Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975 

Tracklist
1. Concert At WBAI Free Music Store
2. Concert At Phill Niblock's Loft

 Finders Keepers invite you to witness these incredible earl Buchla synthesiser concerts / demonstrationsproviding a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presentedin phonographic form. This is history in the remaking.

 Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history butboasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental,groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we’vecome to understand it. To describe this record as a game-changer is an understatement.

 This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counterculture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story ofthe first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it’s daunting tolearn that this record was in fact not a record at all… It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, thatsomehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found onthis 1975 live presentation / grant application / educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographiccontext alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name SuzanneCiani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our recordcollections. Hopefully there is still chance.

 In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company,San Francisco’s neck and neck contender to New York’s Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festivalfreaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and musicreplaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer thecreative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiserthe more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from themainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hardrevolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums ‘The Bull’and ‘Silver Apples Of The Moon’, Buchla’s versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but thehigh-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, inthe pulsating shadow of Moog’s marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. SuzanneCiani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not losefaith.

 These ‘concerts’ are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musicianwhose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesisercontemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short ofsacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutelygenuine vision of and ‘alternative’ musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in abid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a biproduct of never beforeheard music that would render the pigeonholes ‘ambient’ and ‘futuristic’ utterly inadequate. Providing nothingshort of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental ‘records’ of Morton Subotnick and proving to asmall, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musicalinstruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then.

 The importance of these genuinely lost pieces of electronic music’s puzzle almost eclipses the glaring detailof Suzanne’s gender as a distinct minority in an almost exclusively male dominated, faceless, coldly scientificlandscape. Those familiar with Suzanne’s work, a vast vault of previously unpublished ‘non-records’, willalready know how the creative politics in her art of ‘being’ simultaneously reshaped the worlds of synthdesign, advertising and film composition before anyone had even dropped a stylus in her groove. Needless tosay, this record, finally commanding the archival format of choice, courtesy of the Ciani and Finders Keeperslongstanding unison, was not the last ‘first’ with which this hugely important composer would gift society, andthe future of a wide range of exciting evolving creative disciplines. 

 You have found a holy grail of electronic music and a female musical pioneer who was too proactive to takethe trophies. With the light of Buchla and Ciani’s initial flame Finders Keepers continues to take a torchthrough the vaults of this lesser-celebrated music legacy shining a beam on these ‘non-records’ that evadedthe limelight for almost half a century. You can’t write history when you are too busy making it. Available on vinyl once again, alongside another Finders Keepers first, the release of the very first Buchlasynthesiser performance by revolutionary composer Suzanne Ciani, ‘Buchla Concert At Galeria Bonino NewYork April 1974’.