Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

New album of superoxygenated synth fantasias out today, seems like a good time for her own thread.

New one is great btw - it's a little less busy than Euclid, has more of the calmness of Tides. More vocals though plus real wind instruments alongside the burbling buchlas.

This is relevant to my interests!

Need to recall my 'great' about the new one and issue an 'absolutely fucking amazing' in its place

I'm only 2 songs in, and I'm already lost and disoriented and amazed in all the best ways.

Last album, I was all "holy shit, these synths!!!" and barely noticed the vocals, but on this one, the tone-cluster harmonisations are unmissable and completely magical.

This is not something I'm going to be able to listen to on the tube, I can tell. I'm going to have to download this and go and sit quietly in a forest with it for a while.

Just wait till the woodwinds turn up fwiw

The Philip Glass-esque "pa-pa-pa-pa-pa" vocals meets slithering insect noises of Arthropoda just exploded my brain.

thrilled that it's turned out so well. i liked euclid a lot, but there were some moments on it that veered a bit too close to animal collective-y sugar barf and reading that she was touring with them i feared she might go further in that direction. this one is straight-up gold though, and it arrived on the most perfect spring morning too.

This is astonishing and beautiful, it's probably my favourite record of the year so far. I agree it's perfect for spring mornings. I preferred the gentler second half of Euclid and this is a step up even from that - burbling synths and woodwind instruments are one of my favourite sonic combinations so the fact that they're all over this is pretty much catnip for me.

I'm loving the inclusion of more vocals as well, they really work here in a way they didn't on Euclid.

I'd love to get this today, but I don't understand why the CD isn't available on Smith's Bandcamp page? With small-label electronic releases today, normally you can order the CD/vinyl from Bandcamp, after which you can also download the albums as FLACs/WAVs, so you don't have to wait until the record arrives in mail. But this album can only be bought as digital download on Bandcamp, and since I'm one of those old-fashioned foIks who wants to have the CD too, I don't want to pay for it twice.

It was the same deal with Euclid too. Seems pretty stupid that her label doesn't follow what has become the norm with releases like these, it'll just encourage people to acquire the files via illegal means.

good for you for trying to support the label, but amazon do a free autorip if you're desparate

or even desperate

Yeah, but only as MP3s. And Amazon's own prices are almost way higher than with other sellers.

(xpost)

this album is gorgeous

^^^^

ended up listening to it 6 times today, and it's not even knocking-off time

seen her twice and it's a remarkable live show; when someone's music has this many pre-composed threads, and your axe is a modular, it can be tough to walk the line between safely-programmed and live. and there are certainly prepared elements cooked in there but there's still a sense of independent threads & haywire randomness, and someone who knows how to listen & who knows her rig so well that all these random elements get utilized. the second live set in SF last september in particular just perfectly balanced live chaos and structure, blew me away much more than any of the records I'd heard so definitely looking forward to making time for this new one

http://www.factmag.com/2016/03/30/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-modular-synth-studio-video/

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.

It's wonderful. Totally claustrophobic and warm and, yes, self-indulgent, but she is on a mission to prove she's more than a synth artist tinkling on some keyboards. Totally pulls it off in a dreamy, hazy, muffly way.

Also, I saw her play in an outdoor space in Silver Lake and everyone was just floored by the sincerity of it all. She is no joke.

Multiple xp to LG - I think this sounds like a lot of stuff that already exists but it excels at it.

I didn't think any of the posts in this thread were excessively effusive, but who wants to enjoy nice music when we can turn it into a clusterfuck of some kind

The experience and emotions tied to listening to Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's Ears are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax.

sorry i'm just dicking around, i think lj is being a dork, and i love this album even if euclid is a little better

lol

this album (EARS) is aptly titled because I literally feel like I truly have been given a new pair of EARS and am listening to music for the first time in my life

looooooool

http://www.tmchoir.org/wp-content/uploads/NewEars.png

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.

yeah same, i thought the kara-lis coverdale & lxv album from last year was particularly nice. (apologies for the embarrassingly effusive praise)

i listen to a lot of music ~like this~ and this album initially seemed like just a fairly decent version of it but it's completely embedded itself in my life after a couple of months - it feels perfectly balanced between all its elements, there's always something happening so it's not just ambient mood and yet she never breaks the spell

really i only checked this out because of euclid placing in the ilm poll - i didn't love it (off the cursory listen i gave it) but it was interesting enough for me to give this some attention, am really glad i did and intend to return to her previous albums as soon as i can tear myself away from this

xp aftertouches was a v good walking around the city in the sunlight album, felt colder than KAS

k-l c is cool imo, will check out the artist mentioned on this thread

lex OTM. Sums up my feelings too. An album hasn't grabbed me like this, from start to finish as a singular entity, in a while. Maybe years. Hard not to continue gushing. And listening to it loud on a really nice stereo is quite something.

It really is quite good. Whiney is just trying to kill your buzz because that's who he is and what he duzz

JFC what did you people do to this thread.

got excited reading about this (thanks to this thread).

had a deep listen and pretty disappointed really... it's nice enough mood music but i'm not really hearing what separates this musically from the thousands of mid-late-00s synth stuff. a bit more measured sure, some woodwind in there and some 4th world 5ths pitchshifting...

just yer standard vertically-composed arp-scapes really? what are people hearing as being exciting about this

yeah that feels about right to me. i sometimes feel like ilm and maybe the wider world goes crazy for artists around the point where they are becoming less interesting. like julia holter felt the same.

i know that sounds like "oh their early stuff is better" - i mean sometimes an artist's sort of breakout album is some kind of middlepoint of note, but other times i just think the part that is making it appeal more seems to nullify whatever i liked in the first place. and here's why and that's okay.

anyway i am going to give this another listen.

just yer standard vertically-composed arp-scapes really? what are people hearing as being exciting about this

Sometimes it's difficult to explain why a vibe works but it this case it just does, just texturally and melodically really satisfying at the same time. I suppose it depends on what you hope to get from music like this - I don't listen to ambient because it's "interesting" (although that helps), it's entirely about the emotional effect for me.

