On EARS, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith built much of the music around the Buchla Music Easel, but the album never feels interested in proving how electronic it is. She composed first with the Buchla, then arranged parts for woodwinds and vocals, using granular processing to further reshape the material. Before composing, she even studied slowed-down recordings of bird calls.
That detail interests me because the synthesizer and acoustic instruments are not placed in opposition. The woodwinds breathe, the voice bends, and the Buchla produces its own unstable movement until all three begin to occupy the same organic space.
Smith has described the Buchla as unusually human-sounding. I hear something slightly different: the instrument becomes convincing precisely because she does not force it to imitate a human instrument.
Electronic sound can have its own biology.
The lesson for me is not that synthesis should sound natural. It is that modulation, timing and small variations can make electronic sound behave as if something inside it is alive.
