Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
Gush
★★★★
NETTWERK. CD/DL/LP
Latest creative outpouring from Los Angeles-based electronic composer.
THE VIDEO for Neptunes, one of the tracks on Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s collaborative 2024 EP with Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, was awash in close-ups of glistening aquatic creatures, all suckers, tentacles and ambiguous mouths. Her latest album, Gush, might be rooted in human love and desire, but her synthesized pulses and colour-changing beats mean that even land-based relationships come with a squid-like sheen. Like Matmos, Smith has a gift for turning the physical world into an alien playground. Tracks that skim the surface of conventional song structure (Drip, for example) never quite behave as expected, vocals dissolving or trailing off to follow their own rhythmic path. There’s a playfulness here – In The Dressing Room demands its own Oliver Postgate animation – but Gush’s sticky, slightly unsettling sensuality suggests Smith is on a serious mission to get right under the skin of human connection.