Most of us don't go around trying to imagine what sci-fi painter Moebius (aka Jean Giraud), a nudibranch (aka sea slug), and the film: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (aka the beginning of Hayao Miyazaki's feature animation dominance) might sound like as music. It's a good thing Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith isn't most of us. She decoded those visual references and uses them as the foundation for her newest album, EARS. The whole record lives in a bubble, dripping with enough dense greenery to make a vegetarian swoon. Each song is a tentacle, surviving both in the bubble and on its own. And on a throne at the center of the album, sits a Buchla synthesizer. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith had a chance encounter with the modular synth (pronounced BOO-kla) a few years ago that changed the way she thinks about and creates music. For her, the Buchla helped fill the void of a composer without musicians to play her music. The synthesizer is her orchestra. On this episode of Music is Music, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith talks about how she found the Buchla and how the ideas for EARS grew out of a fantastical world of color. Then, we'll get a glimpse into the bubble with the song, Rare Things Grow. Questions / comments / suggestions: @marcjsanchez