“If I wasn’t a musician, I’d be an athlete,” says Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, the multi-faceted composer, sound designer, visual artist – and part-time contortionist. She’s the brains behind the euphoric, mesmerising loops on 10 albums including Ears, The Kid and Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga, where she creates utterly immersive worlds, often on Buchla modular synthesisers. She presents her synth-pop show Touch the Plants on NTS Radio and writes scores for adverts and film, including queer indie rom-com Duck Butter (2018), starring Alia Shawkat and last year’s sci-fi drama Omni Loop, starring Ayo Edebiri.
Anyone following Smith on Instagram will have seen the electronic artist gracefully dangling over bannisters and folding herself into knotted shapes, sometimes looking as though she’s dropped out of the sky and crash-landed in an angular pile of limbs and long brown hair.
“I grew up studying martial arts and yoga – my mom is a yoga teacher. I practise hand balancing, contortion and acrobatics more now,” says Smith from her home in the San Juan islands in America’s Pacific Northwest, where she grew up. She splits her time between there and Portugal, where she knows plenty of good spots for tree and rock climbing. “It feels like using the opposite part of my brain from making music. As a kid I really wanted to be in the Olympics or be a stunt double. Extreme sports are a big part of my personality. Riding my motorcycle is kind of my palate cleanser. I love the focus – the presence. You have no choice but to focus.”
Sensuality and physicality are a huge influence on Smith’s upcoming album, Gush, or as she puts it, it’s inspired by “those moments when the senses melt together.” Smith has synaesthesia, where sounds create physical sensations for her.
“I feel music in my nervous system. Distinct, visceral feelings. Certain songs make me feel like I’m jumping on a trampoline – a fun feeling. Or sometimes, intellectually or emotionally I do not like a song, but then my body loves it.”
For Gush, she wanted to explore how we experience the world in a tactile way. “I wanted to write a love album. I wondered, ‘can I conjure the feeling of falling in love?’ The album has lots of romance and flirtation – not necessarily lust or sexuality, but a lot of people have interpreted it that way. It’s not about a person in particular. I was thinking more about objectification, me being objectified as a female bodied person, what we project onto people and also objects. It’s a lot of things all tangled up and moving – that’s where the name Gush comes from.”
Smith studied composition and sound engineering at Berklee College of Music, and is known for creating lush, experimental, electronic dreamscapes. She has collaborated with the ‘Diva of the Diode’ herself, the pioneering synth artist and early Buchla devotee, Suzanne Ciani. They made their sublime 2016 album Sunergy, a futuristic odyssey of bleeps, inspired by the sun and ocean. That album was number 13 of FRKWYS, an intergenerational collaboration series from Brooklyn record label RVNG Intl. Smith also made the bright, danceable Neptunes, a collaborative EP with Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard last year.
In preparation for the album’s release, Smith has been releasing a single every month, including ‘Drip’ which features a fabulous video choreographed by Kailani Rae, Smith’s dance teacher from Los Angeles’ Haus of Basquiat.
“While writing the album, I was taking vogue lessons and going to a lot of balls. It was really helping me untangle my own identity as a queer, female bodied person, and feelings about objectification. The vogue scene helped me get to a place where no matter what things get pushed or projected onto me, when people decide something about me, it no longer has the power to affect me. That was a big nudge in being able to share the album.”
Gush follows her 2022 album Let’s Turn It Into Sound, and feels more personal than previous releases, with more emphasis on the songwriting. “I have always used my voice in my work but a big intention was to share more of who I am. Be less conceptual, show more authenticity. I’m touched the most by art that lets me in. Something that lets me experience someone else’s perspective. I felt like, ‘Well, if I’m so inspired by that, why don’t I try doing that?’”
When not making music or chasing adrenaline highs with sport, Smith offers creative consultations, working one-on-one with artists. The bespoke sessions explore creative blocks and what stops people finishing artistic projects, for example. “Some people just want me to map out solutions and problem solve things, which I love, or maybe they really want to learn how to mix, but I have a background in studying the subconscious mind too, so when people want to go into that, I can go there too.”
Smith hopes her Edinburgh show, followed by a performance at Gilles Peterson’s We Out Here festival in Dorset the next day, will invite audiences to be curious about what they are projecting onto her.
“With a piece of fine art that you like, for example, we gaze at it, we give it our full attention, almost like we want it to stare back at us and see us too.”
Talking about the Gush track titles, ‘What’s Between Us’, ‘Both’, ‘Everything Combining’ and ‘Stare Into Me’, Smith often comes back to the idea of “two things coming together and creating a third thing.”
“A lot of us go to art for connection, and that’s what I want the album to be all about. Our interactions and connections. Everything feels like an interaction to me. The live show is me sharing the music, and that connection with the audience.”
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, The Hub, 16 Aug, 10pm. Gush is released on 22 Aug on Nettwerk.