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Talkhouse

Elori Saxl is an experimental electronic composer based in New York. Her latest record, Earth Focus, is out now on Western Vinyl. 
(Photo Credit: Max Basch)

Elori Saxl

Music

Elori Saxl and Lia Ouyang Rusli Are Comrades in Film Scoring

The composer/electronic musician/healer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s new album The Mosaic of Transformation on Ghostly International is the follow up to the critically acclaimed 2017 album The Kid.
For her, expressions found in the physical body&#8217;s relationship to sound and color became the foundational frequency of the new album. A bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself, with a distinct healing quality to it that existed long before society’s recent shift. Katilyn continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body&#8217;s relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of the new album.  While writing and recording, she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers.
Not a dancer by any traditional definition, she taught herself improvisatory movement realizing flexibility, strength, and unexpectedly, what she calls “a visual language” stemming from the human body and comprised of vibrational shapes. Understood as cymatics, as she says, &#8220;as a reference for how frequencies can be visualized,&#8221; much like a mosaic.
(Photo Credit: Chantal Anderson)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Emile Mosseri on Taking Care of Their Creativity

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An artist of many disciplines, Alex Somers takes inspiration from all walks of life. His studies in music took him from Boston (Berklee) to Reykjavík (Iceland Academy of the Arts), where he became involved with Sigur Rós. With the famed band, Somers’s role included not just producer but designer as well with his contributions to artwork for albums such as Takk… Alongside frontman Jónsi, he formed duo Jónsi &amp; Alex, who released two albums Riceboy Sleeps (2009) and Lost &amp; Found (2019). As a producer, Alex has lent his talents to works by Julianna Barwick, Gyða Valtýsdóttir, Damien Rice, Amiina, Sin Fang, and Briana Marela. In the decade between Riceboy… and his official debut albums, Somers expanded his audio expertise to film. As a composer, he’s contributed soundtracks for Miss Americana(the Taylor Swift documentary), Honey Boy, Captain Fantastic, the How To Train Your Dragon Trilogy, Aloha, tv shows Black Mirror (“Hang the DJ”) and WGN’s Manhattan, and composed alongside legendary composers such as Danny Elfman (Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far) and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson. 2021 marks the first time he channels his talents into a project solely his own, a chance to express himself while simultaneously sharing all he’s learned from his partnerships, friendships, and wide-ranging interests.
(Photo Credit: Bella Howard)
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Alex Somers

Alex Somers on His Sibling Musical Careers

film scoring