Dubbed “the American Delia Derbyshire of the Atari generation”, Ciani started out as a classically-trained Italian- American with an MA in music. Conducting a “volt”- face after a meeting with synth manufacturer Don Buchla electrified her world in 1970, Ciani embraced the new equipment in an era when the likes of Wendy Carlos was also exploring the possibilities of letting machines do the talking.
Alright, so Wendy was once Walter, but it’s still a fact that female synth composers were few and far between in this brave new world. While Carlos took Bach to the future, Ciani provided the soundbed for art installations, corporate commercials and underground films. On the evidence of Lixiviation, she hit her stride providing music for Atari computer games and, also collected here, logos for the gaming corporation (Liberator is a wonderfully jerky collage of bleeps and beats that might well turn your eyes square with flashbacks).
At their least inventive, the more delicate, New Age-y pieces, such as 1985-03 Keyboard Soundpage A, sound like incidental music from Labyrinth; but the dreamscapes of Princess With Orange Feet and intense layering upon layering of synth lines on the closing 2nd Breath (the latter as hypnotic and engulfing as Metal Machine Music) make us wonder how this music has evaded release before now.
