Pioneering electronic music composer and sound designer Suzanne Ciani, aka the "Diva of the Diode," has released more than a dozen albums over the last fifty years, crossing genres from avant-garde to experimental jazz and ambient. (My favorite is Seven Waves from 1979.) In the 1980s, Ciani also famously appeared on the David Letterman Show (below) and produced music for film and television commercials, including an Atari advertisement and Lily Tomlin's The Incredible Shrinking Woman. I hadn't realized though that she was also the creator of the seductive voice and synth score for the iconic 1980 pinball machine Xenon. From Wikipedia:
This marked the first female voice heard in a pinball game and Ciani had never played pinball before the project arose. In 2013, she was inducted into The Pinball Expo Hall of Fame for her work on the game. Ciani then sampled her voice onto a sound chip with the aim of selling it for use in other applications, including elevator announcements.
You can purchase the Xenon soundtrack here, as released by the intrepid crate diggers at the Finders Keepers label.