The arp scapes comment kinda makes sense to me in that this is sort of the ambient equivalent of Lindstrom c. Smalhans, when what it's doing is sort of rudimentary but at the same time really works.

the last track reminds me a bit of sasha and digweed

sorry everyone

had a deep listen and pretty disappointed really... it's nice enough mood music but i'm not really hearing what separates this musically from the thousands of mid-late-00s synth stuff.

Hard to know who you think this sounds like without you naming names, but a lot of your 0PNs and your John Elliots seemed to be influenced a lot by German kosmische stuff, where as this feels more rooted in an American tradition of Terry Riley and Laurie Spiegel and David Borden, focussing on nature and our place in it rather than the cold vast distances of eternal space etc a la Klaus Schulze. Kind of the pastoral as opposed to the astral? An organic music society sort of thing, something to sow your biodynamic carrots to or whatever (I'm sure that is a perfectly horrible misrepresentation of all concerned, also profuse and humble apologies to whiney etc).

the mid-late-00s thing it reminded me of most was Mountains/Koen Holtkamp - not so much in the actual sounds but more the feeling of connection to the natural world

but then like you said, there's the vocal thing and the woodwinds which i guess are still a terry riley kind of deal, but give it a total other layer to your standard synthetic yoghurt weaving

i quite like this and all but it's so far off terry riley for me.

not saying it sounds like him, he just feels like maybe a spirit presiding over it.

the thing it brought to mind for me, not for specific sonic similarities but for the very organic, breathing synthworld she creates, was the VFTL album

It sounds a bit like some kind of american hauntology?

Maybe if you switch silent running for pendas fen

Well Ears is pretty pleasant, not sure if I'll ever feel the need to listen to it again but it was superficially nice. She doesn't seem to know how to end a track though, apart from the last track they all just kind of... stop abruptly. I'd probably prefer it if it was instrumental as well.

I do really like the last track though

Been listening to this a lot and like it very much, but definitely prefer Euclid. The jaunty pieces from side a of Euclid are still my favorite things I've heard from her. Really nice compositions that give me that Miyazaki vibe in a big way.

Rare Things Grow is my current favorite on EARS. The sax parts on that one are so nice.

this album is so dope, thanks 2 whiney for his thread cuz otherwise i wouldnt've clicked on this one

Wait, did Whiney actually say that he enjoyed music made by a woman

ooooooh zing

No zing I'm serious, he never has before

except St. Vincent, but even then it was "hey wow I can't believe I like this"

lick me

i could write you out some list of all the female musicians I've loved and supported and wrote about and bump on the regular, but I'm sure that would just qualify me for some completely different ad-hom attack

Could you add queers as well? maybe make it a solid list of ten or so

honestly, this is super entertaining but it should really be on another thread -- like whiney's poll thread -- rather than here.

not that i am not guilty of driving threads off the rails myself but still

http://i.imgur.com/7WOj5.gif

yeah, i'll gladly start a 77 thread if fgti wants to decide if the percentage of women and gay artists I listen to is woke enough for his liking

woke enough for his licking

i lol'd

I hate emotional ambient music

I hate music

funnily enough i can't think of an album that's less likely to stir up any kind of heated discussion yet here we are

I think everyone agrees it's a good album, the fight is over just HOW good

lickin good

def my fav track off the album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOYR856Gzrg

many xps

terry riley's "rainbow in curved air" was the first thing Euclid reminded me of!! terry riley is a good comparison, and pastoral is a good word to describe it.

"the last track reminds me a bit of sasha and digweed"

ouch...

"terry riley is a good comparison"

the first person she mentions in this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95UvPlhjbE4&nohtml5=False

I watched that. Didn't want to get all pedantic but Riley's not really known for Buchla. I mean, he was probably around the SF tape music center, but I dont' think I know of any recordings with synthesizers or a modular like that. Maybe that lifespan soundtrack or something. It's close enough though to make that connection I suppose!

awesome
xp

@NickB

you could mention laurie spiegel but her most famous works (ie. expanding universe era not say, obsolete systems) are more about automating and sequencing contrapuntal processes (ie. horizontal) to create music (ie. horizontal composition) with very little emphasis on synthesis really. where as this is just piling on the vertical layers.

i just think perhaps a few of the banners this is being heralded under seems to be misnomers for me (which possibly isn’t her fault). mainly the buchla/synth geek angle and the composition angle.

not really hearing anything that exciting sound-wise here? other than a few token buchla blats kind of gilding the frosting it doesn't really sound unlike a million other subtractive synth jams? (this could just be my problem with a lot of modern modular stuff though... that the end results don't rely take advantage of the format. people using this exotic interface and focusing so much on that aspect of it that they can't hear the kind of prosaic net result of what they're creating?)

watching this video it makes sense that she's from a guitar/folk/school background... i feel like there's a listening learning curve to being able to create interesting electronic music if you've come from another composition background. can't hear the forest for the trees almost and you end up bringing all this other baggage to what you're doing. which could be an interesting mutatnt viewpoint, but more often probably ends up as dilettante-ish.

but yeah, the modern composition angle (ie. NOTATED INSTRUMENTAL PARTS) (this-ain't-just-synth-jamming), jon hassell instrument treatments + arpeggiator for miles + cocteau twins obfuscated vocals +... just seems to be more just ticking of aesthetic boxes for me.

