Classical music begins with blood and guts. The first violins were strung with sheep intestines, while early timpanis bore heads made from goatskin. The conservatory-bound spend years blistering, bruising, and contorting themselves, sometimes to the point of permanent damage. On the Francis Bacon-inspired cover of her new album, Noémi Büchi lies splayed out and bloodied on a plastic sheet, a sight that evokes both a cocoon and a Dexter kill room. Büchi, a Swiss-French sound artist and classically trained pianist—the late Romantic period and early modernist periods are her province—titled her new album after the Latin “exuviae.” To Virgil, these were the spoils stripped from an enemy combatant’s body; to a modern-day entomologist, they’re the husks left behind by molting insects like cicadas. On Exuvie, Büchi sloughs off the buffed metal carapace of her previous records, exposing the gore underneath.