Finders Keepers Records has released a new album that compiles rare tracks by synth goddess Suzanne Ciani.
Ciani is best known for her more recent new age recordings, but she is also one of the first musicians to make a career as a synthesist.
After completing an MA in music composition, Ciani was introduced to synth designer Don Buchla, whose Buchla 200 synthesizer would come to define much of her work for the next two decades.
Here’s what Finders Keepers Records has to say about Ciani’s new release:
Finders Keepers Records are happy to announce a new creative archive based relationship with Suzanne Ciani, a very unique and celebrated experimental composer in her own right, who, as one of the very few female composers in the field (Save Chicago’s Laurie Spiegel, Italy’s Doris Norton, and a post-op Walter Wendy Carlos) turned a hugely significant wheel behind-the-screens of many early computerised music modules throughout the 1980s dating back to her formative years studying at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Labs in the early 70s.
Suzanne Ciani’s detailed and academic approach to music and electronics coupled with an impeccable sense of timing and melody (and a good sense of humour) shines throughout this new collection of previously unreleased recordings. Lixiviation complies and recontextualises both secret music and commercial experiments of Suzanne Ciani made for micro-cosmic time slots and never previously documented on vinyl or CD.
This is the first sneak peek of the early Ciani metal music and non-pop that later went on see her nominated for multiple Grammy awards for her later achievements which brought synthesiser music to the new age movement.
Ciani’s Lixiviation is set for release Feb 28th. It’s available for preorder at Amazon.
Tracks:
1. Lixiviation
2. Atari Video Games Logo
3. `Clean Room’ ITT TV Spot
4. Almay `Eclipse’ TV Spot
5. Paris 1971
6. Sound Of A Dream Kissing
7. Atari Corporate Tag
8. Princess With Orange Feet
9. `Pop & Pour’ Coca-Cola Logo
10. `Discover Magazine’ TV Spot
11. Live Buchla Concert 1975
12. `Inside Story’ PBS TV Spot
13. `Liberator’ Atari TV SPot
14. Eighth Wave
15. Sound Of Wetness
16. Second Breath
via retronyms
I’ll probably get this. There are a few females working in the field the press release has omitted to mention. Which kinda makes me wish they’d drop the issue. ‘Electronic musician’ I can deal with because it tells me at least something about the music. Theses days, I rather think to suggest something specially worthy of attention based on gender is pretty meaningless.
Well, when she started doing sound design with synths I think she was the ONLY woman doing it. There’s a great chapter about her in the book “Analog Days” by Trevor Pinch. Because she did sound design in the commercial world for corporate clients and not just “electronic music” I don’t think it’s too far out of line to bring up gender with her being such a trail-blazer. An amazing person, an amazing woman. (Although to be honest I find her as an individual more interesting and inspiring than I do her music.)
Please don’t forget Delia Derbyshire.