How much does electronica composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith love synthesisers? And, in particular, Buchla synthesisers? Well, so much that she once changed her one wedding list request from a cow to a Buchla Music Easel. That’s one audacious way to crowdfund your music.

‘It’s true,’ she says. ‘I had given up pursuing music as a career and wanted to start a farm and continue learning the art of making cheese. Funnily enough, I don’t eat dairy anymore so it was a good thing I didn’t end up doing that. Instead, I bought my first synthesiser. That was almost 15 years ago and I’m not married anymore, but it was a nice confirmation that there was something I was supposed to do with synthesisers.’

Smith was classically trained at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College Of Music, where she was labelled ‘weird’ by her teachers before being invited back as a guest tutor. She still uses orchestral instruments and takes classical and corporate commissions, including work for superbrands such as Apple, Google, Disney and Amazon, as well as scoring for film and the fashion world from her Los Angeles base.

But since giving up the homestead dream for a synth odyssey, she has made her name as an electronica composer by releasing a number of solo concept albums with accompanying audio-visual live shows, each honed from around a year of private practice. Her forthcoming appearance as part of the International Festival’s Up Late series will be an unmasking of sorts as she debuts a new show themed round her latest album, Gush.

‘It’s the first album where my main intention was that I don’t want to hide anymore,’ says Smith. ‘There is a safety in creating a theme for an album but the intention for this one is to share who I am naturally in the world and what it feels like to be an artist and to be objectified. There is a lot of play with helmets and constantly hiding my face and a lot of intimacy and vulnerability in the lyrics, so I want the show to be more about connecting with the audience and not having distractions with visuals.’

Having said that, a number of album tracks are accompanied by slightly freaky videos showcasing displays of physical strength and flexibility. Smith herself is a hand-balancing ace, as demonstrated in the neon orange publicity shots. She also has synaesthesia, but not the form which sees musical notes and chords as colours; for her, sounds create physical sensations. 

‘An example is that someone can say something and the way that the word hits the roof of their mouth will make me feel like a bouncy ball just fell out of their mouth and I have to go catch it,’ she explains. Smith first tuned in to her synaesthesia as a home-schooled child on Orcas Island in Washington State when a family friend played piano and Smith would make such a strong involuntary connection between the piece of music and the physicality of the performance that she could reproduce the music just by recalling how the friend looked in the act of playing.

Now it is a visceral force to be harnessed and played with across her diverse creative canon. ‘I’m having this constant interaction with the world around me in response to sound, which gives me a really large capacity for presence. I can be in traffic, I can be in a city, I can be anywhere because everything is asking me to interact with it at all times.’

Up Late With Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, The Hub, Saturday 16 August, 10pm; Gush is released by Nettwerk Records, Friday 22 August, main picture: Tim Saccenti.