but like you say, it's very hard to say why something like this hits you. why do i love 70s roedelius when lots of that stuff is full of boring pentatonic arpeggios too? i'm just spouting (a lot of) hot air really.

i thought that video for fact was really coherent in its explanation of what she was doing with a modular set up and that seems incredibly rare.

i don't doubt she knows exactly what she's doing.

it's more... like an artist making a photo-realistic rendition of people's face with carefully-burnt toast or something. the process/craft being valued over the end result (ie. something you could take with a click of a shutter). is something relatively prosaic any better just because you took a convoluted route to the end result. again, not levelling it at her necessarily - more in a general sense for modu-lators in general.

i should've said xp – didn't mean it as a reply to your post, just to the posting of the video which is what made me listen to the album.

nonetheless, doesn't feel like aesthetic box ticking for me.

linee I get exactly what you're talking about, and it's funny, one of my earliest altercations on this board involved explaining horiz. vs. vert. composition and people screaming at me that I was stupid (but those descriptions are super useful imo!)

KAS is best, for me, when she's working just with the Music Easel bc it forces out her ingenuity with the thing, and yes with this record it does just become a layered dessert but insofar as Emeralds-y style Jenga music goes she's got the best sensibilities out there imo

Listened to this album off the back of the praise / descriptions in this thread, loved it, bought it, enthused about it to others in a manner not dissimilar to the start of this thread and now have one other person enthusing about the album in a manner not dissimilar to the start of the thread. Thanks to the enthusers!

Me too! A very bad hate thread made me listen to a couple minutes of "Existence in the Unfurling" youtube the day before yesterday. What I heard was so amazing that I immediately ordered ~vinyl~ copies of both EARS and Euclid and killed the video so as to more fully enjoy the Total Album Experience when they arrive.

Thanks, old ILX dickhole zing cru.

I didn't like the public shaming element of that thread but i like the idea of Divisive Albums where people passionately take sides, we could stand to have more of that on the board.

Sometimes it feels like there is so much a available music now, no one album seems to matter... Everyone has a "like it or leave it" approach, which is bad for criticism. If you can love something, you should be able to hate it... Idk this thread wasn't an instance of that but I like the idea of passions running high.

i don't think this album can bear the weight of serious divisiveness. it's just mostly pleasant + unoffensive which is obv what imago doesn't like about it - that it isn't challenging/difficult enough.

nah I just find the melodies completely uninteresting, which is enough to make me fairly passionately dislike something (if it's melodically-driven, which this is imo, as much as it is texturally-driven, and sure the textures are nice)

can't conceive of a non-pointed sense in which a melody can be interesting

I wonder how common an experience it is nowadays for an artist investigating what seems to be a sudden breakthrough of appreciation for her work and finding shitposting containment

I've only played it a few times. Thanks to this thread, I'm glad I checked it out. Some of the processed vocals early on bothered me a bit. That's a small point, and I think most of it is "good" I'm sure I'll play it again, but it might be too pretty and unthreatening to get the adrenaline flowing.

@ katherine, typically in the experiences of the people I know, the shitposts are all that are remembered, they blot out all the praise

In this case though not much of it is at the expense of the actual music or the musician.

also she's on tour with anco

o shit whiney's gonna have a field day with that

spending a tour with animal collective seems like it'd be a real drag/test of patience

Are you saying that for any reason beyond being subjected to their performances along the way?

the animal collective dudes always seemed very chill almost to the point of dullness

She might get bored and turn to the internet and find this thread...

...which is overwhelmingly positive, so hi Kaitlyn I enjoy your work

starting to prefer this over euclid now

"spending a tour with animal collective seems like it'd be a real drag/test of patience"

they make really good earplugs now.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TQkCGgIjrCA/UNs0KJpSeuI/AAAAAAAAAyU/yjeG91v5TCs/s1600/GuyGiantHeadphones.jpg

this album is so dope, thanks 2 whiney for his thread cuz otherwise i wouldnt've clicked on this one

― bitcoin bajas (diamonddave85)

same. i've been listening to it obsessively the last few days and picked up the LP this afternoon. euclid rules too!

just to counterweight the jokes a lil idk if this is broadly true or politically meaningful but: anco support slot is p significant, i think, & has a p gd history; like i remember hearing grouper talk abt it being her first real show getting paid a living-artist-wage amount of money. i feel like i have seen good groups supporting at animal collective shows, & that KAS is maybe a smaller commodity commercially than whoever else they could've dragged along, so w2g AC for breaking up the Shitty Evening Of Support Band Industrial Complex & introducing everybody to cool spacey music

Credit to them for breaking up a Shitty Evening Of Animal Collective Music with something good as well.

they are good i think

Here's something that scratches a similar itch (but not nearly as good): https://waclawzimpel.bandcamp.com/album/lines

bought this record at the weekend thanks to the Whiney thread. It's pretty good so far!

and i know i keep banging on about it, but anyone who likes this should check out Girls In Airports as well.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/45-best-albums-of-2016-so-far-20160620/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-ears-20160617

Looking forward to this!

http://www.factmag.com/2016/06/28/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-suzanne-ciani-frkwys/

Nice

So, I got Sunergy in the mail today, and it's pretty dope! It sounds less organic and more influenced by old school space music/synth jamming than KAS's previous albums, but being a big space music fan I like that! I wasn't familiar with Suzanne Ciani before, but based on her liner notes his been playing the Buchla since the 1970s, and I guess that's her hand showing with the more spacey stuff. It's not like proper cool/minimal '70s space music a la Tangerine Dream though, it gets more loopy and heavy, and occasionally the arpeggios even sound like they could be from Wechselspannung or some other downtempo electro album. No beats though, which is fine.

Time will tell, but on the first listen this may even be my favourite Smith album since Tides.

