Introduction
“Music makes mutations audible.”
Jacques Attali (4)
In the spring of 2007, I began working on a sound project entitled Pornographic Gender.
This collection of short audio pieces was comprised of sound samples from gay male
pornographic films. It was an experiment dealing with the manipulation of language, voices, and
soundtracks of the audible gay body in adult film. One of my critiques of the films that I had
sampled, and of the genre overall, was that their audio tracks seemed poorly edited. I also found
that porn music, when employed as a loop, was extremely unerotic.
When I originally proposed to steer Pornographic Gender in the direction of a thesis
project, I was asked during a class critique if I could name any porn films or directors that had an
approach to sound which I enjoyed. I was embarrassed to say that I did not have any in mind. At
that point, I began to question how I would be able to critique porn soundtracks as being bland,
without having a clear idea of what innovative porn audio might sound like. In addition, not long
after the aforementioned class discussion, I realized that there was music that I found fitting for
pornography, but it was not from an adult film; rather, it was an alterna-lounge album I owned
called 1-900-Get-Khan, by an artist who goes by the name of Khan, or Khan of Finland.
I continued to read porn theory, but I did not feel any closer to having a methodology to
further my project. In addition to all of the essays on pornography, I was reading Tia DeNora’s
Music in Everyday Life. The book is structured around the information DeNora collected from
her study of fifty-two women, and how these women used music day-to-day, in particular
situations, and for specific purposes. DeNora calls for a change in traditional musicology. She
writes that
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it is still possible to speak about musical materials – if not ‘works themselves’in relation to matters of value, authenticity, meaning and effect. To do so, however,
requires us to identify not what the work, as a bounded object, means, or does in
itself, but rather, how it comes to be identified by others who refer to or attend to
(and this includes non-discursive, corporeal forms of attention) its various properties
so as to construct its symbolic, emotive or corporeal force. Such a strategy ensures
that interpretation of music is not used as a resource for, but rather a topic of,
investigation. (30)
While she recognizes the need for knowledge of musical structures such as notes, chords, tempo,
and cadences, DeNora is equally concerned with how people use music. It is this use, this
repetition, where meaning becomes solidified.
This is where I was faced with my own arrogance. In my critique of porn soundtracks, I
had stated that the loops were a turn-off, and that the music was bland and cheesy. But who was I
to say what kind of music constitutes a turn-on? Who was I to deem what kind of sounds might
or might not instigate sexual activity? I recalled Cindy Patton’s essay “How to Do Things with
Sound,” in which she writes about video porn produced in the 1980s, an era when sexual
commands and catchphrases became aural fetishes (476). While reading Patton’s essay, I had not
even bothered to consider that for some viewers, the sleazy muzak of porn could itself be a fetish
object.
Therefore, I wanted to investigate the different forms of audio that people use to
articulate desire and orchestrate their sexuality. In her book Feminine Endings, Susan McClary
writes that music is “often concerned with the arousing and channeling of desire, with mapping
patterns through the medium of sound that resemble those of sexuality” (8). Even in his work on
the political economy of music, Jacques Attali remarks that “a great musical work is always a
model of amorous relations, a model of relations with the other, of eternally recommenceable
exaltation and appeasement, an exceptional figure of represented or repeated sexual relations”
(143). Nevertheless, the question is, how does music make its way into sex? Why do people
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reserve certain works of music for sexual encounters? I had been inspired by DeNora’s essay
“Music and Erotic Agency,” and appreciated her use of four ethnographic accounts of how
people use music during sex. Yet, DeNora’s subjects are four heterosexual men. I wanted a
broader scope, a sort of sonic-sexual reference list. Furthermore, DeNora discusses the idea of a
bio-feedback loop, where “culture is not totalizing in its disciplinary properties over nature;
rather it facilitates the process of bringing semblances of the material body to life” (Erotic 49).
Likewise, she writes that “sexual bodies, like bodies in general, are thus neither full-time
consumers of, nor fully consumed by, cultures” (ibid. 50). It was this junction that I wanted to
explore: a research process that investigates the music that people find suitable for the erotic, and
a project that would add to the bio-feedback loop. This is the crux of my work. The Sound Sex
Project is an ongoing participatory research-creation project, comprised of a blog, music sharing,
reflections on this music, the significance of mix tape culture, and the physicality of the mix
cassette. It is an examination of music use, the meeting point of sound and sex, and how we use
the aural to articulate desire.
In the section “Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks,” I will discuss how musical
works are not static documents, as well as the process I went through to invite people to
participate in the Sound Sex Project. In addition, I will address the significance of sex and
sexuality in this project. The “Music and Meaning” section will discuss the work of theorist Tia
DeNora, how music attains meaning on a personal level in everyday situations, and the
qualitative and quantitative approach to music that this project takes. In “Precursor to the Sound
Sex Project,” I will briefly situate my work alongside that of my musical collaborator, Montreal
artist Sheena Hoszko. The section titled “The Aural Body and the Body’s Memory” features
some of the stories sent in by participants, and it examines how they discuss the body in relation
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to music, alongside thoughts on how the body’s memory interacts with sound. “Silence(s)”
details some of the limitations of the project, specifically the subjects that participants do not
address, such as shame related to the body, sexuality, and musical taste. “Silence(s)” also
recognizes the complexities of desire, and the physical force of music. The second half of the
thesis, “The Mix Tape is an Aphrodisiac,” deals specifically with the mix tape’s relevance to the
Sound Sex Project. The chapter “From Analogue to Digital” offers a brief history of the mix
tape, and the technological shift that has accompanied personal music consumption. In “The
Sound Sex Project Mix Tapes,” I state why I chose to forego CD compilations and return to my
mix tape practice. In “Side A: The Mix Tape and Musical Genealogy,” I outline how I offered
Sound Sex Project participants a mix tape, how I went about making each tape, and how I
attended to each participant’s personal song submission. I also situate the mix tape both inside
and outside of gift culture. The conclusion addresses other subjects I have found difficult to
incorporate into the project, such as friends who have sound sex stories but who have not
officially submit them to the project. Finally, I remark on how the project has changed since its
inception, and how I would like the work to continue.
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Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks
At its very core, the marrow of this project is a search for meaning in music. More
specifically, the Sound Sex Project is an exploration of how music acquires meaning, and how
the locus of what music signifies is always shifting. In some ways, it would appear that music
must have some sort of fixed meaning. The technological vessels that carry sound into our lives
seem to bind sounds into documents that do not wither. Songs are etched into vinyl, signals
become imprinted onto audio tape, a finite series of ones and zeroes rest unchanging in the
digital format of a CD, and the MP3 is a veritable ghost in the machine, replicating forever from
hard drive to hard drive and through the net’s ether. Yet, records can accumulate microscopic
fungi in their grooves (Poole), cassette tapes get worn out or erased, CDs become scratched, and
MP3 files become corrupted. While the technological significance of these mediums will be
explored in a later chapter, for now we will consider these examples as microcosms of how
music gets its multiplicity of meanings.
Though the aforementioned changes often connote a negative decay, there is the
possibility of understanding them not as reduction, but as gain. The vinyl is sprinkled with dust,
fungi, and other micro-organisms that are site-specific and time-specific. Theoretically, when we
listen to that record, we are not only hearing the album, but we are hearing the physical
manifestation of where the record has been, and what it has accumulated (Poole). The cassette
tape that wears out is stained with fingerprints. After all, who hasn’t rescued a tape from being
garbled by a machine, only to handle the magnetic ribbon with supposed care, winding it back
onto its bobbin with one finger rotating the spokes? Likewise, the tape that has been recorded
over multiple times often brings with it the whisper of its past, as we can hear the faint remnants
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of previous recordings bleeding through the new one. Music is a temporal medium, and as it
moves through time, it brings with it the intricate intimacies of everyday life.
In his book The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau examines the potential that
rests in the quotidian. In the following passage, de Certeau discusses proverbs, though his
analysis could apply equally to music
Like tools, proverbs (and other discourses) are marked by uses; they offer to analysis the
imprints of acts or of processes of enunciation; they signify the operations whose object
they have been, operations which are relative to situations and which can be thought of as
the conjunctural modalizations of statements or of practices; more generally, they thus
indicate a social historicity in which systems of representations or processes of
fabrication no longer appear only as normative frameworks but also as tools manipulated
by users. (21, emphasis in original)
Music, like any other form of text, is something that we use. Musical texts become marked by
this use, and carry the imprints of those who used it, when, where, why, and how. Music brings
with it a social or collective history, as well as personal histories. What resonates most in de
Certeau’s writings is that proverbs and stories are not static documents to be consumed in a topdown manner, but rather tools that can be manipulated by their users.
To better understand how people use music for sex, I sent out an open call via e-mail for
Sound Sex Project submissions. I asked that interested parties send me the name of an audio
track and artist they had played during a sexual encounter. If participants wanted to send me
more information, they were encouraged to provide a bio, and to write about how their musical
choice affected the sexual encounter, what type of technology they had used to play their
soundtrack, why they had chosen that particular work, and any other thoughts or reflections they
might have. I made it clear that all submissions would be posted on the Sound Sex Project blog
(www.soundsexproject.blogspot.com) and that when I had amassed enough songs, a Sound Sex
compilation CD would be sent out to each participant.
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To start off, I e-mailed my request for submissions to everyone on my personal mailing
list, and posted a note on my personal Facebook and MySpace accounts, and on those set up for
my band. In addition, I sent out the call for submissions to the Concordia COMSlist, the Queer
Concordia listserv, and the Queer McGill listserv. I also asked some of the sound professors in
the Communications program at Concordia University to share the project with their students.
On Monday, November 26, 2007, the call for submissions was also posted on the blog for
Lickety Split, a local pansexual smut zine (Goodwyn). Furthermore, on February 1, 2008,
Lickety Split re-released their Multiples issue in a limited edition of thirty. Each shrink-wrapped
zine contained objects donated by local artists. I donated thirty copies of a mix CD comprised of
music I have had sex to, wrapped in an invitation to respond to the Sound Sex Project. Finally,
from March 4 to 15, 2008, my sound installation Pornographic Gender was featured in
InterAural, a group show in the Concordia Art Matters Festival at the Room and Board Gallery.
Included in this installation was a stack of papers for people to take, each note containing only
the Sound Sex Project website address.
I had to set up some parameters for myself. First, as people began to send me titles, some
participants sent in multiple song names. I decided to post only their first choice, and any
subsequent song titles would be reserved for future editions of Sound Sex Project mix CDs.
Second, I made a point to create the Sound Sex Project’s playlist on a chronological basis. In
some ways, that proved more difficult than it would seem. As someone who has participated in
mix CD and mix tape culture, I felt that I had to resist organizing the songs in a particular order.
In a way, that would simply be me controlling not only how the playlist should flow, but also
how a sexual encounter should progress. Likewise, I also had to restrain myself from editing the
song list, as there are songs that I find unsexy and downright annoying. If anything, this was
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another instance of me facing my own musical snobbery. As the project has progressed,
however, I have changed from objective observer into active participant, returning to my practice
of mix making. This change caused the project to shift significantly, which I will discuss in depth
later in this thesis.
Currently, all of the information sent to me via e-mail has been posted on the project’s
blog. Though the song titles were heard by the participants in a variety of formats, including CD,
tape, vinyl, MP3, compilations, self-made mixes, or a media player set on random, I have
nonetheless listed the album of origin for each of the songs.
I have asked participants to send in a song they have played during a ‘sexual encounter.’ I
have also stated that the project investigates how people use music to articulate desire. I have
worded it this way in an attempt to leave the sex quotient of this project as broad as possible. It is
my hope that within the threads of this project, that ‘sex’ is not coded to mean only between two
people, only heterosexual, or only gay. Likewise, in leaving the idea of what constitutes sex as
relatively open-ended, it is my hope that participants would not view penetrative or genital sex as
the only possible viable contributions to the project.
Other difficulties that arise when discussing one’s sexual practices is dealing with the
delicate lines between personal preference, the schism between sex acts and identity categories,
and the ways in which the body is always in dialogue with culture. As mentioned above, this
project is very much about the bio-feedback loop between bodies and cultures, specifically
sexual bodies and the music that accompanies them, or conducts them. I would argue that the
dichotomy of nature/culture is in fact not a binary, but something more interwoven. In his book
The Regulation of Desire, Gary Kinsman writes that “contrary to ‘common sense,’ sexuality is
not natural or innate. Cross-cultural and historical studies have unearthed the diverse ways in
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which it has been organized in various social settings. Sexuality is not biologically defined; it is
socially created, building on biological potentialities” (24).
Of course, there are certainly zones on the body, which are more often than not
considered erogenous. But human sexuality is more than merely “the ‘correct’ organs being
placed in legitimate orifices” (Gagnon and Simon 5). After all, one need only consider the
concept of fetish or BDSM, acts that may never involve sex or even orgasm, to realize that “there
is no ‘natural’ or ‘unitary’ sexuality. No situation is inherently sexual, but many situations are
capable of being eroticized” (Kinsman 24). Furthermore, we must also acknowledge that what
we view as ‘sex’ changes over time, and that which “organizes and comprises sexual relations in
each [time] period is therefore an historical and empirical question – a topic for exploration”
(ibid.). The interplay between physical bodies and cultures is best summed up by Kinsman in the
following passage
The various possible erotic zones of the human body provide the preconditions for the
social and cultural forms of activity and meaning which come to compose human
sexuality. It is in this transition from biological to historical and social that the definition
and regulation of sexuality have emerged. Biological capacities are transformed to create
sexuality as a social need, and, in turn, to make new erotic needs. Sexuality is a history of
social relations. Human sexual practice is composed of thoughts (eroticized images,
socially learned courses of action, or ‘sexual scripts’) and physical/sensual activities
themselves. The way in which our erotic capacity comes together with mental constructs,
language, and symbolic systems and images is a social process. Together, thought and
activity form human praxis, which provides the basis for a historical materialist view of
sexual relations. (24, emphasis in original)
In leaving the ‘sex’ part relatively vague in the call for submissions to the Sound Sex
Project, it appears as though the nuances and variations of sexuality begin to emerge. The Sound
Sex Project blog contains diverse sexual practices and encounters. Participants in the project
write about friendships-turned-romantic, oral sex, bad sex, the aural turn-on of scrambled porn,
long-term relationships, loss of virginity, long-distance relationships, solo sex/masturbation,
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first-time sexual encounters with particular partners, drunk sex, fetishes, role-playing, one-night
stands, cross-generational sex, making out, and fuck buddies.
I consider gender to be an important part of this equation as well, though I do not wish to
conflate sex, sexuality, and gender into one category. If biological sex, long seen to be an
either/or, is not a fixed category (Fausto-Sterling), gender is most certainly not a stable grouping.
Like sex and sexuality, gender works its way into a loop, cultural artifacts prescribe roles, and
bodies act them out. In other words, “the concept of gender is generally understood to describe
the means or systems by which cultures and social groups create, display, transmit, and enforce
biological sexual difference; that is, gender theory describes how a culture makes sense of what
it means to be male and female” (Cook and McCartney 87).
To be fair, I will situate myself in all of this. I am a white, able-bodied musician,
composer, and performer. I bring up race for three reasons. First, sexuality cannot be separated
from race; they are intertwined. Second, as Yasmin Jiwani writes, “the salience of race as a
category for regulating power and access and for maintaining a hierarchy cannot be contested”
(XVIII). Third, like sexuality, race does not constitute “some fixed and essential attribute” (ibid.)
Jeff Buckley referred to himself as a “chanteuse with a penis.” If I had to choose one
gender category I fit best, that would be the one. I bring this up in order “to challenge the myth
of the genderless composer” (McCartney, Gender 45). In terms of classifying my sexual identity,
I move forward carefully, as “the singular clarity of announcing one’s ‘identity’ fails to reflect
the fluidity and diversity of human sexual behavior, which is not simply a condition of the body,
but inseparable from influences of time and context” (Thaemlitz 182-183). According to the
biographical information I have posted about myself on the project’s blog, I am queer. I feel
most comfortable with queer, all the while recognizing that this is quite a loaded term. I relate to
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the potential that queer offers, in that “queerness can be used to challenge identities that are
usually broken down according to strict binaries of straight/gay, masculine/feminine, and other
dualisms” (Oakes 48). I am also interested in the possibilities offered by the act of queering. As a
verb, “queering is the process that actualizes […] that which is abject in society, transgressive
and disordering of norms and normative practices” (Joyce 35).
I have included my own biographical information because many of the Sound Sex Project
participants have likewise done so. Though no one was obliged to include a bio, it was
encouraged as something to accompany the song they sent in. Whenever identifying any of the
participants in this project, I use only the descriptors that they have used to identify themselves. I
recognize that this might be a bit contentious. After all, not everyone submitted personal
information. The project’s blog can appear inconsistent, in that some participants have included
their name, their sexuality, their gender, and their ethnicity, while many participants fall under
the ubiquitous ‘anonymous.’ Furthermore, as I have discussed above, sexuality is more often
than not constructed outside of the body, via cultural products, legislation, and policy.
Nonetheless, I thought it was important to include the descriptors of the Sound Sex Project
participants in order to respect the fact that sexuality has become “the medium through which
people seek to define their personalities and…to be conscious of themselves” (Foucault and
Sennett 183).
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Music and Meaning
One of the most in-depth examinations of how people use music is theorist Tia DeNora’s
book Music in Everyday Life. While DeNora’s essay “Music and Erotic Agency” was certainly
germinal to the Sound Sex Project, her book offers a very detailed account of personal music use.
Music in Everyday Life is structured around the information DeNora collected from her study of
fifty-two women and their personal music consumption. Furthermore, DeNora addresses how
music’s potency is used in commercial spaces, neo-natal wards, and various forms of therapy.
Through their testimonials, the women reveal the music they choose for relaxation, studying, and
rejuvenation, as well as the reasons behind their choices. Therefore, music becomes associated
with both activities and locations. In addition, she explores how music’s affective powers are
often connected to personal memory. It is this melding of use, place, and memory, which is of
most interest to DeNora. She writes that “music’s effects are generated by a describable addition,
whose sum is greater than its parts: music, plus the ways that the recipient [...] attends to it, plus
the memories and associations that are brought to it, plus the local circumstances of
consumption” (Everyday 43).
Perhaps this might all seem evident to any avid music fan. Personally, I can remember
the moment I heard a particular song, the discovery of a new artist, instances in life that I
associate with specific soundtracks. These types of personal anecdotes, such as the testimonials
that appear in the Sound Sex Project, aid in understanding music’s semiotic force. However, they
can be ignored in more traditional forms of musicology, which often view music as a text that is
marked with a specific message. For instance, upon reading Richard Middleton’s essay
“Authorship, Gender, and the Construction of Meaning in the Eurythmics’ Hit Recordings,” it is
evident why abstractions do not always strengthen musical analysis. Middleton states that
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Eurhythmics’ vocalist Annie Lennox sings in a “pure-toned ‘virginal’ timbre” (471) and that “the
hints of torch song in Lennox’s vocal seem to represent the protagonist as ‘the woman as
victim’” (479). While something could be said for placing Lennox’s sound in a timeline of torch
songs, exactly what makes a tone “virginal” is not explained sufficiently. The way in which
music becomes connected to sexuality feels intangible in Middleton’s discussion of the Lennox
and Aretha Franklin duet Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves. The author merely states that “the
music is erotic” (481).
