isomonstrosity & International Contemporary Ensemble - isomonstrosity (2022) Hi Res

isomonstrosity is a pandemic symphony in rap and avant-pop. The project was assembled by three collaborators Ellen Reid, Johan Lenox, and Yuga Cohler. They solicited contributions from an array of contemporary classical composers, then overlaid features from an all-star cast of voices from contemporary rap and modern avant-pop.

The three principals’ credits are unassailable. Ellen Reid won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her opera p r i s m in 2019, the year after Kendrick Lamar shone a new light on an award previously spoken about mostly in the jazz and classical worlds. Yuga Cohler has a dual career as a Juilliard-trained orchestra conductor and a well-established software engineer working for Google and Coinbase. Johan Lenox is an LA-based artist who studied composition at the Yale School of Music then built a subsequent career as a go-to producer for iconic pop performers, contributing to records by Travis Scott, Big Sean, Shawn Mendes, Teyana Taylor, Lil Nas X, Selena Gomez, and Cautious Clay. Most recently he was an integral part of 070 Shake’s You Can’t Kill Me album, also opening most of her North American tour dates with a pair of sets presenting his solo work and a block of classical composition.

isomonstrosity was inspired in part by the mood and the constraints of the Covid-19 quarantines of 2020-21, recorded separately in pieces, with every musician working in isolation. The goal was to make a vocal chamber music album using the same process as a contemporary rap album, assembling contributions from a wide array of artists then reorganizing them endlessly into a final work. They first commissioned excerpts from established new music composers Bryce Dessner, Marcos Balter, Nina C Young, Wang Lu, Carlos Simon and themselves which were then recorded one track at a time by International Contemporary Ensemble. Next, the featured vocalists recorded parts inspired by those excerpts. Finally all of the music was chopped up and restructured, layered and collaged into a final album.