Let's Turn It Into Sound

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s style fits in somewhere between Terry Riley and Suzanne Ciani (a pioneer of the famous Buchla synthesiser with whom she released an album in 2016, Sunergy). However, she’s switching things up with this 11th studio album, forging a sound closer to Holly Herndon and Ólafur Arnalds. The concept of Let's Turn It Into Sound is bold, to say the least. ‘I found myself in a situation which I think almost everyone has experienced… where you're a little confused on whether something is [coming from] you or if someone else is projecting onto you. That concept was really fascinating to me. How do we understand what it is that we’re feeling? How do we translate our experience of the world into something that someone else can understand?’ she explains. The album opens with ‘Have You Felt Lately?’, which asks the question that initially instigated this record. It's a song in two parts (or perhaps three, it's not entirely clear) which exhibits these different feelings and changes in mood that Smith has 'turned into sound'. The result is an album that brakes and skids without warning before swerving into a side road (which may well lead to a tunnel of breakbeats (‘Is It Me or Is It You’) or magical clouds (‘Unbrain’)). And all this with her beloved Buchla, of course, an instrument that she quite literally reinvents. She says that it feels like synthesisers ‘breathe’ and that ‘playing with the older synthesisers allows me to feel like I have this window into sculpting electricity’.  © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz