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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s first encounter with a Buchla 100 modular synthesizer sounds almost too twee to be true. While Smith devoted almost a decade of her life to music, studying composition and sound engineering at Berklee, it wasn’t until she returned to live in her hometown of Orcas Island, Washington, a quiet idyllic spot in the Pacific Northwest, that she came across the early creation of synth pioneer Don Buchla. At the time, she was living in the same small cabin where she grew up, commuting on horseback to the dairy farm where she had begun working. “I had this mind-set like, I’m giving up on music,” Smith said recently over the phone, speaking from her home in Los Angeles where she was busy rehearsing her live show. “I just want a homestead and to start a farm. It was when I finally decided to give up on music when I felt this openness and this freedom to play without any expectation.”
Serendipitously, one of her neighbors lent her a Buchla 100 to play around with, and she started teaching herself the rudimentary basics of synthesis in between her agricultural duties. “I would wake up and play music and create a patch, then I’d ride over to one of the farms and work a little bit, ride the horse back, change the patch, and it was just so much fun. It was pure exploration,” she said. “It’s definitely my favorite memory that I have in my life.”
Since this utopian introduction to the world of synthesizer music, Smith has released five studio albums that have garnered critical acclaim for her distinct ability to evoke seemingly organic sounds in her dense, primarily electronic compositions. She’s collaborated with New Age legend Suzanne Ciani (Ciani synthesized that fizzy noise of a Coca-Cola can being opened for the company’s TV advertisements in the ’70s) and just last year released her otherworldly breakthrough album Ears. With The Kid, released this fall, she began to further flesh out her own electronic sound and brought things into a more personal dimension.
The Kid is a concept album that charts the emotional stages of life, from the newborn lack of self-awareness to self-questioning teenage years, which Smith describes as possessing a certain sonic immaturity but “in a really wonderful, inquisitive way.” The album’s sound progresses in this existential narrative arc—early songs like “A Kid” overflow with gurgles, springy synths, and deep, tumbling bass notes, while later tracks like “Who I Am and Why I Am Where I Am” are lucid and meditative. The textures that Smith creates are inspired by birds, insects, and ocean wind; the entire project, she says, began from an inexplicable urge to create something that sounded like the crunching of a “giant frosted shredded wheat,” a noise that she effectively manifests in the crackling beat of “Until I Remember.”
Aside from a desire to sonically render the consumption of breakfast cereal, the album’s distinct sound sprung from a difficult time in Smith’s life, a period during which she dealt with the loss of a loved one. She emphasizes the importance of staying present in the face of tragedy, a culled-from-real-life experience that she channels into the playful textures that formulate the album. “An unfortunate situation happened that taught me a really valuable lesson about how much I want to spend each moment, taking the time to find the play in everything and holding on to that kid energy,” she said. Songs like “I Am Consumed” radiate this youthful exuberance, its plucking melody sounding almost like Smith is playing a toy xylophone. And after a year that’s challenged our collective psyche on almost all fronts, it’s precisely this childlike yet resilient spirit that makes The Kid essential and contemplative listening.