With Exuvie, Noemi Büchi moves deeper into a territory where sound is less a destination than a state of becoming. The album (recently released by -ous label) circles around transformation without ever resolving it, embracing incompleteness as a generative force rather than a flaw. Built through subtraction, restraint, and a careful attention to texture, Exuvie resists narrative payoff and avoids the emotional shortcuts that often define contemporary ambient and experimental music.
In this conversation, Noemi reflects on evolution over resolution, on memory as a physical persistence rather than nostalgia, and on abstraction as a more honest language than explanation. She discusses fragility in structure, the role of silence as rhythm, the tension between control and intuition, and the subtle influence of visual art on her sound world. What emerges is a portrait of an artist who treats opacity not as obscurity, but as space – a space where music can remain open, unstable, and alive.
Chain D.L.K.: Exuvie is framed around transformation, but it avoids narrative payoff. Are you more interested in change itself, or in the discomfort of never quite completing it?
Noemi Büchi: I don’t believe that anything can ever truly be completed or finished. An artwork is never a closed object; it’s an ongoing process that only really ends when you stop existing. Because of that, I’m much more interested in evolution than in resolution, in what happens during change rather than in arriving somewhere.
In my work, transformation isn’t about reaching a final state or offering a narrative payoff. It’s about staying inside the movement itself: the shifting of style, the constant variation of one’s own artistic identity, the way timbre, structure, and inner voices evolve over time. These changes are not linear or goal-oriented; they are fluid, sometimes unstable, and often contradictory. I’m drawn to that sense of incompleteness because it feels closer to how we actually experience time, memory, and the self. The fact of never quite finishing something isn’t really a discomfort. It’s a productive space.
Chain D.L.K.: “Shedding” implies loss as much as renewal. Was subtraction a compositional strategy, not just a theme?
Noemi Büchi: Yes, absolutely. Subtraction was a conscious compositional approach. For this record, I limited myself sonically and worked with far fewer elements than in my previous releases. I reduced the amount of layering, simplified the palette of sounds and the rhythms, and tried to resist the urge to constantly add or thicken textures, allowing each sound to carry more weight and presence.
Chain D.L.K.: Many experimental records talk about memory. What kind of memory does Exuvie refuse to romanticize?
Noemi Büchi: I’m not interested in memory as nostalgia, or as something meant to provide emotional comfort or catharsis. In Exuvie, memory is treated as something physical – repetitive, constantly resurfacing, and at times oppressive. It simply persists. The body carries it like an inner archive, continuously shaping one’s life and sense of self, year after year.
Chain D.L.K.: Do you trust abstraction more than explanation, or is abstraction simply the least dishonest option?
Noemi Büchi: I tend to trust abstraction more than explanation, because I find it impossible to truly approach or describe music through language. Words inevitably simplify or distort what music does on its own terms. Abstraction leaves space for ambiguity and allows the music to exist without being forced into explanations that can never fully account for it.
Chain D.L.K.: Several tracks feel structurally unstable, as if they could collapse or drift apart. How intentional was that fragility?
Noemi Büchi: I’m not entirely sure what “stable” or “unstable” means in music. I think that’s a very personal perception. It’s true that several tracks deliberately avoid clear resolution and end in an open way. I’m very drawn to the idea that nothing really has a definitive ending. This approach also reflects how I work in live performances: I don’t need a clearly defined beginning or end. I’m more interested in inhabiting a moment, a state of sound, or what I would call a kind of sonic explosion, allowing it to exist without forcing it into a closed form.
Chain D.L.K.: You often stop developing ideas just before they become satisfying. Is that resistance to closure philosophical, aesthetic, or practical?
Noemi Büchi: What does satisfaction mean in music? For me, the idea of something becoming “satisfying” in music is already highly subjective. I don’t really think in terms of withholding satisfaction. If there is a resistance to closure in my work, it’s mostly aesthetic and philosophical rather than practical. I’m interested in keeping ideas open, in stopping at a point where the music still breathes and remains in motion. Closing something too neatly can fix its meaning too firmly, whereas leaving it unresolved allows the listener to stay inside the sound rather than arrive at a conclusion. I just want people to feel something while listening to my music.
