Bleep

What started as a novel, “unexpected” crossing between highly revered electronic artists in 2025 soon became a fruitful ongoing collaborative process as Actress and Suzanne Ciani have toured their Concrète Waves performances across Europe. Transgenerational collaboration isn’t such a rarity; see RVNG Intl.’s stellar FRKWYS series which Ciani took part in with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith in 2016. But something feels special about Concrète Waves. Its generosity, openness, the monolithic contributions both artists have made to electronic music. This meeting of minds may have been hailed as unprecedented, but it seems like their gravities were pushing and pulling each other all along.

As “avant techno” laptop and drum machines combine with the fabled Buchla of a “neoclassical electronic pioneer”, the scope of Concrète Waves looks beyond generation to span equipments, mediums, and sonic cultures. A conjunction of analogue and digital, of the philosophies informing Actress’s “R&B concrète” and Ciani’s 1982 album Seven Waves.

This release marks the reactivation of Actress's Werkdiscs imprint founded in 2002, and captures their co-commissioned performance at The Barbican, London alongside Barcelona’s renowned Sónar, exploring a fluid quietude where rumbling Buchla stormclouds emerge, whirlwinds of offkilter rhythms fluctuate, and soft industrial clangs allow flowing ribbons of analogue synth to take centre stage.

Pretty much every synth voicing imaginable flows through these immersive performances. Actress's liminal icy tones are interstitched with Ciani's idyllic Buchla, whirring and whispering as micro and subtle soundscapes morph into throbbing laser beats. Ciani accentuates Actress's slams and chiptuned pulses with enigmatic gusts of synths whizzing by. Together they conjure an ethereally rhythmic experience few else can dream of.