Ciani, Suzanne – “Voices of Packaged Souls” – [Pre-Cert Home Entertainment]

Suzanne Ciani is known for “her groundbreaking evolutions in the commercial evolution of synthesizer music, as one of the small number of female composers in the field.” This album was created for an exhibition at the Galerie Withofs in Brussels, Belgium in June of 1970. These sounds were created when she was at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. Lots of analog synthesizer – knobs and switches, touch plates, mixed with musique concrete, modified and swirled in. High pitches, lots of ’70s minimal “outer space” style sound effects, early electronics. Each track has a narration of which “voice” and usually some trippy title like “sound of an eyeball ripping”, some in French and English. Both sides appear to be one, but if you’re careful, you could start and begin between narrations.