RECORD STORE DAY JUNE 12TH 2021 EXCLUSIVE

Suzanne Ciani
Xenon
FKSP020

Greg Kmiec’s Xenon pinball machine was released in 1980 and marked a significant milestone in pinball technology and design. The expansion of microchip technology would provide new opportunities for sound designer and synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani, allowing for basic oscillator control and a wider scope for sampling capacity which could facilitate the higher frequencies of a female human voice and entirely reshape the concept of the machine in the process. By using state of the art Synclavier synthesiser technology and an invaluable experience in film scoring and record production Suzanne would devise a complete minimal music score for the machine, then dissect the piece into separate fragments that would be triggered throughout the game play adding an extra creative dimension in player inter-activity (potentially turning the participant into their own musical arranger). By incorporating her own infamous voice box (which had been the focus of a seminal David Letterman Show feature) Suzanne’s combination of a harmoniser and a vocoder also provided the first-ever female identity to a pinball machine which in conjunction with the games ergonomic design and Paul Faris’ figurative graphics (echoing the aesthetic of Rene Laloux and Roland Topor’s La Planète Sauvage) Xenon was able to add a degree of subconscious sensuality to its performance, a feature previously unchartered in arcade development.

This disc presents the full extent of Suzanne Ciani’s groundbreaking musical effects for Xenon, in their isolated form, for the first time ever heard outside of the confines of the machine which recently earned the composer her own induction to the Pinball Expo Hall Of Fame.

LIMITED EDITION 1000 COPIES ON BLUE VINYL

Xenon

Xenon (Long Effects)

Suzanne Ciani - Xenon (Long Effects)

Behold Finders Keepers, a British record label, 40 years in the making, introducing fans of psychedelic, jazz, folk, funk, avant-garde and whacked-out movie musak to a lost world of undiscovered vinyl artifacts from the annals of alternative pop history.

Catering to record collectors and DJ-producers alike with a huge emphasis on sample friendly soundscapes, rocksteady back-beats and primitive electronic experimentalism. Discerning purveyors of the bizarre and abnormal should expect the Japanese choreography records, space-age Turkish protest songs, Czechoslovakian vampire soundtracks, Welsh rare-beats, bubblegum folk, drugsploitation operatics, banned British crime thrillers and celebrity Gallic Martini adverts... presented on CD, 7" and traditional black plastic discs in authentic packaging.

Following in the very same footsteps as the mind boggling "Music To Watch	Girls Cry" and "Songs In The Key Of Death" mix CDs for Fat City Records and the original 5-star rated Finders Keepers compilation LP in 2001, Manc-based vinyl-vulture, recording artist and record producer Andy Votel enlists the skills of fellow B-Music DJ and Rare Disc Detective Doug Shipton to form a team of psychedelic librarians and cosmic-pop-quiz-elitists to run their new Twisted Nerve distant sister-label, leaving no progressive pebble unturned or record collection un-rifled.

Future compilations and re-issues will feature collaborative curators such as David Holmes, Cherrystones and Bob Stanley and further contributions from mystery A- / B+ pop-celebrity fanatics of outsider music and ultra-rare bakelite discs. Finders Keepers is an 'accidental world music label' with a punk aesthetic and DJ friendly ethos which allows the desperate listener to sit back while we deliver schizoid cultural channel-hopping compilations and rocking-horse-shit & hen's-teeth re-releases to the comfort of your psych-starved living room...

Suzanne Ciani - Xenon (Long Effects)

Finders Keepers Records