New interview up today if yr interested in the process (and how they got together):

http://thequietus.com/articles/20910-kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-suzanne-ciani-interview

The Ciani 'Invisible Jukebox' feature in the Sept 2016 issue of The Wire is also a good read (and very funny in places).

so I checked if this was up on Spotify and it isn't there yet, but they have added Suzanne Ciani's Buchla Concerts 1975 disc, which I'm checking out now:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5NeWznX1xhs9KzsNh5PZQT

nice catch, thx for sharing

A Bolinas concert would be amazing. Also, it would only be promoted via flyers posted at the bar and the general store, maybe a message written in the sand at low tide, and I'd never hear about it.

Yeah, the official release date is September 16th... I pre-ordered it via Bandcamp, and for some reason got the physical CD in mail yesterday already, even though you can't yet download the digital version on the Bandcamp page.

catching ciani tonight at roulette. finally a brooklyn modular show i can get excited about

Super psyched for Sunergy, I know I'm going to love it...

I've been listening to this more, and I really like the (apparently) improvised nature of the music, you never know where it's gonna go next. I mostly listen to ambient/space music informed by techno and house and other forms of dance music, but this seems to sidestep that lineage completely, possibly because Ciani predates it. So it's nicely unpredictable.

If you could make one complaint, it's that the soundworld on all three tracks is pretty samey, I guess because most of the music was done with the two Buchlas Smith and Ciani played. But it's a trippy world to dive into!

Man, I love the synth twitches on the first track starting around 14:45 minutes... Like aliens burping through 303s.

sweet video, looks like they had fun making this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5Xaw5r43n0

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/16/don-buchla-modular-synthesizer-pioneer-dies-aged-79

https://twitter.com/kaitlynaurelia/status/776897971078045697

Nobody posted this yet apparently - limited release on a tape compilation from 2015, so it's understandable if it was missed

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

Sunergy is on Spotify now, but for some reason searching by that title didn't show it: had to look for 'FRKWYS' instead

One spin in after getting this last night – and it's pretty much exactly what I wanted/expected, and that's a great thing. Love this.

this is wayyy more up my alley than the other KAS stuff.

great last night in london, when it got started...

(i think the support was a dj, but there was nothing to say that the special guest dj had taken over from the bloke playing records beforehand. so it just felt like we were being kept waiting for 2 hours, 200 of us crammed into a railway arch.)

she came on at 9:30, played for 50 minutes or so. not sure how much was sequenced or how much of it was improvised. seemed to be playing songs, short bits with vocals with some longer (better) bits in between.

Sounds pretty similar to her set in SF a couple weeks ago. Would love for her to just jam for an hour, but then I'm currently in love with Sunergy soooo

colorful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goegShPV3i0

Nice. Is this a leftover from the EARS sessions?

listening to Ears and it really is a great album

new album in October ya'll

o wow amazing news. caught her show at knockdown in brooklyn, one of the best live experiences i've had in a while. love her music.

radddddddd love her

Saw her in SF. She sold her swag directly from the stage after. Not ashamed to say I fell in love while handing her cash for a shirt. She's a really lovely person in addition to being an incredible musician.

cool 360 degree video of her studio:

https://www.facebook.com/redbull/videos/10158787001250352/

A cover of Sade's "By Your Side"? Sure, why not

https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/track/by-your-side-sade-cover

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)

New one doesn't have the hooks the last one did, but the last four tracks ... damn. Combining that deep meditative ish with that lightness.

eh imo the hooks are way stronger this time around

i love this album

I really like this, but EARS was a bit stronger. My main complaint is that I could stand slightly less singing and more synth noodling. There are several tracks where her vocals work really well, but using the same harmonizer effect over and over gets a little tiresome.

Looking forward to seeing her perform in London tonight, stoked.

Her sound is wearing off on me. It felt so incredible and new on Euclid; then there were moments on EARS that I really relished. Now it's starting to feel like a cartoon. I am ready for her to take a hard left turn into something different.

i am co-producing her next album, it is a modular synthesis tribute to tom jones

.... jesus christ y'all

that is on her christmas album

Agree with Pgwp: the textures and rhythms on this album sound amazing, but her singing gets tiring after a while, especially since is using the same filter that was on her previous two albums too, but even more. I still like Waves more than the next three albums because that vocal sound is too much, but I wish she'd make an instrumental synth album again, with the same craft and imagination she's managed to put into this one.

Agree with Pgwp and Moodles, I mean.

I like the vocals

tuomas hates vocals shocker

I've nothing against vocals per se, but their range on Smith's last two albums is not that wide, and using the same filter on them without exception is tiring. I'd be saying the same if she was using the same synth sound on every track. And the two instrumental albums she's (co)produced sound great, so it's not like this is her only thing.

Yeah, I would love to see her play live in a more jam context - something along the lines of the Sunergy record with Suzanne Ciani. But that said, the live show was pretty jaw-dropping amazing. Cyborg trance, channelling the cosmos territory with amazing bio-organic visuals. There's definitely hooks and strong melodies, certainly even songs, but this stuff is at times also close to mantras or chanting. And the vocals absolutely worked for the whole show, even more so than the album, I felt.

Four Tet remix of I Will Make Room For You is ace

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

This is true!

I was at the Scala show too - pretty astonishing. Has she done one of those "Ableton Live" type videos recently (or ever) where explains the gear she uses on stage and how the sounds are generated?

Hearing all the recent stuff end to end did however betray how samey some of the vocals are (and it doesn't help that a lot of the songs are in the same key). I want her to carry on with lyrics but I think a radical change of direction on the vocal front for the next record is called for.

