Customer Reviews

Seven Waves

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fans of new age music tend to fall into two camps. You have the elevator music nerds, and the ambient heads. Well Suzzane Cianni captures the ears of both listeners with this unassuming early 80's release. "Seven Waves" combines the consistent theme of the sound of ocean waves mysteriously crashing against the shore, with hypnotic synth compositions. I love this album. Something about it craves to be played, only at night. It stimulates deep thought, slow sex, and eventually, the most peaceful sleep you've ever had. Don't be surprised if after listening to the first track, you find yourself sitting in the dark with your eyes closed, slowly drifting away to the scent of Nag Champa smoke.

I first bought Seven Waves on vinyl in 1984; replaced it in 1986; and later got the CD. With synthesized surf crashing woven into to water-themed melodies, it instantly became my wife's and mine favorite "bed-time" music. We still love it
after all these years, making it onto my top 5 of all time list!

I had an old cassette tape of seven waves and it was beautiful, though provoking, very melodic music. The album makes it very easy to create a mental image of walking along a beach. Or simply visualizing a beach. Soft and gentle melodies.

I think the only thing I wish was that the album was longer. This is peaceful and electronic. I would recommend this to people who enjoy Wendy Carlos's soundtrack to TRON, and those who enjoy the soothing pieces of some Kraftwerk melodies, and Synergy. Suzanne Ciani is the person behind the "Welcome to Xenon" voice as well as, I gather, the various musical effects in the pinball game, which gives yet another reason to buy this album if you remember enjoying the Xenon pinball machine from the '80s.

After reading about Suzanne Ciani in Analog Days (see my review) and her important role in the early days of the synthesizer I picked up this, her first, album. It was disappointing to me that, although she had been making music forever, her first album would not appear until close to 1980. This means that her instruments are rather more modern than the original Moogs and Buchlas that I'd been expecting to hear. It feels to me like some essential history of electronic music went unrecorded.

And then, considering that the instruments were so much more modern than the old Moogs and Buchlas, this album sounds paradoxically extremely dated. These are the Prophet V and Synclavier sounds that history has preferred to forget, I guess.

Disappointing in many respects.

Primitive synths and uninspired tunes. A fossil footprint of a deceased animal. The electronic instruments improved and so did her composing skills.