Moog Music enlisted the help of an innovator from early electronic music for help promoting their newest piece of equipment. Suzanne Ciani contributed the music for a short film titled Music as Living Matter using their semi-modular analogue synthesizer, The Subharmonicon.
Accompanying retrofuturistic visuals by Scott Kiernan for the duration of the video is a tranquil soundscape composed by Ciani using the instrument. A female spoken-word vocal sample touches on philosophical matters around music as gentle plucks turn to bright undulations, warping into a series of different waveforms by the end of the song.
Diva of the Diode
Suzanne Ciani’s career in electronic music extends back since before it took hold as a youth culture phenomenon in several countries. Born in Indiana in 1946, she first her first work as a composer for advertisements in 1969.
Ciani released her debut album, Voices of Packaged Souls, in 1970, and she worked both as a session musician and in commercial jingles throughout the rest of the ’70s. In the ’80s she earned considerable recognition appearing on PBS programs as well as The David Letterman Show, earning her the nicknames “Diva of the Diode” and “America’s first female synth hero.”
More information on The Subharmonicon can be found on the Moog Music website.
