Sunergy brings together synthesists Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith for the thirteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational collaboration series. Revisited and expanded for a radiant, radical 2023 edition, the Pacific Coast’s panorama provides the place and head space for a musical appreciation and consideration of the ocean’s life-giving form, vast and volatile with change.

Fortuitously (as is the freaky way), Smith and Ciani were discovered to be neighbors in their small coastal community in Northern California. The two had become close friends, bonding over their experience as women musicians and, more unusually, their shared passion for the Buchla synthesizer. The music of Sunergy embraces this kinship, with Ciani and Smith 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 2015 in the home where Ciani has now lived for the last three decades. Her living room overlooks the Pacific Ocean from a cliffside perch, creating an idyllic, inspired setting for music making. Setting up their synthesizers 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. Eight years on from their meeting and recording, these sublime, expansive synergies still retain their potent transportative power.

Since its initial release in 2016, Sunergy has become a touchstone in both artist’s catalogs, marking a return to Buchla form for Ciani (who at the time had not released a new synthesizer recording in forty years), and a transformative moment for Smith, whose breakthrough instrumental album Ears was released the same year. Ciani has since toured globally, dazzling audiences with live Buchla improvisations in the vein of those heard on these recordings, and Smith has solidified her place on the vanguard of electronic pop.

This expanded LP, contains the previously CD and digital only bonus track “Retrograde.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. A New Day
B1. Closed Circuit
B2. Retrograde (Vinyl Edit) 

Compilation album curated by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.

The directive for the composers featured on “Breathing Instruments” was, in effect, to accentuate the ways in which instruments sound like they are breathing. Some have recreated the literal experience of feeling or hearing the human breath. Others take a more abstract approach, where breathing is more motif than object of emulation.

From hushed pulsations and distant vocals in Kathryn Shuman’s ‘Objects creating a womb-like environment to Julianna Barwick’s blissful ‘Newborn’ the tracks give sonic form to the experience of emerging from the womb.

There is also a striking concurrence of woodland sounds throughout this collection from the ghostly tones of Emily A Srague’s ‘Flew’ to Cool Maritime and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s dew dripped ‘Daybreak’.

Meanwhile the undulating seascape of Geotic’s ‘Uncaught’ conjures moments of Evening Star by Fripp/ Eno, but supplants that album’s crystalline production with the warm crackle of vinyl.

If we learn anything from “Breathing Instruments” it is that we are inextricable from the natural world.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, as well as being one of the premier synthesists around today, has a deep rooted and recognisable appreciation for the forces of nature, and 'Breathing Instruments' is a predictably gorgeous and effecting study of human breathing through song. Though the concept sounds mildly strange, it manifests as a gorgeously plaintive and euphoric suite of ambient movements from a superb lineup of ambient electronic talent.

TRACK LISTING

1) Dim Arc – Breeze Shapes
2) Sunmoonstar – Sleepy Dragon
3) Emily A Sprague – Flew
4) Fools – I Can See Your Voice Thru The Trees
5) Cool Maritime + Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Daybreak
6) Constant Shapes – Wind Leaf Shimmer
7) Kathryn Shuman – Objects
8) Jeremiah Chiu – Poems One & Fourteen
9) Kacey Johansing – Whales Of Agate
10) Julianna Barwick – Newborn
11) Mary Lattimore – She Remebers Sitka
12) Geotic – Uncaught
13) Andy Strain – Patience
14) Bana Haffar – Circulations
15) Ulfur - Feathered

In 2017, the musical term “electronic” is nearly obsolete given the ubiquity of computerized processes in producing music. Even so, the prevailing assumption is that musicians working under this broad umbrella must be inspired by concepts equally as electrified as their equipment. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has demonstrated in her still-blooming discography that this notion couldn’t be further from the truth, and that more often than not, rich worlds of synthesized sound are born from deep reverence of the natural world.

Smith (who by no coincidence, cites naturalist David Attenborough as a contemporary muse) has embodied such an appreciation on The Kid in as direct and sincere a way as possible by sonically charting the phases of life itself. The album, which punctually follows up her 2016 breakthrough EARS, chronicles four defining cognitive and emotional stages of the human lifespan across four sides of a double LP. The first side takes us through the confused astonishment of a newborn, unaware of itself, existing in an unwitting nirvana. Smith’s music has always woven a youthful thread befitting of the aforementioned subject.

Here she articulates it in signature fashion on the track “An Intention,” which serves not only as a soaring spire on The Kid, but on her entire output. There is playfulness here, but it's elevated by an undertone of gravity into something compelling and majestic that is fast becoming Smith’s watermark. The emotional focus of side two is the vital but underreported moment in early youth when we cross the threshold into self awareness. The subject is profound enough to fill an entire album, but rarely makes its way into a single track, indicating Smith’s ambition to broach subtler and deeper subjects than the average composer. This side offers up another highlight in the form of “In The World But Not Of The World” which serves its subject well with epiphanic, climbing strings and decidedly noisy textures over a near-Bollywood low end pulse.

Side three emphasizes a feeling of being confirmed enough in one’s own identity to begin giving back to the formative forces of one’s upbringing, which is arguably the duty that all great artists aim to fulfill. This side ends with the exploratory album cut “Who I Am & Why I Am Where I Am” recorded in a single take without overdubs on the rare EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer. This humble piece of sound design serves as a contrast to side four’s verdant orchestral moments, all written and arranged for the EU-based Stargaze quartet by Smith herself.

This final side represents a return to pure being, the kind of wisdom and peace that eludes most of us until the autumn of life. On “To Feel Your Best” this concept is voiced in the bittersweet refrain “one day I’ll wake up and you won’t be there” which Smith intended to be a grateful acknowledgement of life rather than a melancholy resentment of loss. The song has both effects depending on the mood of the listener, and both interpretations are equally moving. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith belongs to an ilk of modern musicians who are defined by their commitment to creating experiential albums despite the singles-oriented habits of modern listeners, and here she represents her kind proudly. 

TRACK LISTING

01 I Am A Thought 1:54
02 An Intention 4:01
03 A Kid 5:04
04 In The World 3:00
05 I Am Consumed 0:54,
06 In The World But Not Of The World 3:57
07 I Am Learning 3:16
08 To Follow And Lead 4:48
09 Until I Remember 4:23,
10 Who I Am Why I Am Where I Am 5:21
11 I Am Curious I Care 3:45
12 I Will Make Room For You 4:59
13 To Feel Your Best 6:20….