Suzanne Ciani & Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Sunergy

Label: Rvng Intl. – FRKWYS13EX
Series: FRKWYS – Vol. 13
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Blue [Pacific Blue]
Country: US
Released: Mar 2023
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient

Sunergy brings together synthesists Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani for the thirteenth instalment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational collaboration series. For this edition, a panorama of the Pacific Coast provides the place and head space for a musical appreciation and consideration of a life-giving form vast and volatile with change.

Fortuitously (as is the freaky way), Smith and Ciani were discovered to be neighbours in the small coastal community of Bolinas, California. The two had become close friends, bonding over their experience as woman musicians and, more unusually, their shared passion for the Buchla synthesizer. The music of Sunergy embraces this kinship, with Smith and Ciani respectively performing on the Buchla 200 E and the Buchla Music Easel, two modern configurations of the innovative instrument developed in the ‘60s by Don Buchla.

Sunergy was recorded in the Bolinas home where Ciani has lived for the last twenty-four years. Her living room overlooks the Pacific Ocean from a cliffside perch, creating an idyllic, inspired setting for music making. Setting up their synths side-by-side, Ciani and Smith took turns keeping time and freely improvising for the album sessions. As a complete piece, Sunergy is shaped by slow, pulsing forms and sinuous, melodic sequences that conjure both an oceanic world and the unlimited sound made possible by modular processing.

A. A New Day
B1. Closed Circuit
B2. Retrograde (Vinyl Edit)