Live Review: BY ANY MEANZ SONICALLY
Suzi Analogue gives an audiovisual history lesson in the Black women who created the blueprint for electronic music.
Suzi Analogue at Brookyln Academy of Music, 23 January 2025. Photo: Erica Press
It wasn’t a normal Thursday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Clinton Hill center, otherwise known as BAM, is an axis for indie darlings and the cinephiles who appreciate them. The last time I was here was four years ago to watch We’re All Going to the World’s Fair with fellow armchair critics who ready to analyze the unsettling horror film. On this night, I was still just another voyeur, this time seated alongside curious music lovers eager for Suzi Analogue’s once-in-a-lifetime show.
The screening was put together by Alfreda’s Cinema, a self-described micro-cinema that serves more as a third space connecting audiences with films that showcase Black and non-Black people of color. Its founder, Melissa Lyde, took the stage to introduce the night’s showing before asking Suzi Analogue if she had anything to say. The artist timidly smiled and shook her head no.
Dressed in angelic white attire, Suzi Analogue sat behind a table that overflowed with synths, controllers, vocoders, mixers, and other electronic music instruments she would use to compose the live score (When asked to specify the equiptment, Suzi said: “I don’t promote gear companies”). It’s clear from the very beginning that BY ANY MEANZ SONICALLY was deeply personal to her. Massive text filled the screen to read: “I hope my mama is bragging on me in heaven.” While the movie follows the Black women in music who inspired the electronic music we enjoy today — nodding to classical music, jazz, hip-hop, and R&B — it also trails Suzi’s life and artistic development.
BY ANY MEANZ SONICALLY was put together in just three months. Suzi would get on 3AM calls with mononymed UK director JONES to create a timeline for the creation of electronic music. The result was a transformative audiovisual collage comparable to a femme-centric Space Is The Place. Suzi’s sonic reimaginations of nostalgic songs and poems echoed throughout the room as trailblazers like Grace Jones, Aaliyah, Jlin, and KeiyaA appeared on the stage.
Suzi’s mother and grandmother are featured throughout BY ANY MEANZ SONICALLY — after all, women are its focus — but its worthwhile to note her father also passed away in 2016, just four years behind her mother. She had already been producing for 14 years when she had to grieve the loss of both of her parents. The music was all she had to hold her.
She’s a prime narrator for this story because not only was she there to see electronic music develop, but she also contributed to its advancement. She was in Baltimore when she started making music in 2002, watching the evolution and expansion of East Coast club music and being inspired by a new sound that spawned from Chicago house and jazz, which we’d later come to know as footwork. In 2014, she officially established her own collective and music label, Never Normal Sound System, which is still making an impact in the scene today.
When the movie is over and questions pile in from the audience, there’s one thing Suzi stressed to make known: Everything is still a work in progress. The film is a work in progress, electronic music is a work in progress, and she’s a work in progress.
As a selector who wants to soon dabble in music production myself, the sentiment gave me some sort of relief in accepting that just because something isn’t perfect, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth sharing. The path has already been paved by these incredible women, just so I can start.
