mutable and multivalent: fundamentally unconcerned with genre, but richly allusive of the hermetic worlds of private-press canyon-cult mystics and East Coast noiseniks alike.
Though Cohen began playing guitar at age thirteen, her songwriting idiom emerged gradually from her longstanding noise and drone practice. Her out-of-time recordings as Itascaârefined over the course of several releases, including three albums on Paradise of Bachelorsâreflect both this dislocated geography and her Janus-faced gaze towards both baroque, acid folk-inflected songcraft and deconstructive, textural sonics.