Swiss sound artist Noemi Buchi dissects the sounds that shaped her in her new album Exuvie.
Images: Bahar Kaygusuz
Since her 2019 release, Matière, Buchi has emerged as an exciting figure in experimental electronic music. She approaches sound as a material, focusing on its tactile features. Whether infusing classical instrumentation or dissecting electronic sounds, she expertly extracts and displays weight, mass, texture, and other sonic qualities in her work.
For Buchi, music is more than sound. Her approach bridges experimental electronic, classical, and contemporary composition with audio-visual performance, evolving into something unique. For Exuvie, Noemi draws from an internal smorgasbord of pop culture references from her lived experience. The album moves with a physicality that pulls the listener through its abstract sound field.
The album almost puts you in fight-or-flight mode. This isn’t a record that you can listen to in the background – it’s meant to be listened to intently. Every timbre of sound gets underneath your skin at some point. Sometimes the music hangs over you in a foreboding way. Sometimes it’s light, transparent, and illuminating.
Noemi’s live performances are another highlight. Her audio-visual work has been showcased at major events such as MUTEK, Ars Electronica, CTM, and L.E.V. Festival, to name a few. With this latest release out on OUS, we reached out to Noemi to learn more about her inspirations and approach to the album.
Talk to us about the creation process. How did you come up with the concept of the album, and how have you pieced the various elements and inspirations together?
I tried to work with the principle of memory. Personal and emotional memory, but also cultural heritage. The music I grew up with shaped me deeply, both the sounds of my childhood and the broader cultural background that educated my ears. On this album, I consciously allowed those memories to flow into my own musical language. I think that’s also why some moments might sound almost “childlike”, in a playful or naïve way. It’s not nostalgia, but rather a reactivation of those early emotional imprints.
Your work is drawn from a tapestry of texture and genre. What were some sonic inspirations that influenced this album?
Anime soundtracks, hip hop, pop music, classical music, video game music, and film scores. And, honestly, everything I listen to every day. It’s perhaps like a collage of everything that has shaped me. I don’t separate high and low culture; it all becomes material. The album is a kind of condensation of my listening biography.
The darker tone and more electronic, synth-based sound design in this project is different from previous work. What was the thought process when deciding on which sounds would be best to articulate your vision?
I think I wanted the music to feel lighter overall. Even when darker tones appear, I tried to keep them a bit more suspended. Interestingly, in a live situation those sounds still have a strong physical presence, they carry a lot of body. But on the album, I was interested in a certain transparency.
In the liner notes it is stated that the album is about the fragile process of transformation. In what ways have both yourself as an artist, but also as a person, been transformed through the research and creation of this project?
I never stop transforming, none of us do. Transformation is not an event; it’s a permanent state. With this album, I wanted to show that I am constantly shifting, stylistically and conceptually. In a way, I’m already somewhere else artistically. Maybe tomorrow I won’t even like this album anymore because I’ve already moved on. That continuous movement, this endless process of artistic becoming, fascinates me. That’s why I’m interested in always sounding different.
There is a lot of reference to disjointed rhythms and musical memory on the body with this project. Do you plan to create any other experiences around this, for example contemporary dance pieces or A/V performances?
Yes, there is already a new A/V show. The live version of this music is actually much more immersive and dense than the album itself. The physicality becomes stronger in space.
You have always been good at taking specific themes, such as memory or time, and developing them into unique and emotional listening experiences. With this in mind, how do you get from A to B? Is it a solo and personal endeavour, or do you draw from others when shaping ideas into fully formed pieces? And how do you know when to stop?
I don’t fully know how it happens. I work very intuitively. One idea naturally leads to the next, it’s like a logical sequence of thoughts and musical actions, like building a chain link by link. It’s mostly a solitary process in the studio, but of course I am always in dialogue with the world, with what I read, hear, and see.
I simply feel that the piece has reached a state of tension and balance that doesn’t need further intervention. Or just because I’m exhausted.
What’s next for Noémi Büchi?
I’m looking forward to presenting the audio visual live show that I created with the filmmaker Brigitte Fässler and dancer Rebekka Mondovics at various festivals in Europe and overseas.