My Sound: Music is a mood board for Suzi Analogue

Suzi Analogue is making musical mood boards with Lightpad M, the super sonic surface now available from ROLI. Reach for the ultimate music-making surface that fits in the palm of your hand. The next-generation Lightpad Block features a redesigned illuminated grid that offers an even more tactile, responsive, and precise playing experience.

It’s right there in her name: the fusion of human and electronic. Suzi Analogue’s deeply synthesized and layered vocals are organic, and they’re precisely engineered. It’s the sound of a machine-enhanced artist taking R&B in a new direction.

The Brooklyn-based producer and DJ was interested in electronics since childhood. “I had pocket gaming systems, digital pets. I got into tapes and cassettes, and I was recording and dubbing by the time I was about ten. Music technology keeps evolving, and I still have a sense of wonder when I find something new.”

Her collections of controllers and synthesizers, her hundreds of thousands of samples — they’re all a way to capture a human, ephemeral mood. “I like to describe my sound as a moodboard for real life moments. I find the right soundscape — the right drums, synths, pads — to tap into that moment and capture the mood. So my sound is really about real life.” The human and the electronic meet in a precise moment: when she comes across a new technology and feels it out intuitively. “Usually if my body takes to it, it means it’s designed well and I can bring it into my process.”

Her body responded immediately to the Lightpad Block. “To me BLOCKS is like sorcery. I’m gliding my fingers over these pads and they’re picking up all of that touch and sending it back out as sound. It’s definitely challenging me as an artist and as a performer to become more alive in my expression — to see how much I can express.”

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