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viewing 1 To 5 of 5 items
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LP
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TTP 108LP
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Sound Wonders: A Series of Epics is the second compilation from Touchtheplants, the imprint and multidisciplinary creative environment founded by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Sean Hellfritsch (aka Cool Maritime). Following 2020's Breathing Instruments (TTP 107LP), the new collection features sonic responses to a new prompt. Like its predecessor -- which explored music as an extension of the human body and the natural world -- the medium of focus here dates back to ancient civilizations. Smith invited artists to compose music based on the idea of epics: the long poems and narrative verse works that have detailed deeds and adventures since the dawn of storytelling. The musicians -- some of today's most exciting practitioners of experimental sound design, instrumentation, and synthesis -- took this directive loosely, realizing a series of vibrant and transportive songs evoking wondrous visions, subjects, and locales. From Elori Saxl's chamber piece to Olive Ardizoni's ode to the strange and beautiful phenomenon of starling murmurations with synth and xylophone tones the album splays out like chapters in a panoramic account of all that surrounds us. Features Elori Saxl, Matthewdavid's Mindflight, Appa Wú Wéi, Emile Mosseri, Yialmelic Frequencies, Nailah Hunter, Green-House (Olive Ardizoni), Emily Ritz, and SK Kakraba.
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2LP
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TTP 107LP
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Compilation album curated by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. The directive for the composers featured on Breathing Instruments was, in effect, to accentuate the ways in which instruments sound like they are breathing. Some have recreated the literal experience of feeling or hearing the human breath. Others take a more abstract approach, where "breathing" is more motif than object of emulation. From hushed pulsations and distant vocals in Kathryn Shuman's "Objects" to Julianna Barwick's blissful "Newborn", the tracks give sonic form to the experience of emerging from the womb. There is also a striking concurrence of woodland sounds throughout this collection from the ghostly tones of Emily A Sprague's "Flew" to Cool Maritime and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's dew dripped "Daybreak". Meanwhile the undulating seascape of Geotic's "Uncaught" conjures moments of Evening Star by Fripp/Eno (1975), but supplants that album's crystalline production with the warm crackle of vinyl. If you learn only one thing from Breathing Instruments it is that we are inextricable from the natural world. Also features Dim Arc, Sunmoonstar, Fools, Constant Shapes, Jeremiah Chiu, Kacey Johansing, Mary Lattimore, Andy Strain, Bana Haffar, and Ulfur.
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LP
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TTP 102LP
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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is an American composer, performer and producer, originally from Orcas Island and currently based in Los Angeles. After several self-released albums, Smith was signed to independent record label Western Vinyl in 2015, who released her first official album, Euclid, in January 2015. Tides: Music for the Meditation and Yoga, was released in January 2019. Smith grew up and was home-educated on Orcas Island, Northwestern Washington. She left the island to study composition and sound engineering at Berklee College of Music in Boston, before returning to the island after her graduation. It was after returning home that Smith discovered synthesizers, when a neighbor introduced her to the Buchla 100 Synthesizer. Having originally intended to use her voice as her primary instrument, and then moving to classical guitar and piano, Smith switched to the use of synthesizer after being leant and experimenting with the Buchla 100 for a year. Smith formed indie-folk band Ever Isles whilst still at Berklee but left the project after discovering the Buchla 100, explaining, "I got so distracted and enamored with the process of making sounds with [the Buchla's potential] that I abandoned the next Ever Isles album." When developing her composition skills, Smith used visual aid as inspiration for her music. She has said that she is always composing to a visual in her head, explaining, "Sometimes I let the sound create the image for me and then I build off that. Or vice versa: I come up with imagery that is inspiring to me, or I see something that is inspiring, and then create sounds that I feel match it." Recorded in 2013, Tides is a glimpse into the early phase of what has become Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's signature approach to electronic music. Composed and played on a Buchla Music Easel -- the modular synthesizer that gives Smith's music its organic feel -- this collection of instrumentals is at once uplifting, transportive, and meditational.
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Cassette + Book
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TTP 106BK
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A boxed set of cassette and companion book of poetry and drawings. Synthesist and filmmaker Sean Hellfritsch and author-illustrator Rob Moss Wilson met in 2008 while constructing a treefort together in Santa Cruz, California. Rob was invited to intern on a property where Sean was busying his hands with permaculture and animal husbandry, but after just a brief time working together the two realized each other's ability to cultivate forts of a more abstract nature. From that point forward, the structures they built would be made of sound, language, light, and spirit culminating in Big Lunch, a union of spoken-word poetry, ambient composition, and pen-and-ink drawings that weds Hellfritsch's bubbly, revitalizing synth work to Wilson's emotionally honest, casually profound poems and drawings. When taken as a purely auditory journey, Big Lunch is a succession of koan- like musings delivered in Wilson's unpretentious tone, which is both deepened and given levity by Hellfritsch's sonic water coloring. Wilson's words meet us right where we are: the dirt-spatter on our cars, the push-pull of grocery store impulses, standout joggers clad in blue jeans, and any number of modern niceties that become hilarious and humbling when simply noticed. In fact, noticing these details might be Wilson's superpower. Recognizing this knack throughout years of friendship, Hellfritsch and partner Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith put themselves up to the task of capturing the literary side of Big Lunch -- which was first printed as a standalone book of writings and drawings a few years back.
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LP
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TTP 104LP
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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is an American composer, performer and producer, originally from Orcas Island and currently based in Los Angeles. After several self-released albums, Smith was signed to independent record label Western Vinyl in 2015, who released her first official album, Euclid, in January 2015. Tides: Music for the Meditation and Yoga (TTP 102LP), was released in January 2019. Smith grew up and was home-educated on Orcas Island, Northwestern Washington. She left the island to study composition and sound engineering at Berklee College of Music in Boston, before returning to the island after her graduation. It was after returning home that Smith discovered synthesizers, when a neighbor introduced her to the Buchla 100 Synthesizer. Having originally intended to use her voice as her primary instrument, and then moving to classical guitar and piano, Smith switched to the use of synthesizer after being leant and experimenting with the Buchla 100 for a year. Smith formed indie-folk band Ever Isles whilst still at Berklee but left the project after discovering the Buchla 100, explaining, "I got so distracted and enamored with the process of making sounds with [the Buchla's potential] that I abandoned the next Ever Isles album." When developing her composition skills, Smith used visual aid as inspiration for her music. She has said that she is always composing to a visual in her head, explaining, "Sometimes I let the sound create the image for me and then I build off that. Or vice versa: I come up with imagery that is inspiring to me, or I see something that is inspiring, and then create sounds that I feel match it." Recorded in 2009, Ever Isles' Cocoon is an experimental folk album made by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Jeremy Harris on Orcas Island in an improvised recording studio built from bed mattresses. Smith and Harris, longtime friends, first met in 2004 while attending Berklee College of Music. Cocoon is the only remaining document of the Ever Isles project and offers a unique glimpse at the early work of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith -- an era predating her discovery of synthesis when she was still playing classical guitar. Jeremy Harris, a multi-instrumentalist and neo-classical composer, engineered and co-produced the record with Smith. In 2016, Harris released Ages via Gnome Life Records.
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