The Magic Of The Buchla 100 Synthesizer: A Night At The Starline Social Club with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is an American composer, producer, and performer originally from Northwest Washington. The artist, who is currently based in Los Angeles, spent her former years at the Berklee college of music where she discovered the wonders of the Buchla 100 synthesizer, the foundational instrument in Smith’s current music. Smith is known for her unique compositions of synth arrangements and is currently on tour for her Let’s Turn it Into Sound (2022). album.

I got the chance to attend her show live at the Starline Social Club in Oakland California.

Smith’s sublime experimental music takes you on a celestial trip of collaged beats, warps, and hums. It was certainly an uncategorizable mix of sounds – synth, keys, vocals, bass, the occasional tambourine, and what seems to be a steel drum here and there. Her detailed fingerwork on the Buchla modular synthesizers is certainly something that I was not accustomed to, but after the first song, I developed an ardent appreciation for the precise yet miraculously flowing cohesion of Smith’s electronic noise.

Her vocals consist of an almost extrinsic distortion that gives many of her songs an extra layer of sound. Smith’s vocals, rather than using traditional language to express meaning explicitly, are one and the same as the melody, adding to the emotional feeling of the music. Along with vocals, she brings a complicated yet cohesive mix of traditional DJ style, synth composition, and audio distortion to her performance.

One particular song caught my ear. “Unbraid the Merge”, which started out as what seemed to be a further climbing interlude of synth, quickly brings you down to earth with a sturdy bass and distinct percussion. The five-minute journey of layers and sheets of thick sounds crescendoed into a steady beat and was tied together with an anodic synth. Not only was this song a journey for the ears, but the graphics to go along with it were paralleled to the noise created by Smith.

Smith at the Starline on 12/9

During “Unbraid The Merge”

The graphics revolved around a sort of neon animatronic woman – shapeshifting with each song into a creature that fit the ambiance of the current song. During the middle of her show, Smith noted that her graphics were created by using a motion suit, a brilliant move, as this allowed the graphics to perfectly mimic the artist’s movements and vision for the song.

By the end of the performance, the crowd’s heartbeats were in tandem, I could feel it. The music slowly faded and left the audience hanging on a whim, wanting more (the best way to end a show). I got a chance to talk to Smith after the show.

She commented on the inspiration for her new and upcoming music: “it’s a combination of wanting to get out of the part of my brain connected to language and express it through sounds.” Sith expressed to me the important influence of sounds in motion on her work, and how all of her music is meant to be a free-flowing form that is constantly moving. For Let’s Turn it Into Sound she made a point of noting the inspiration of compound words: “I just love how there is no one word for one thing, and how different words can come together to create meaning”

Her album itself is certainly a reflection of its creator’s inspiration. Its layers of electronic sounds and automatic melodies compounding onto one another, oftentimes slowly building – a humming of a musical pulse into a crescendo of cathodic rhythm (or vice versa). Her unique language of arrangements speaks for itself, and the composer’s use of sound gives Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s music a meaning, and a life of its own.