Chicago-based cellist and performance artist Lia Kohl subverts conventional notions about how her instrument should sound. On 2022's Too Small to Be a Plain, she weaves field recordings (birdsong, burbling water, people's voices, crickets, etc.) into spare, methodical improvisations and introspective, sonorous drones that nibble at the peripheries of your consciousness like playful rodents. Kohl's new album, The Ceiling Reposes, deploys live radio samples captured primarily during a trip to Vashon Island. These lend a gently disorienting affect to the mutedly radiant and electronically glitched drones Kohl produces on her cello, as well as on kazoo, bells, synths, and other instruments. It's an engrossing headphone listen, and it'll be interesting to see if it translates to the stage. Kohl cut a record with tonight's headliner, Macie Stewart, Recipe for a Boiled Egg, that's even weirder and more jagged than her solo stuff. Seattle drummer/composer Sheridan Riley, whose Participant EP makes avant-garde music sound fun, opens. by Stranger Writer Dave Segal