Name: Jessika Kenney
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, sound artist
Current Release: Jessika Kenney's new album Uranian Void is out October 31st 2025 via Kou.
Recommendations on the topic of sound: Anything by the great writer Will Alexander of Los Angeles, for example Divine Blue Light. It helps me to unwind my expectations of thought, the breath, sound, and communication. His writings allow a person to experience interdimensional collective growth through all of these conduits. Here is a wonderful interview.
If you enjoyed this Jessika Kenney interview and would like to find out more about her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Facebook, and bandcamp.
When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?
Perhaps similarly to sound/visual synaesthesia, I tend to see letters and numbers in the world recombining to make various patterns.
The sensation of noticing this runs parallel to my musical memory emerging and submerging, which might be a kind of non-knowledge. I like to notice how this subconscious synaesthesia affirms learning as a heart-based beneficial process which is innate to consciousness rather than learning that is driven by acquisition or mastery.
I enjoy listening to live music with others as a way of perceiving energy, images, non-verbal and intricate histories of the place and people, as well as to connect through the window of my body into other worlds.
How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?
Here is a baby bird listening to music Eyvind and I made played on a record player.
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Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.
Working with Niloufar Shiri the last few years has really opened up my personal definitions of sound. She plays the Iranian kamanche as well as the cassette player, and has a great sense of refinement and overwhelming harshness combined often in the same moment of sonic poetry.
I also really love the Anaiis track from 2021 ‘undulations’ for her approach to poetic sound space and combinations of spaces.
Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?
The strength of my emotional response (usually a lot of tears) seems to be based on a particular recurring experience of the collision of multiple types of synchronicity; musical, liberatory, awakening, resurrecting, reframing types of synchronicity.
I try not to label these sounds too much after the fact but feel extremely grateful and slightly ashamed when it happens.
There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?
I think I may be a little bit strange in the sense of tending to like sounds that bother most people.
Resistance and sound are very connected in my experience, so that there is a spectrum of ways of resisting through sound and also ways of just absorbing sound through extreme receptivity and willingness for the transformations that may occur.
Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?
I feel a positive connection with the 60 Cycle hum found in the electrical system where I live, (currently LA).
When I travel to Europe or Indonesia, I really enjoy the feeling of transposition to the 50Hz hum.
Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?
I worked on a cave recording piece with Emma McCormick Goodheart, as well as underwater/above-water recordings with Eyvind Kang, of the Spokane River where I grew up.
Both of these experiences gave me a love for the sound of moisture / interspersing of elements that you can feel in a sound vibration.
[Read our Eyvind Kang interview]
What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?
The first place for performance that comes to mind is the Columbarium at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA! Nice to relate with the pigeons, songbirds, and doves there.
The best recording experience I have had was with Mell Dettmer and Eyvind in a room immediately adjacent to Cove Passage on the Salish Sea.
Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?
I like to imagine that feelings are made of cerebrospinal fluid!
In that sense I also like to think that shaping music is like shaping pulses in fluids of various viscosities, as an inner dance.
How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?
The idea of health in the context of art often treads a thin line, and can potentially become quite oppressive. Initially it is better to make space for sickness.
At the same time musicians often instigate a life-affirming sound vibration in an unexpected place like a hospital or prison, a dark room, or an underpass, and this causes me to recognize that music is saving our lives every day.
Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?
The term ‘more-than-human’ has really affected my thinking lately, where humans are included, but from the perspective of a bigger community that takes work to be a part of.
I’m hoping that musical work will contribute to that process, of actively participating in a larger community.
Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?
Interspecies communication exists and is well documented.
We need more feminist science, as in the writing of Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer, to show that we as humans can present a more useful, accurate, and ethical view of the world.
Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?
I would love to keep a log of what frequencies appear in my tinnitus experiences and sing their melodies transposed down.
Listening to one’s own body obviously takes a lot of patience and great fortitude.
We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?
I’m excited about un-silencing things, like interspecial communications as you said, and the hidden or repressed sides of stories and histories.
I don’t like to actively add too much sound to my day because I enjoy the extremely varied sounds of my neighborhood. We also practice a lot, and this becomes a part of our home micro-climate.
Different types of silence are also very exciting to me, like underwater ‘silence’, getting out of the city sound and light silence, and this thing that happens as you are falling asleep where everything goes totally silent in your mind’s ear for brief intervals.
Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?
I have heard that the sense of smell is the most precise and fastest!
But I love the idea that breathing is the universal sense, which could be similar to using atmosphere and listening as synonyms of each other.
