Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing her in a few weeks at Levitation. New album is great.

wow this is big step forward from her already excellent earlier stuff

Her best yet

in an act of unfettered capitalism run amok, I bought copies of Euclid and EARS from my local vinyl album purveyor this evening

I bought Euclid from Origami when I was in L.A. a year ago. I am back now and will be buying Ears from ... somewhere.

^^ not that this is all that exciting or worth posting, mostly i am just glad to be back down here where it is warm for a week

This is fabulous. Like a midpoint between Glasser and Invisible Conga People, plus woodwinds.

Definitely hearing glasser in the vocals and the way they're treated

Found out from a recent story that she comes from Orcas Island, one of the most beautiful but also fairly isolated places in the US. Whether or not that truly reflects in her art I don't know but I think it would encourage a certain independence.

I guess I could easily google it, but where is that ned?

Washington state apparently. That helps explain part of her aesthetic for me. She certainly doesn't sound like anything else out of LA right now. There's this organic pastoral quality to her sound that's very unique and it's wonderful hope her folk and classical background influences her electronic composition. Her new album is a bloody masterpiece BTW. One of the best things released so far this year. She's definitely leveled up.

Lovely stuff: Glasser/non-scary Fever Ray in the vocals, which presses my buttons

new interview @ popmatters

Driving a Spaceship Through Futuristic Jungles with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
http://www.popmatters.com/feature/driving-a-spaceship-through-futuristic-jungles-with-kaitlyn-aurelia-smith/

The album was heavily influenced by animated art, particularly the movie Nausicaa by Hayao Miyazaki, but also the work of Jean Giraud Moebius and Killian Eng. All three artists, Smith says, “have these neo-futuristic vibes that still feel connected to nature and have a spiritual quality to them.” She adds, “That’s always been very evocative for me and has always been my visual language for when I’m creating sounds. It’s always been in that world. I’m starting to try and connect my visual world with my auditory world and try and make sound environments that can help other people feel those visual worlds.”

otm

really liked euclid but this is wonderful

nothing new to add, this is just incredible. "Existence In The Unfurling" is a perfect piece of music, the way those glassy melodies spiral and leap across each other is otherworldly.

This is most excellent, and yeah, "Existence In The Unfurling" is so great, that, while really appreciating the composition of the short pieces here, and how finished they are...the lengthy exploration of the final track is just fantastic. What a closer.

Would echo the see her live if you can! The Bitchin' Bajas pairing last yr. was perfect (and Rob Frye from that outfit supplies horns and woodwinds here, I believe).

i saw her open for grouper last year in san francisco, and it was the only experience i've had where the opening act blew me away with their live performance. the new album is excellent, a cornucopia of wondrous sound, and i'm excited to have it accompany my life in these next few spring and summer months.

this is a gorgeous album

btw, the vinyl copies were very affordable, Euclid is $15 on amazon including digital download. They seemed slightly lightweight, but sound fantastic.

EARS is fantastic, can't wait to see her open for the AC next month.

this album is gorgeous and i love it. i wasn't going to say anything bc i have little to contribute beyond this but i wanted to annoy lj.

Yeah, I'm into this.

this is such a gift

Shared this album with a couple friends the other day very loud on the home hifi. They kind of just sat back and just said "wow" once the first track finished. After the album was done, we looked at each other and wondered aloud how we were going to put on another album after this one.

so good. have been nerding out on modular stuff lately - but more the gear than the music being made by it - so to hear something come along like this and just blow you away is a welcome correction as much as anything else.

GOOD MUSIC

yep

i might prefer euclid to the new one tbh

i do 2 but the new one is still wonderful

looking fw to seeing her live in NY soon. Put a song on this mix:

http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/new-music/dan-selzer-a-heavenly-imposition-mix

imago was complaining about this in another thread so i checked it out and am loving it so far, thanks LJ! :)

complaining?

Bitterly at that. His loss!

seriously, I don't keep up with most new ilx threads, but I don't see how this record is particularly ILX-friendly. Maybe because the review compares it to Fever Ray/The Knife?

i think it's just ilx friendly bc it's good and ilm posters are suckers for good music

not feeling this album. there are some good synth sounds on it but a lot of unpleasant sounds too.

which thread is all this complaining happening on?

OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/229/files/2015/02/simpsons-pitchforks.jpg

fwiw i think this is p good but not standing out for me so far. i listen to a lot of music like this, it's nice but it's not blowing my mind.

The album is good

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, April 5, 2016 12:19 PM (3 minutes ago)

Für lj - this is a staggering monument of artistic genius and musical magnificence. surely the greatest album of the year, if not the century. ten thumbs up - highly recommended!

We should just have "good"/"bad" polls from now on.

that's too absolutist. options should just be OK and eh

Is anyone else into Kara-lis Coverdale? I sort of group them together in my mind due to similarity of names, and KLC's music has more of an ecclesiastical Tim Hecker vibe but they both push the same emotional buttons for me.