Played the new one at record club. https://devonrecordclub.com/2017/12/02/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-a-kid-round-105-nicks-choice/

Were you able to put on another record afterwards?

lol

haha, actually we did play this last I think, although not deliberately because of that!

couldn't find a better thread to post this, but claire was mentioned above

classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOWG03-xnXU

touring and playing Dublin next month!

A new thing.

https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/album/electronic-series-vol-1-abstractions

I listened to it late last night. It seemed likeable as a long improvisation, maybe not worth $10?

My students mostly seem to think she's crazy for working with Buchla synths instead of a laptop in the 21st century.

Yes, definitely one to stream now and then, rather than buy. The cartoon sounds about two thirds of the way through injected some nice levity.

Listening to it now (and I bought it anyway) -- it's fun!

Not sure if this has been linked already, she has a monthly radio show on nts - https://www.nts.live/shows/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith

sounds nice would be cool if the tape came with some succulents

Radio show starting up now, checking it out.

cool!

Good stuff, pretty eclectic.

She’s so lucky to have inherited a buchla from a neighbour. That’s insane. Also living on orca island - damn

https://crackmagazine.net/2018/08/listen-to-a-new-ambient-track-kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-created-using-field-recordings-from-a-mountain-hike-in-los-angeles/

unusually informative URL
thanks!

https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/album/tides-music-for-meditation-and-yoga

I wonder if that's just a vinyl/digital reissue of the original Waves? I love it to death, but I don't see the point of listening to ambient music on vinyl, and obviously I don't need to buy the digital version twice. It seems to be lacking the final track ("Tides X") of the original release, so maybe it's been reworked in some way?

New album on Ghostly International in May.

Teaser track, "Expanding Electricity":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-fBFJ6KuM4

Press blurb extract:

West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She's continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body's relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her latest full-length, The Mosaic of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself.

"I guess in one sentence, this album is my expression of love and appreciation for electricity," says Smith. While writing and recording, she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers. Not a dancer by any traditional definition, she taught herself improvisatory movement realizing flexibility, strength, and unexpectedly, what Smith calls “a visual language” (the term was introduced to her by filmmaker Sean Hellfritsch) stemming from the human body and comprised of vibrational shapes. Understood as cymatics, as she says, "as a reference for how frequencies can be visualized," much like a mosaic.

Smith describes her first encounters with this mosaic; "the inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other...My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday...into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself." As it has arrived, in a completed state, The Mosaic of Transformation is a holistic manifestation of embodied motions. Smith's signature textural curiosity that fans have grown to adore pivots naturally into a proprioceptive study of melody and timbre. Airy organ and voice interweave with burbling Buchla-spawned harmonic bubbles.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES6qKBxWsAAdLRe?format=jpg&name=small

*reads blurb*

*stocks up on rotten tomatoes*

I'm sure you did the stocking up proprioceptively.

tbf now i'm on lockdown my flat is now also a 'multidisciplinary creative environment'

hurling the rotten tomatoes will probably qualify as a 'holistic manifestation of embodied motions' though

Nice, pretty psyched to add this to the collection

I love her music and I'm woo-woo as fuck so I can't wait for this

I know certain posters are docking her coolness points or whatever, but I like that she is true to herself and her own idiosyncratic weirdness.

It makes a lot of sense if you;ve seen her live.

She emanates L.A./west coast New Ageness both in her music and her promos too now haha. Probably has some crystals next to her synths or something, but still love her to death

Shes from and lives on orcas island in the san juans, no? Peak west coast crystal vibe zone

still a shocking album cover regardless of her vibe

she should tour with Marianne williamson

or score a love prayer

what's the matter with peace love and understanding

sayin

https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/album/the-mosaic-of-transformation

Enjoying the new album

It's a bit more chill and vocal focus. Feels like a return to the direction she took on Euclid.

I am very into this, so dreamy

So, apparently she’s an anti-vaxxer too? Bummed to find out that facet. I don’t mind the crystal vibe zone aspect of her personality, but this puts her work in a whole new, unfortunately, less charitable view for me.

lj warned us back in 2017.

Ah fuck, really? Where did she air these views?

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith did an AMA yesterday and didn't answer a question about her apparently being an anti-vaxxer. This all sucks, obviously, but something I didn't expect is that I'd now begin to view her musical endeavors as some sort of grift. pic.twitter.com/0GqQ3Bbnl2

— Joshua Minsoo Kim (@misterminsoo) May 20, 2020

the new age movement has always involved a lot of grift, didn't help that the skeptical community turned out to be raging jackasses

Zappa to thread.

She makes vaguely new age music? Its going to come with the territory

Wholly unsurprising, but yeah I think it's ok to enjoy the music that comes out of being a crystal-brain yogahead

"I'd now begin to view her musical endeavours as some sort of a grift"

Hassling an established micro-celebrity about a viewpoint that they've expressed via a single Instagram story is full-tilt narcissistic abuse. I read that AMA yesterday and I hope that everybody's next favourite band is a cliff and they all dive right in

Not saying anti-vaxxers aren't the worst, they are, but ffs when is this shit gonna abate

I agree - and good for her getting paid for selling music to that app she isn’t complicit in some terrible sin bc she wants to make a living from her music

thirded

I think it's ok to enjoy the music that comes out of being a crystal-brain yogahead

Of course it is! And, if you think about it, accusations of grift don't make sense. It would be more suspicious if she wasn't an anti-vaxxer

FWIW being a “crystal brain yogahead” is totally fine and also a far cry from pushing dangerous anti-science bullshit. The AMA dodge doesn’t bother me, it’s the straight up anti-vaxx propaganda she posted on IG that rubs me the wrong way. Conflating being into yoga and crystals with being dangerously anti-science is also fucking stupid.

For the record, I’m not co-signing the “grifter” accusation, that’s weird to single her out for getting paid through teaming up with an app. She’s hardly the first musician to do so.

Thats also fine!

People are going to have different levels about what they cancel artists over. This one is hardly a surprise though

The grifter argument is probably more about expectation that an artist be a certain sort of person and when it turns out they might not be quite that, the gap between expectation and reality can't be resolved for some

Who are the people who what they really responded to in her music was responsible medical advice and promises to never sell out

The people upset in the AMA?!

i mean obviously not but somehow learning that she isn't those things is still spoiling the joy i guess

Exactly. I mean I was pretty much in love with her (as much as an adult can fawn over an artist these days) until the anti-vaxx news. I still love her music, but my feelings for her the person have been shattered.

People are disappointed that KAS is anti-science, which is a valid criticism of ANYONE these days, let alone your favorite Buchla jamming artist. It's like finding out Neil Gaiman and Beck were Scientologists.

Regardless of whether we "love" her music or not, she has revolutionized the use of modular synth in popular music, developed an entirely unique songwriting style, literally doesn't drink and is as straight as they come, and the only thing that is getting cancelled in 2020 is toxic fandom and patterns of abusive control. Go harass a real celebrity if you want to pretend to be an activist

(That last statement isn't directed at anyone here obv I'm just super-pissed that I log into an AMA and top post is people dragging KAS over a fucking Instagram story reblogging somebody else's dumb belief.)

anti-anti-vaxxers are almost worse than anti-vaxxers imo

my feelings for her the person have been shattered.

also come on dude this is truly pathetic, are you like a grown man? get a life

She's one of the few artists I kinda fell for in a dopey fanboy over the last few years. Nothing wrong with that, other than some embarrassment when confessing here haha. I just vibed with her sound and persona, creating an emotional connection. I was one of those "overpraise" comments in one of those Whiney polls for the Ears album.

Go harass a real celebrity if you want to pretend to be an activist

It was an AMA, the third A being "anything", and clarifying someone's beliefs that they publicly expressed via social media (even if it was a lazy reblogging of some BS) is a totally valid fan question to ask an artist in a public forum! That's not harassment. She's publicly evangelizing beliefs that cause people harm. It gives her an opportunity to further clarify her already public views

Looking at the thread, most of the comments are merely disappointed. A feeling I share.

anti-anti-vaxxers are almost worse than anti-vaxxers imo

Nah.

Anyway, I have no strong feelings about her stuff one way or another but insofar as some of my favourite music of all time was made by bona fide murderers, I don't think being a gullible neo-hippie or whatever is sufficient grounds for socioprofessional erasure.

"Oh my feelings are so hurt my illusions of this person are shattered I feel grifted" I literally wish to grift your sorry ass across a gravel road. The woman owns a Buchla and is from the Pacific NW at least make this about agency and class, "the Music Easel suggests wealth", be at least a little more artful with your toxicity. I don't feel outraged so much as insulted

Might also be hitting a personal nerve id guess

anti-anti-vaxxers are almost worse than anti-vaxxers imo

Hard disagree here, I'm a resolute anti-anti-vaxxer, I'm just wondering when people are going to shake their heads and be like "oh wow hassling this person signed to Western Vinyl over a random IG story reblog did not increase my personal wealth or social capital, and the sweet tang of abuse is so fleeting, maybe I should attempt to improve the world in some other way"

i keep reading that tweet and thinking i no longer know the meaning of the word "grift"

agree with cfcf who said in the twitter thread that new age stuff is inherently a grift and it's quite disappointing she's an anti-vaxxer but i don't know why anyone cares that she got paid to premiere her album on some new age grift app

fgti if your point is that both sides should stop fucking posting, i heartily agree

...I mean it's a good album.

It is. Her best since Ears imho.

i mean if you think about it music is kind of a grift, it's just some assholes playing bullshit

fgti if your point is that both sides should stop fucking posting, i heartily agree

Same goes for me, frankly! I don't know why this touched a nerve, I barely know the woman.

if your point is that both sides should stop fucking posting, i heartily agree

board description

This news doesn't surprise me at all, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty of anti-vaxers in the music biz. Music weirdos gonna believe some oddball stuff sometimes. It sucks, but it's pretty predictable.

<i>I'm just wondering when people are going to shake their heads and be like "oh wow hassling this person signed to Western Vinyl over a random IG story reblog did not increase my personal wealth or social capital, and the sweet tang of abuse is so fleeting, maybe I should attempt to improve the world in some other way"

― it’s been one week since you pissed on me (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, May 20, 2020 6:16 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink</i>

^^^^^^^^

I'm just wondering when people are going to shake their heads and be like "oh wow hassling this person signed to Western Vinyl over a random IG story reblog did not increase my personal wealth or social capital, and the sweet tang of abuse is so fleeting, maybe I should attempt to improve the world in some other way"

― it’s been one week since you pissed on me (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, May 20, 2020 6:16 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^^^^^^

― winters (josh), Wednesday, May 20, 2020 8:25 PM (0 seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

(hope the silliness of my stoned formatting capabilities can offer a break from this particular conversation tbqh)

if only people had any control over what IG stories they reblogged

this is killing me

i mean if you think about it music is kind of a grift, it's just some assholes playing bullshit

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, May 20, 2020 9:30 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

also, great fgti posts

I still jam Exene and Moe Tucker and I'm still gonna jam KAS, ymmv

Also, I applied to the music supervisor job at Calm and didn't get it. I wonder who did!

there are anti-anti-anti-vaxxers posting in this thread

well i can't agree with that

funny, when i saw she was debuting the album on Calm I thought, well that's perfect, kudos to whoever thought of that and kudos to both sides for getting it done.

that aspect of this, at least, is like ... the opposite of a grift!

