Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

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.