(FYI if anyone is too much of a bottler to post on this entirely peaceable thread then their opinion basically doesn't exist and is irrelevant).

i like her colorful wires

this album sounds like aurelia smith traveled back to the garden of eden and captured the natural noises made by the birds of paradise soaring above lush fields and dense wet forests and two naked bodies listening, carefully, they embrace, moved by the music to tears and a sense of heavenly grace that can be shattered by nothing - not by snakes in the grass or fruit growing on trees. the album ends and they look at each other and wonder aloud how they can put on another album after this one.

this album is like breathing for the first time

i had never even seen a shooting star before.

25 years of rotations, passes through comets' paths, and travel, and to my memory I had never witnessed burning debris scratch across the night sky.

there are many free youtubes

though you pay google for ads, but you if you do anything on the internet you already do that

I don’t know, should the “providers of this service” be compensated, is it labor, blah blah blah

Without a spiritual tradition to fall back on, it seems hard for westerners to not worry about ‘not meditating right’ and I guess these apps can help but I wish there was a better, non-monetized way.

There are really good books, guided meditations, dharma talks, all available for free or low cost. There are good retreats that are free all over the world (not an option at the moment but.) If you live in a major urban area you can find a group of people to sit with (that would be via Zoom now.)

The problem is that the non-commercial stuff doesn't market itself well, so you have to know it's there.

dharmaseed.org

I use Meditation Studio now, good app, think it was $7 or something, but it's a 1 time fee not subscription

but in addition to the 8 million other decisions that I make every day that I'm informed are wrong and bad, good to know that the thing I use to breath for 5 minutes a day is bad and I should use some other thing that is good

I know this is simplistic and probably goes w/o saying for most who maintain a practice, but the game changer for me was accepting that the "right" way to meditate (in vipassana meditation anyway) is just to acknowlege that's it's not working e.g. "oh look, now I'm thinking about this instead" and it changed the experience for me—this idea that you can't fuck it up so long as you observe yourself fucking it up

Brad Warner’s ‘sit down and shut up’ advice eventually worked for me but it took some getting past notions of “am I sitting correctly.”

I know all the other resources exist but many of them are tied to a spiritual tradition people may not be interested in and the success of Calm (or etc.) is that it’s an app on the device you carry with you all the time and not a class you have to travel to. Short of convincing everyone there’s no wrong way to meditate, it lowers the barrier to entry - unfortunately for $$$.

Yeah I hadn't thought about explicit Buddhism being a barrier for some people, good point. Also I know nothing about Calm, not trying to knock it.

there was a great looking sorta cranky ebook I found on amazon once that seemed to focus on berating westerners for practicing mindfulness/meditation as a means to stress reduction/self help when they should just be doing it as a means to contemplate hell

now that I want a link to

what music can soundtrack a guided meditation on hell

Dark ambient?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTXXCmX3t1g

no way is hell ambient

i guess with Calm, they do the cultural appropriation for you? idk i deal with anxiety the American way by taking pharmaceuticals proscribed by a doctor and partially covered by my health insurance company ... not saying that's the "right way" making a joke mostly ... just that I don't understand this whole meditation / relaxation industry

You don’t need to meditate to be meditating maaaaan.

Revisiting this thread, reminded of more comfortable, more inconsequential, more moribund times

Real lol at this:

she's grifting live on the p4k IG right now:

"Grifting" should become common usage as a verb to describe somebody using a modular synth

beats "wiggling"

But surely one sketches on a music easel.

New track: https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/track/lagoon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpXOlcpoj1c

Every time I listen to this record I forget it's on until "Expanding Electricity" rolls around. Really poor first single to album quality ratio.

yeah, couldn't wait after listening to the preview, got the album off bandcamp and it was such a let down after that first release.

Still waiting for the vinyl from Bandcamp, which was ordered on the first bandcamp friday!

holy fuck, this new record……. my god

I saw Max Tundra bigging this up, and reports are that it's a whole new sound, so I'll chance a listen, even though she's done nothing but annoy me before

Nah, same stuff repackaged. Maybe a bit less ambient than before, and there's probably more variation, but so many of the vocal, melodic, timbral choices are purpose-built to infuriate me still. Track 7 is quite good though! There I said it etc.

it leaked?

it came out yesterday

saw it being described as hyperpop and am disappointed it didn't live up to that

Well an hour ago when I posted that the bandcamp still had it in pre-order status. Just checked again and the page has updated, how about that.

I've given the new one a couple of half listens, and it's really not connecting. It seems too disjointed, and not in a fun po-mo OPN kind of way. Just ideas clashing with one another, with no real conceptual basis.

I still adore EARS though, and Sunergy. Guess I'm more into the bubbling synth arpeggios and orchestration, and less into the vocals and attempts at subversive 'structure'. KAS is great at ambient textures, and not so hot at 'songs' imo.

She’s playing a free show in a couple weeks at the museum where I work - in LA

https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2023/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith