Hard to believe, I know.
Actually, it is hard to believe – but first I should probably tell you about SEXTOYS (the band).
SEXTOYS was an idea that Ian Spink and I had after my residency at Rough Mix in 2013 (you can read more about it here).
For that residency I was experimenting with transducers which are small speakers that transmit sound through objects. This is different from normal speakers because with transducers the sound changes depending on the material of the object. For example, glass is fairly neutral and doesn’t alter the sound much, but metal isn’t, and depending on where you place the transducer you can (wonderfully) color the sound in various ways. As an artist and performer this allows a huge range of creative possibilities.
Now transducers aren’t the only things that cause objects to vibrate – drum beaters, violin bows, lips, hands and feet do too. In fact, if we weren’t able to make objects vibrate, we wouldn’t have music because music is created by vibrating objects to make sound. The different material qualities of objects give us the variety of tonal colors (timbre) that make up our musical world.
In addition to instruments, which I do use in some of my work, I’m also interested in found objects mostly because they’re undiscovered territory. A violin sounds like a violin – you can eek out some new sounds by playing it differently – but it’s been around the block a few times and then some. But a found object? Who knows what sounds you’re going to discover? It might be boring but it might be absolutely amazing, and for me, that is much more exciting.
And just like any instrument, to get sound out of a found object you have to make it vibrate. To do that I often use drum beaters, violin bows, rubber balls, and yes, vibrators. These cause the objects to resonate which I then amplify and mix together live or for recordings. What makes electric vibrators (including toothbrushes, drills, fans and sex toys) particularly useful is that you can leave them vibrating against an object while you do something else. When you’re creating a complex and evolving piece of music and need to manage several streams of sound at the same time, this is absolutely crucial.
But that’s not all, electric vibrators are electromagnetic – they use electricity and magnetism to drive motors – and using a coil microphone, it’s possible to sonify this. And – that – is – cool. Very cool.
The range of sounds you’re able to discover is incredible and only increases as you add more devices. For example, if you have three electric toothbrushes, they will all sound slightly different depending on how charged their batteries are, the differences in their motors, how close they are to each other and where you place the coil mic. If you add the capability of adjusting the speed or pattern of the vibrations, as you can with sex toys, combined with the objects the vibrators are resonating against, you have a universe of sounds to explore.
The question isn’t why you would use sex toys, but why WOULDN’T you?
Which brings me to SEXTOYS the band.
As I mentioned, the idea emerged from the Rough Mix residency. The performance was a success, and afterwards Ian and I were talking about the gig and what we might do next when all of a sudden he snapped his fingers and said, ‘That it! We’re going to start a band and it’s going to be called SEXTOYS!”
RM 2013 Bill Thompson from Magnetic North on Vimeo.
Now, I’m not sure if he was joking and I mistook him and then he, seeing my enthusiasm, went along with me while also wondering if I might be joking, but somewhere in there we decided it was the best idea we’d had in a long time.
Part of the enthusiasm may have come from the fact that our projects with Airfield typically involve months of preparation, rehearsals spread out between different locations, numerous performers, and if we’re lucky, a budget. They’re incredibly rewarding to do, but not exactly spontaneous or agile.
SEXTOYS, on the other hand, is our little noise-punk band. Free of Airfield’s high art expectations, SEXTOYS is spontaneous and edgy – more street fighter than Kung Fu master. The only rule is that we don’t have rules other than those we discover in performance and they aren’t repeated from one gig to another.
And this, finally, brings me to the Hidden Door Festival.
Ian contacted the organizers offering our participation. Hidden Door is run by volunteers and have almost zero budget. We even gave them £40 to support the festival with our application. So we knew this wasn’t going to be a highly paid gig but we’re enthusiastic, they’re enthusiastic, and so why not. We applied and after a bit of discussion eventually received this:
“Dear musicians,
It is with great pleasure that I am emailing you to let you know that we loved your proposal and we would really like you to be part of the next Hidden Door Festival…”
Great, right? And naturally this was followed by weeks of setting dates, contacting performers, arranging schedules, transport, accommodation and all the stuff you have to do to organize a gig, even a spontaneous SEXTOYS one.
Then, a few weeks later, Ian informed me that with no warning whatsoever he:
‘just got a call from Hidden Door high command saying they cannot have us at the festival – ‘too controversial’ and ‘too expensive’ are the reasons given so far….’
Now I doubt it was the expense because they weren’t paying us anything – we paid them! And controversial? I mean, seriously, what a bunch of prudish amateurs. I’ve been organizing events for literally 15 years and if I was ever concerned about something being controversial, I dealt with it before I booked them, not AFTER!
The funny thing is they never explained how we were controversial. I’m guessing because of our name, but we’re only called SEXTOYS, we don’t actually stick them in our asses on stage! In fact, we clearly stated what we do and even gave them videos of past gigs, and at no point was there any insertion whatsoever.
Here’s an excerpt of our application (delicate types should look away now):
“SEXTOYS create one off site specific performances using dancers and musicians. We employ junk instruments and objects together with a range of transducers, discarded sextoys, found vibrating equipment and simple lighting and video effects. The band is usually made up of from 3-5 performers including guests.”
Shocking, I know, I mean, really outrageous stuff – Carolee Schneemann has nothing on us!
The photo above, by the way, is the remarkable performance piece Interior Scroll by Schneeman in which she reads from a scroll of paper withdrawn from her vagina of an imaginary conversation with a male film-make who was dismissive of her work.
So there you have it, the shocking story of how SEXTOYS was banned from the Hidden Door Festival. We’re negotiating with a few other venues, and as many of us have booked travel and turned away other work, it would be good to perform somewhere in Edinburgh/Glasgow during the week of May 25th.
If you know of a venue that might be interested, it’d be great to hear from you! Just send me an email or tweet.