Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith launches Someone Special with Ruin: It’s Not Just Music

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has announced Ruin: It’s Not Just Music, due 2 October, and the project also launches Someone Special, the label she co-founded with James Daniel. That makes this a strong 25 May indie-electronic news item because Smith is not only starting a new album cycle; she is building the structure around it. Her music has always felt like it belonged to its own ecosystem: modular synthesis, color, breath, motion and a sense that electronic sound can behave like a living thing.

Ruin appears to push into more confrontational territory. Smith has framed the record around sonic combat, shock and aftershock, suggesting something less soft and pastoral than some listeners may expect from her work. That shift is exciting because Smith’s strength has never been simple prettiness. It has been the ability to turn sound into sensation, movement and physical imagination.

The label launch also matters. Independent music is not only made through albums. It is made through labels, communities, visual worlds and the decision to create your own context when the existing one feels too narrow. For a 25 May digest, Smith’s news is a good reminder that experimental electronic artists can be infrastructure-builders as much as composers. Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-launches-label-with-new-album-ruin-its-not-just-music