Chain D.L.K.: Did you actively work against conventional ambient flow or classical development while composing?
Noemi Büchi: I don’t actively think in terms of genres. So, I’m not working against anything. I’m neither opposing nor consciously following something. I compose by listening closely to what the material itself suggests and by responding intuitively to the sound. Any sense of deviation from conventional forms comes from that process, rather than from a desire to position the music against a specific tradition or expectation.
Chain D.L.K.: How do you recognize when “enough” structure has already become too much?
Noemi Büchi: When I’m exhausted haha.
Chain D.L.K.: Your sound design is tactile but rarely dramatic. How do you prevent texture from turning into mood-setting wallpaper?
Noemi Büchi: I’m not sure what “dramatic” means in music, it’s very subjective and cultural. I don’t compose with those categories in mind, or with the intention of setting a mood. I focus on the behaviour of sound itself and on my emotions that I can’t really describe, but they’re guiding me.
Chain D.L.K.: Were there sounds you discarded because they felt emotionally manipulative or overly expressive?
Noemi Büchi: Not at all. Sounds aren’t manipulative for me. They’re not humans.
Chain D.L.K.: How do you balance physical low-end presence with the album’s emphasis on restraint and vulnerability?
Noemi Büchi: I don’t approach sound as something that needs to represent vulnerability or restraint conceptually. Low frequencies are simply part of the physical reality of sound and it’s true that they can touch deeper than the higher ones. It’s just another way the body and the brain experiences sound.
Chain D.L.K.: Do you treat silence and near-silence as compositional material, or as a side effect of reduction?
Noemi Büchi: For me, silence represents pauses, and therefore it functions as a rhythmic element.
Chain D.L.K.: How much of Exuvie is the result of controlled systems versus accidents you chose not to correct?
Noemi Büchi: I would say Exuvie is largely the result of controlled systems. I tend to work with clear decisions / follow my intuitions, and I usually choose to shape or refine what happens rather than leave things unresolved by chance. Also leaving things open like an ending is a clear decision I make.
Chain D.L.K.: Do you trust your tools, or do you deliberately work against them?
Noemi Büchi: I trust my tools, but I like to use them in a very personal, tailormade way. Rather than working against them, I adapt and configure them so they respond to my own needs, allowing the tools to become extensions of my way of listening and working.
Chain D.L.K.: At what stage did mixing and spatial decisions begin shaping the compositions themselves?
Noemi Büchi: Mixing is a precise way of refining my sonic vision. It helps me clean up layering issues.
Chain D.L.K.: You draw from pop, orchestral music, game soundtracks, and hip-hop, but avoid stylistic signaling. Is that a reaction against genre readability?
Noemi Büchi: I’m not reacting against genre readability. I see genres and cultural heritage as tools, stylistic materials I can use, vary, and transform, rather than identities I need to signal.
Chain D.L.K.: Francis Bacon’s distorted bodies suggest violence without spectacle. Did that influence how you shaped sound without dramatizing it?
Noemi Büchi: Yes, a lot.
Chain D.L.K.: Do you worry about cultural references becoming opaque, or is opacity part of the work?
Noemi Büchi: Yes, opacity is very much part of the work and more generally, part of everything we do, I believe. I don’t see clarity as an obligation. Opacity allows space for interpretation and reflects the fact that meaning is never fully transparent or fixed.
Chain D.L.K.: How did the vinyl format influence decisions around dynamics and sequencing, especially in such a quiet, detailed record?
Noemi Büchi: I didn’t compose Exuvie with the vinyl format specifically in mind. The dynamics and sequencing came from the music itself rather than from format-related constraints. The quietness and detail are part of the compositional language, and the vinyl release simply became one possible way of presenting that material, not something that determined its structure.
Chain D.L.K.: Compared to your earlier work, does Exuvie feel like refinement, or like a deliberate narrowing of possibilities?
Noemi Büchi: I think it’s just a continuation of my compositional research. It’s part of an ongoing process, following questions that were already present in my earlier work and allowing them to evolve in a different form.
Visit Noemi Büchi on the web:
https://noemibuchi.net/
https://noemibuchi.bandcamp.com/