Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Does that mean Jute Gyte is next for covering that song?

New album details/preorder

https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/album/the-kid

Wow, vocals front and center for a change. Wonder if the whole album will go for a more traditional songwriting approach.

another new one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix9Kr5E7XdQ

Album is available to stream: http://www.npr.org/2017/09/28/553692113/first-listen-kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-the-kid?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nprmusic&utm_term=music&utm_content=20170505

oh nice

wow wow wow wow

i'm halfway through and excited to listen to this many more times this year.

this is probably the worst possible way to frame this praise, but the ending stretch of "until i remember" is like the forgotten promise of early 2000s ~folktronica~ gradually emerging from behind the sun, like if planet X was actually real.

Super psyched, though EARS set a very high bar

she's great

I'll have to spend some more time with EARS. Didn't do all that much for me at the time but this new one sounds so playful and effortless. She does all these wonderful things like it's nbd

it takes everything i like about EARS and magnifies it, and then stretches it out.

dang, so good

i'm gonna hold off of any additional listens until the LPs arrive in the mail

this is probably the worst possible way to frame this praise, but the ending stretch of "until i remember" is like the forgotten promise of early 2000s ~folktronica~ gradually emerging from behind the sun, like if planet X was actually real.

― Karl Malone, Thursday, September 28, 2017 12:15 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know what you mean, shit like Caribou and Four Tet? struggling to think of other examples but yeah "folktronica" was absolutely a thing & yes it was forgotten

oh hey, pretty clever what she's done with the tracklist

i know what you mean, shit like Caribou and Four Tet? struggling to think of other examples but yeah "folktronica" was absolutely a thing & yes it was forgotten

Tuung is always the band I think of when this label comes up, but I can't remember now how a single one of their songs goes.

haha oh yeah! i remember them. but yeah can't even remember a song title now

Can't decide if I should listen to this before the show in a couple weeks or not.

> forgotten promise of early 2000s ~folktronica

XP/OT: Really wish Pooka had further pursued some of their sounds from Shift (2001)

Which was a remix album by Brian Duffy? See also "Ovum", which is probably a better precursor to KAS, only with FM rather than analog synths.

My favorite syntho weirdos KAS and John Maus dropping albums in the same month? Love it.

Looking forward to hearing this but damn she went from having an incredible album cover with EARS to having an absolute eyesore of a cover here

cover is dope imo, EARS cover was pretty sweet too

Mixed feelings listening to this. Which means I'll probably still be listening to it a year from now.

whoa! this record ROCKS

It's astonishing

This is even more florid and pastoral than EARS, like bits of it are like being in the main village in Zelda or something, but then she'll suddenly overturn it with an abrupt tonal shift or a rush of clanking noises. There's enough grit in there to prevent it becoming cloying - the difference between this and the new Four Tet in that regard.

Her Baker's Dozen is pretty mellow:
http://thequietus.com/articles/23330-kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-bakers-dozen-favourite-albums-the-kid

She did synths on the new Four Tet.

Wow this new record is great. Her vocals kinda remind me of Grimes, especially on "A Kid."

Is it all Buchla derived still?

claire hamill in that baker's dozen! hell yeah!

Claire hamill absolutely rules. Big influence on grimes tko

I'm pretty sure Buchla is the main synth on all of her stuff, but she throws in other synths as well.

I like that Claire hamill record a lot but I sure as fuck had to unfollow her twitter during the brexit vote

also i think she ran as a tory councillor in the last council elections so y'know

some of this KAS album feels like the brightness is turned up way too high but i love some of the less manic stuff - 'an intention' is definitely a favourite atm

also lol at a track being called 'A Kid'

why?

oh i was just amused at the thought of her devising her track titling scheme just so she could make a weak radiohead pun

Short profile from Reynolds - https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/10/13/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-and-the-secret-life-of-synths/

This FACT video is also great, I didn't check if it's been posted yet - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95UvPlhjbE4

The ascetic aspects of her practice, including everything before working with modular synths and releasing music, is pretty interesting. I guess it's easy to write it off as some hippie stuff, but actually think that's quite a superficial reaction. Seems to me that there's something deeper going on, there's something to her work that endorses a need to withdraw from the social to practice in order to exercise different capacities, to achieve a certain kind of mastery.

I dunno, I'm increasingly interested in these acts of withdrawal and imposing limits after years of internet and social media binging, and now culminating in the perpetual outrage of the alt-right and Trumpocalypse era...

Great video. What a view to work from!

i thought that was a fantastic video. she presents her process in a way that is remarkably straightforward, compared to most musicians, even though what she's doing is insanely abstract on certain levels. i really admire that. she is so cool! i really liked the part about halfway through where she was talking about learning to operate and listen to the oscillators for the first time. i was also pleased that she seems to gel with my high school stoner observation that music biz legends beethoven/mozart/et al would likely be electronic musicians today. unless you're in the very unusual position of having the money and prestige to write compositions for orchestras, it is much more practical to DIY that shit with a synthesizer and get access to over 512 other sounds along the way

it's cheaper to rent an orchestra and orchestra hall than it is to build a buchla synthesizer set-up!

haha, true with the buchla i guess (she acknowledges that it's super expensive somewhere in the video i think)! but in general it's pretty easy to create a permanent setup that lets you create pretty much any kind of noise for very little $

But again, I think it's the process of isolating herself for self-practice that's also interesting - the long process of training and experimentation. Obviously she's some kind of master now, but that came through an effort of cutting herself off from stuff, or striving towards another world rather than what's given...

You could say that about any number of artists obv. Not sure why I'm reflecting on it so much with her work. Very inspiring anyway.

Part of it may be that she seems more open about detailing her process than many electronic musicians.

more detailed than many artists, period. there's a lot to be said about maintaining a sense of mystery but i love it when someone finds it natural to talk about in a straightforward way (even if what the creative process they're trying to describe is not straightforward at all)