Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Ruin: It's Not Just Music

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Ruin: It's Not Just Music

Label: Someone Special - SPECIAL001 - 5051142053824
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: UK
Released: 2nd October 2026
Genre: Electronic
Style: Drum & Bass

Description
Across the past decade, KAS has established herself as a unique voice in experimental electronic
music, a composer and synthesist whose work dissolves the boundaries between ambient electronica,
contemporary classical, composition, and immersive sound design. Her new album “Ruin: It’s Not Just
Music” arrives with a distinctive gravitational pull. The record moves with greater physical force,
placing rhythm and impact at the centre of its architecture, revealing a more confrontational and
embodied dimension of KAS’s musical language.
The first single “Ruin” arrives May 22nd, with the full album released October 2nd via SOMEONE
SPECIAL the new label co-founded by KAS.
Where much of KAS’s earlier work explored harmonic environments, the forthcoming album is built
around tension and release. Inspired by the sound of drum and bass, breakbeats fracture through
dense fields of synthesis, percussive patterns and her signature melodic fragments – motions that feel
closer to the kinetic language of club music than the meditative spaces often associated with her past
catalogue. The result is a body of work that feels both recognisably hers and newly charged, music that
moves through the body as insistently as it engages the mind.
For listeners who first encountered KAS through the glowing synthesis of “Ears” (2016) or the intricate
experimental pop of “The Kid” (2017), this direction may feel initially surprising, yet the shift has been
quietly unfolding across the past several years. KAS’s practice has steadily expanded beyond the
expectations placed upon experimental electronic artists, moving between orchestral composition,
audiovisual installations, film scoring, and large-scale commissions while retaining the unmistakable
sonic signature that defines her work.

The 2022 albums “I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon” (2022) and “Let’s Turn It Into
Sound” (2022) explored a deeply immersive approach to composition, expanded her reputation and
instinct for constructing detailed sonic ecosystems while continuing to blur the lines between
experimental electronics and contemporary pop structures. KAS’s most recent output has continued to
widen that field including the rhythm oriented electronic album “Gush” (2025) and her return to more
orchestral roots with “Thoughts on the Future” (2025). Together these releases underscored the
breadth of her practice.
Her prolific collaborators and creative partners have ranged from Patti Smith and Suzanne Ciani to
Danny Elfman, Tycho, Glass Beams, RY X, Caribou, Four Tet, Reggie Watts, and Max Richter, while
her compositions have appeared in projects with Apple, Chanel, Meow Wolf, the BBC Orchestra, and
major film and television productions.
On “Ruin: It’s Not Just Music”, that vocabulary becomes more kinetic than ever before. The record
draws energy from jungle, drum and bass, and dance-floor focused electronic music while retaining the
intricate synthesis and tonal curiosity that have defined KAS’s work from the beginning. The result is a
record that feels equally at home within club culture, contemporary composition, and the experimental
spaces that have long championed her artistry.
On May 27th KAS will present a major performance at London’s Barbican Centre alongside the
London Contemporary Orchestra, marking the ten-year anniversary of her landmark album Ears. The
evening will trace the arc of her creative evolution while also introducing material from the new album.

Tracklist

Side A1) Introduction A2) Ruin A3) GTP! A4) I’m Just Being Honest A5) Obsessed
Side B1) 19 Minutes B2) I Don’t Know What It Is B3) That Is Like You B4) It’s In Everything You Say B5) On The Low