While Middleton may indeed find Lennox to sound virginal, or the feminism-infused
anthem to be erotic, he does not address the fact that these are personal associations with those
sounds. I myself have heard Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves many times, and while I think it
is a great song, I do not find that it incites eroticism. This type of analysis would fail to explain
how Sound Sex Project participants attend to their musical selections. DeNora explains that
“identifying abstractions [...] or for that matter any type of non-musical content, and perceiving
these things ‘in’ the music has no ground outside of what the analyst says. It is therefore
indistinguishable from simple assertion, from an ‘I’m telling you, it’s there’ form of analysis.
Such a strategy is impossible to validate and impossible to refine” (Everyday 29).
I have referenced Middleton’s assertions about the erotic qualities of the Eurythmics’
music because, as I admitted in the introduction to this thesis, my analysis of porn soundtracks
contained ‘I’m telling you, it’s not there’ claims. To remedy this theoretical stagnation, it was
important for me to examine other types of audio that people find suitable for the erotic. The
minimum amount of information sent in by Sound Sex Project participants was the name of a
song they had used during a sexual encounter. This base amount of information is helpful in
some ways. First, it adds to the general sonic-sexual reference list that is the Sound Sex Project.
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It functions in an additive way. If we assume that Prince or Madonna might be good examples of
sex music, we can refer to the Sound Sex Project anecdotes and note that the music of Grace
Jones functions equally well as a soundtrack for desire. It places one more track in this growing
sensual jukebox. Furthermore, with just a song name, we can begin to compare sounds, to notice
which artists are mentioned more than once, and to examine which genres or styles of music are
more popular for sexual activity. I will note that at present, only one musical group, Iron and
Wine, is mentioned by two different participants. While Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion is
mentioned once in the Sound Sex Project, this piece is also used by one of the participants in
DeNora’s essay “Music and Erotic Agency.”
One problem arises when looking at the list of song titles. While the music itself could be
considered qualitative, in this context, it is purely quantitative. By this, I imply that in examining
only song titles, the analyst cannot help but separate music from its use, the specific space in
which it is consumed, and the memories it may invoke for the listener. For example, if I see that
Leonard Cohen’s The Future has been used during someone’s sexual activity, I can rely only on
my personal assumptions and knowledge of who Leonard Cohen is, what type of music he
makes, and what his lyrics encompass. I could be a listener who is quite familiar with Leonard
Cohen, but who has never heard The Future. In addition, the participant who lists this song in the
Sound Sex Project lends it a greater level of specificity, because the version of The Future she
was listening to at the time came from a live bootleg entitled Blossoms of Heaven, Ashes of Hell.
Therefore, even if I am in fact musically savvy about Mr. Cohen, I may not be familiar with this
bootleg and the subtleties of the live performance it contains. After all, I own some live bootlegs
whose renditions mean more to me than their original recordings. Finally, it is most important to
reiterate de Certeau’s observation that “listening to music is to receive a message. Nevertheless,
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music cannot be equated with a language. Quite unlike the words of a language – which refer to
a signified – music, though it has a precise operationality, never has a stable reference to a code
of the linguistic type” (25). Without knowing why someone uses music, where they use it, when
they play it, and who is listening with them, music’s significance is open to an endless array of
interpretations.
Precursor to the Sound Sex Project Compilation: the hiv/aids mix
I asked people what sort of music they found fitting for sexual activity. What would I do
with this information? My first thought was to make a mix compilation of all of the music, and
then give the discs away, a natural reaction from someone who has been making mix tapes for
about a decade. However, in that same germane moment, I realized that the compilation idea was
very similar to Sheena Hoszko’s the hiv/aids mix. Hoszko, whom I collaborate with in a band
called On Bodies, is an interdisciplinary artist living in Montreal. While the Sound Sex Project
and the hiv/aids mix do share some common attributes, I would like to clarify how my project
situates in regards to Hoszko’s work.
