Cyrnai To Subtle-drive

A reissue of the 4th full-length from Carolyn Fok / Cyrnai, an Asian-American female solo artist from the Bay Area. Carolyn’s adventures in sound began with recording stories on a tape recorder at age 9 in 1976. A short time later, exploring the scattering of musical instruments and effects units her father left lying around the family home. She became especially fascinated by his TEAC reel-to-reel recorder that set off a lifelong fascination with sound design. By the age of 16 Carolyn had become inspired by industrial electronic act Cabaret Voltaire, as well as anarcho-punks Crass. Creating the stage name CYRNAI, a rearranging alphabet of Carolyn Fok, she played in several Bay Area bands including Treason, A State Of Mind, Trial and Rhythm & Noise between 1983 and 1991.


By 1988 Carolyn’s recording gear had many changes and upgrades, from cassette 4-tracks, 8-track reel-to-reel 1/2 inch, a TASCAM 388 to DAT, to floppy disk sampling. She spent three to four nights a week developing sequences for 14 hours from 10pm onwards. Samples would sometimes begin on a Synclavier keyboard with its sophisticated sequencing capabilities. Her fourth album, ‘To Subtle-Drive’, was self-released in 1988 as 8 untitled songs spread across a 30-minute cassette. Then in 1989 Carolyn discovered the first Digidesign digital recording software and changed the project to have more ethnic sounds and samples stemming from tapes collected during a trip to Egypt. In 1990 ‘To Subtle-Drive’ was re-released with 2 songs from the 1988 release and 4 new compositions. This reissue adds 5 bonus tracks recorded during the same period spread across a double LP set. Each copy includes a double sided insert with lyrics, photos and notes by Carolyn. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. "Old-soul beat tracks on cassette with time and techno-guilotine songs."