Show Review: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

by Ruben Radlauer

Following a stint of performance and production workshops for the EPD department, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith took to the Red Room to play a set of beauty and chaos to a room packed with Berklee and non-Berklee people alike.

Both as a technical feat and an artistic expression, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s set was awe inspiring. It was a perfect marriage of experimental pop, ambient music and chaotic noise music, and on top of that most of it was performed live with Ableton and a modular setup. All of this was synchronized artfully with visuals by opening act Cool Maritime, which used incredible close ups of normal things in such a way that they appeared metallic and alien, while still retaining their natural beauty.

For an hour she created incredibly lush textures and then built them up to huge swells of otherworldly sounds, only to bring them back into the pop realm with her haunting vocals. With electronic music, there is a fine line between sounding like the record being a good thing or a boring thing. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith was able to create the same exact sounds as the record with her voice and synthesizers, but blended and extended songs for a truly exciting performance.