New Age-y musician is a bit New Age-y as a person, News at 11.

Back to the album, listening it to the first time right now, and while the synth sounds are bright and beautiful (as always), I have to say I'm a bit disappointed by it... Based on the pre-release info, I was expecting it to be proper ambient/space music in the vein of Tides and Sunergy, but it still has the mouse-on-marsy "naive electronica" approach she's been doing since Euclid. And there's nothing wrong with that, but this is her forth solo album in a row with the same sound, so I'm getting a bit tired of it.

Obviously this criticism has everything to do with my expectations and nothing with the actual record, but since Tides remains my favourite album of hers (and one of the best ambient records of the '00s), I keep hoping she would one day do something more droney like it.

funny, when i saw she was debuting the album on Calm I thought, well that's perfect, kudos to whoever thought of that and kudos to both sides for getting it done.

that aspect of this, at least, is like ... the opposite of a grift!

― alpine static

same. honestly, when i was first reading that blurb about Calm i thought "hmm, i wonder if they have good yoga videos too. maybe i'll look into that." #thoughtquote

i do like the new album, but i also sympathize with what tuomas is saying too. there were some moments on EARS that really surprised me, but with the last few releases i kind of know what to expect. i suppose that's a familiar problem for any artist (maybe not even a problem - it depends on what we want as listeners)

she has revolutionized the use of modular synth in popular music

C'mon, seriously? Modular synthesisers have been used in all kinds of musical contexts for over fifty years. For a start, even if Wendy Carlos's Bach interpretations don't count in your book as "popular", what about Tangerine Dream? Or Kraftwerk?

can't lie this is p lol and the Calm thing is pure new-age grift I mean come on

nonetheless i think it's wrong to stick the knife in so self-righteously as her cancellers seem to relish doing

her art should be judged on its merits, not her personal beliefs (even if those beliefs *might* bring those around her into risk)

Haha, I've never observed anybody suggesting that the art of Ian Stuart Donaldson should be judged on its merits, rather than his personal beliefs.

would've been surprised if she wasn't an anti-vaxxer tbh. pnw crystal/yoga people are probably one of the biggest anti-vaxx populations there is. I live among them.

I don't think I could handle living on the West Coast.

even if those beliefs *might* bring those around her into risk

Not good enough. Speaking as someone who knew two people who died young from a disease that they could have been vaccinated against, KAS and her ilk can GTFO.

anyone reading this thread: where did you first learn that she was anti-vax? how active of a role did she play in her disinformation campaign? would you have known about it if it weren't for this thread?

i'd guess most people reading (posters or lurkers) would say no, they would not have heard about it. she doesn't seem to make a big deal out of it. from what i can tell, she posted an instagram story to her 19.1K followers on jan 12 that said that vaccinations were dangerous. later that day, someone on twitter with 1,433 followers posted "Woah kaitlyn aurelia smith is an anti-vaxxer??", which was retweeted 3 times and liked 22 times.

if you do a google search for kaitlyn aurelia smith vaccination, you won't be able to find much, if anything. i'd guess that this thread may become the top search result for it, soon.

i get as angry about ignorant/dangerous beliefs as much as anyone, and i try to hold people to a high standard. but anyone freaking out on this thread needs to take a step back and assess the situation

it's one Insta story repost apparently? yeah, I don't follow her on Insta so I didn't know, and I still don't give a shit

i saw the original tweet in my timeline bc i follow the person who tweeted it and i thought it was stupid + trivial but i never would've brought it up on ilm if others hadn't mentioned it first

someone's moral sensibilities can inform their art consciously or otherwise like anything else. never heard skrewdriver but i'm guessing their shitto sensibilities might be more directly palpable and central than KAS's thoughts on immunology are in her music

i mean if you think about it music is kind of a grift, it's just some assholes playing bullshit

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, May 21, 2020 1:30 AM (fifteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^new board description?

lol @ the idea that people noting that a minor musician has shared anti-vaxx propaganda are somehow worse than anti-vaxxers themselves. so weird to see which artists get the wagons circled in their defense.

for what its worth, i only brought it up because it was disappointing to learn. i never said or implied she should be canceled, but when an artist makes their dumb ass beliefs public, of course i'm going to think differently of them.

lol @ the idea that people noting that a minor musician has shared anti-vaxx propaganda are somehow worse than anti-vaxxers themselves.

who expressed that idea? (honest q: i skimmed over the last couple dozen posts looking for it, didn't find it)

Regardless of whether we "love" her music or not, she has revolutionized the use of modular synth in popular music, developed an entirely unique songwriting style, literally doesn't drink and is as straight as they come, and the only thing that is getting cancelled in 2020 is toxic fandom and patterns of abusive control. Go harass a real celebrity if you want to pretend to be an activist

noting it /= "this puts her work in a whole new, unfortunately, less charitable view for me"

I just wanna say that there was no ad hominem intent in my replies above. Imago is someone who I think is in general very OTM in his posts here.

are people saying that Calm is a grift because you shouldn’t have to pay for it or something

because you don’t get a piece of vinyl with it or something?

hopefully the wire will ask her about all this

i think a lot of people put things like yoga, meditation, "healing music" and stuff like that in the same category as whatever they sell on Goop

i guess i should be prepared for someone to come back with a link to the Calm website that shows it selling the same penis enhancement power crystals as the ones they sell on goop or whatever

this revelation has tarnished modular synths for me, they just sound like so many shades of grift now

Calm is fine. I think Numero and LITA and RVNG have put in a lot of work removing the false barrier between "good new age" and "bad new age" which mostly seems dictated by font choice

*keyboard drone but a photo of a log cabin under papyrus font*: This is a grift!

