Suzanne Ciani's long and intense connection with modular synthesis started after meeting Don Buchla in the late 1960s. She soon became obsessed with the Buchla 100 and 200 systems, taking a particular interest in how the voltage-controlled quadrophonic capabilities enabled her to move sounds around a room. More than five decades on, while Ciani has utilised a huge range of synths during her career, the Buchla is still her main instrument of choice. She has produced some truly magical music over the years, earning no less than five Grammy nominations along the way, but it's not enough to describe her work as being in another league. It's also from another dimension.
We have lots of other great interviews too, with Propaganda pair Ralf Dörper and Michael Mertens introducing a new version of the band, Ron Geesin revealing the influences on his eclectic output, and Erland Cooper explaining why he buried a reel-to-reel tape on the island of Orkney. Plus SETI, Miki Yui, Kampire, Molchat Doma, Veryan, Strafe, Noël, Photay and Unicorn Ship Explosion, which is not a name you'll easily forget. They have an album called ’There’s A Rhinoceros In The Mega Church’. You have been warned.
Alongside this month's magazine, we have an exclusive red vinyl seven-inch featuring two contrasting but equally essential Suzanne Ciani tracks. The A-side is the beautiful and evocative 'Ocean Jungle With Third Wave', a live Buchla reworking of one of the highlights of her acclaimed 'Seven Waves' album from 1982. It was recorded at a performance in a New York church earlier this year and Ciani's trademark arpeggios are glorious. The other side of the record is the very different and almost Devo-ish 'Shrinking Particles', which is taken from her soundtrack to the 1981 film 'The Incredible Shrinking Woman'. This was the first time a woman had scored a major Hollywood movie.
As with all our music releases, this record is strictly limited and is only available to readers of Electronic Sound, so make sure you get your copy right away.
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