#4025: The Ever-Changing World of Electronic Music

Hear some electronic music from Icelandic Ben Frost, Qasim Naqvi, Valiska, and Moscow-based pianist/composer Dmitry Evgrafov. We’ll also hear a special in-studio performance by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, live from Studio 5.

West coast-based synthesist, producer, and composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith experiments with weaving melodic patterns and pulses through delays and various gates, using various analogue synthesizers – like her main instrument, the vintage Buchla modular synthesizer, (along with the rare EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer), and other digital processing. Her palette includes strings, bassoons, clarinets, and horns, natural sounds, and noisy textures, along with her layered vocals with arresting results. Smith grew up on Orcas Island in the northwest region of Washington state, and we mention that because it’s possible to hear how her creative work continues to draw from the magic nature: dense forests, rocky islets, empty beaches - and serenity and isolation of Orcas.

On Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's latest, The Kid, due out in October, she crafts a playfully strange expression of human awareness via these synthesized sound designs. The album’s over-arching concept maps human existence from birth to death, from awareness of the self to seeking wisdom and achieving peace and how that might coexist in nature. Hear some of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s music from the studio session, recently recorded at WNYC for the Soundcheck podcast.

Listen to music from the Icelandic composer Ben Frost, recorded with the legendary Steve Albini in Chicago. From Frost’s record, The Centre Cannot Hold, hear music that has much in common with his unsettling soundscapes from By The Throat, but somehow deeper, more intense and raw, yet also futuristic. There’s music from Moscow-based pianist/composer Dmitry Evgrafov, in collaboration with Serbian soundscape composer Abul Mogard. Then, listen to music by drummer, composer, and member of the group Dawn of Midi, Qasim Naqvi. He is based in Brooklyn and when not touring with DOM, he composes electronic and chamber music for film, dance, theatre and chamber ensembles- like the soon-to-be-released record, Film. Plus, hear music from Valiska, a Polish-born, but now Calgary, Canada-based composer of soundscapes who layers Moog synthesizer and tape loops with washes of analog hiss, crackles and warps.

PROGRAM #4025, The Ever-Changing World of Electronic Music, with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (First Aired: 9/21/2017)           

ARTIST: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
WORK: Labyrinth VII, excerpt [1:00]
RECORDING: Euclid
SOURCE: Western Vinyl 130
INFO: westernvinyl.com | kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
WORK: An Intention [4:01]
RECORDING: Live, WNYC 9/8/17
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: The work appears on The Kid, available Oct 6, 2017 
westernvinyl.com | kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
WORK: Existence in the Unfurling [10:56]
RECORDING: Live, WNYC 9/8/17
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: The work appears on EARS, available via westernvinyl.com | kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
WORK: To Follow And Lead, excerpt [1:00] 
RECORDING: The Kid
SOURCE: Western Vinyl 170, Due out Oct 6, 2017
INFO: westernvinyl.com | kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Ben Frost
WORK: Ionia [6:49] 
RECORDING: The Centre Cannot Hold
SOURCE: Mute Records, Due out Sept. 29, 2017
INFO: http://smarturl.it/BFTCCH

ARTIST: Qasim Naqvi
WORK: Aligned [1:37], The Cast [2:24] 
RECORDING: Film
SOURCE: Erased Tapes, Due out Sept. 29, 2017
INFO: erasedtapesmusic.com

ARTIST: Dmitry Evgrafov
WORK: Znanie (feat. Abul Mogard) [5:30] 
RECORDING: Comprehension of Light
SOURCE: 130701 / FatCat, Due out Oct. 6, 2017
INFO: fat-cat.co.uk

ARTIST: Valiska
WORK: Softness [6:02] 
RECORDING: On Pause
SOURCE: Trouble In Utopia, Due out October 13, 2017 
INFO: valiska.bandcamp.com