*keyboard drone but a drawing of some shapes under helvetica font*: I'm literally shaking rn

I thought modular synths consisted of 100% natural components, I feel so grifted rn.

xp

i mean i disagree but haha

honestly i think because of those labels (and i own many LPs by all three), the log cabin under papyrus font is held is much higher esteem than perhaps it ever has been

btw, the part i disagree with is obv the idea of "removing the false barrier between "good new age" and "bad new age"

xpost lol whiney

I think ppl have embraced the corniness of 'bad new age'. I think it's kind of similar to the self-conscious retro vibin of the scene in the garcia peoples thread

re: the Calm app, what's the problem? people don't buy music, Spotify pays pennies, what is she supposed to do

get a job! sell physical goods at the farmers market! stop showing people how to relax!

xxpost I think some have embraced the corn, but I enjoy Iasos in the same way I enjoy Windy and Carl, and can't imagine anyone who isn't using this as a serious lifestyle choice/drug thing wouldn't either. I went to a Leaving Records music under a tree thing and it wasn't all that different than going to see Fennesz or whatever save the amount of pot smoke in the air and vegan treats, and that just might be "Los Angeles"

I love a lot of 70s new age to death, but truthfully I can’t even bring myself to check out the stuff that’s really explicitly functionally titled like “Music For Spiritual Improvement”... for the same reason Stephen Halpern kinda gives me the creeps.. idk

I had the calm app for a bit, I liked it

why don't you have it any more tho? ;)

I'm relaxing with a vaccine on the rocks right now

xpost, I found a cheaper meditation app thereby allowing me to feel less bad about not using it

congratulations on your deprogramming :D

like many things that make me feel better and are good for me, I refuse to meditate apparently

i mean i know some music that might help

many xp to Vast Halo

I'm not saying "wow modular synths haven't been used in a pop context before", she literally actually changed the way they are performed-- when she first emerged, singing songs while doodling along on a Music Easel, it was an absolutely new thing. How can I describe it? I hadn't seen modular synth used in such a pre-ordained way, like, she had specifically written a very precise way of performing something (which still left room for improvising), it was a far cry from the way I'd previously seen modular synths used by, like, Alessandro Cortini or Emeralds or any of the other normal dude modular synthesists.

The Blow have recently been doing something similar, albeit with more focus on the message and politic of the songs, with different but equally resonant effect

Alright, fair enough!

many xps - Monetizing mindfulness is gross, Calm is probably less of a grift than a lot of shit related to that.

i know those apps are corny but I'm not capable of going full Hoos into real Buddhist shit but even breathing for 5 minutes helps

as jim in vancouver noted, if anyone thinks Calm is a New Age grift, never move to Cascadia

if you do a google search for kaitlyn aurelia smith vaccination, you won't be able to find much, if anything. i'd guess that this thread may become the top search result for it, soon.

hey any anti-vaxxers who end up on this thread via Google - EAT SHIT AND DIE.

tbf that's kind of what they're trying to do

for what its worth, i only brought it up because it was disappointing to learn. i never said or implied she should be canceled, but when an artist makes their dumb ass beliefs public, of course i'm going to think differently of them.

xxxxp this sums up my feelings perfectly and informs my comments above. I'm not cancelling KAS at all, and will still enthusiastically buy her records and see her perform, but it's hard not to express disappointment and see her in a different light.

xxp fgti, I'll check out The Blow!

many xps - Monetizing mindfulness is gross, Calm is probably less of a grift than a lot of shit related to that.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Thursday, May 21, 2020 2:43 PM (yesterday)

I think I agree with you. For some instinctual reason that stuff feels manipulative and creepy to me. It's kinda in the same vein as those "we send you a box of things in the mail" services that supplant the requirement to do basic adult tasks? I think for me, the aspect that feels creepy and manipulative (the new age stuff) is that it implies you are incapable of adequately taking care of your own base human needs (like base of the maslow pyramid, base needs) and require this specialized service in order to do so? But as this thread shows, there are intelligent people who find these apps and what-not actually useful and don't mind paying for them? So I should just re-think my instinctual reaction.

i wouldn't blow $60 on Calm, but i might if i had more money. but it wouldn't be for learning how to address my base human needs, and i honestly i wouldn't assume that would be anyone else's intention, either. instead, it would just be to get some nice guided yoga and meditation exercises. i don't see yoga or meditation as a pursuit of base of the maslow pyramid, physiological needs. if anything they're more for the top of the pyramid - esteem and self-actualization. just sitting and being quiet (..calm?) and breathing feels really good. i have trouble doing it without some sort of audio or visual guide, though. i get distracted, otherwise.

but i don't know, i don't actually buy any of these apps or subscriptions or anything, so i don't know what they're hawking on there. i just look for youtubes and have never felt the need to pay for anything beyond that.

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

https://www.instagram.com/pitchfork/

I don't know, it beats doing nothing.

it's like someone on Twitter was shading meal kit services, I love HelloFresh, 3 nights a week I don't have to think about what to make my kid, no shopping for some spice I'll use once every 5 years, plus motherfucker I know you live off DoorDash

it's like someone on Twitter was shading meal kit services, I love HelloFresh, 3 nights a week I don't have to think about what to make my kid, no shopping for some spice I'll use once every 5 years, plus motherfucker I know you live off DoorDash

lol

i don't actually buy any of these apps or subscriptions or anything, so i don't know what they're hawking on there. i just look for youtubes and have never felt the need to pay for anything beyond that.

fair enough -- i guess it's similar to how i look online for recipes when i can't decide what to make for dinner or what the typical ingredients are for some dish -- these resources exist and why not use them to improve your life.

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 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

KAS is great at ambient textures, and not so hot at 'songs' imo

I was broadly in this camp too until the jolly new single which does both texture and tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pODPke5PJ24