The act of making someone a music mix is a gesture of giving away an object, a theme
often explored in Hoszko’s work. For example, for All My Music 1996-2004, Hoszko took her
entire CD collection and painted over the discs, rendering them unusable in CD players. She then
gave them away to friends and family as art objects, and as an “investigation into personal
identity through objects” (Hoszko, personal interview). Yet, her pieces that involve gift-giving
are more so part of a larger catalogue that probes themes of impermanence, futility, and the
intangible qualities of human interaction. Concerning her art practice, Hoszko says that she sets
up “situations between [herself] and a viewer that evoke a questioning of the status quo, and of
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quotidian events. Everyday gestures become isolated and heightened, so that they become
imbued with more meaning, [in order to] let people reconsider them” (ibid.) Hoszko’s work
moves in and out of these ephemeral moments with subtle ease, accruing significance even as
they begin to vanish.
For Dear Neighbours, Hoszko distributed a formal letter to the neighbours in her
building, inviting them all to flick their lights on and off for one minute at a set date and time.
She sat outside her apartment complex and videotaped the flickering lights. This finite moment
managed to unite a group of people symbolically, through a simple act. The artist situates her
work in the vein of relational aesthetics, art that is “based on interactions/relationships, versus a
visual representation” (ibid.)
One of Hoszko’s ongoing works is the hiv/aids mix, a project that “intends to raise
questions surrounding current and past representations of hiv/aids via music.” Hoszko asks
participants to think about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, choose a song, and e-mail the song selection
to her. After ten songs are collected, she gives the participants a mix CD containing those ten
songs.
There are two main distinctions between the Sound Sex Project and the hiv/aids mix.
First, in line with the rest of Hoszko’s work, I would classify her mixes as art objects, things to
be given away, rather than originating in music mix culture. Hoszko states that the hiv/aids mix is
an attempt to hear “individual voices, as opposed to trying to represent a whole bunch of
representations in just one image” (Hoszko, personal interview). In contrast, my work, the act of
creating a mix and giving it away, stems from my personal practice in mix tape culture.
Second, the two projects veer off into different directions in terms of theoretical
approaches to music use. It is interesting that the hiv/aids mix investigates how popular music
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has found it difficult to represent something as complex as HIV/AIDS. Therefore, some of the
song selections relate literally to the pandemic, such as Let Us Praise the Masters of Slow Death
by Diamanda Galás, while other song choices appear less literal, and based more so on personal
experience, such as Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. The biological marker of the virus becomes
entwined with song as Hoszko’s project adds to a particular bio-feedback loop, a circuit of
cultural products that struggle to depict a health crisis and a moral panic that have been with us
for more than two decades. However, the complexity of how music attains meaning is not the
focal point of the hiv/aids mix. There are no personal accounts from contributors, and no
indication of how participants react to the songs on the compilations.
I would argue that these two elements are what distinguish the Sound Sex Project from
the hiv/aids mix.
The Aural Body and the Body’s Memory
The two main elements that make up the Sound Sex Project are the blog and the mix. The
blog, comprised of participants’ songs and stories, functions as a sonic-sexual reference list.
Using sex as a focal point, the blog and its participants demonstrate how music achieves meaning
through its use, and how sound works with and on the body. The second component is a series of
Sound Sex Project mix tapes. When I first began this project, it was my intent to collect all of the
participants’ songs, burn them onto CD, and distribute the compilation to everyone who
participated. While this compilation idea stemmed from my practice of making mix tapes, I also
intended the compilation to act as bio-feedback loop. My original hope was that those who
received the compilation, being aware of the music’s context, could use the CD as a new
soundtrack for sexual purposes. Essentially, all of these songs that have previously been used as
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sonic-sexual resources would be circulated to fresh ears. However, I have since changed the
course of the mix quotient in this project, and I will discuss this in the chapter concerning mix
tape culture.
A significant and telling thread in the project’s blog is how participants frequently remark
upon the way that music affects their bodies. Tia DeNora writes that “musical ‘forces’ are only
activated in and through the ways that the users interact with musical forms” (Erotic 59).
Therefore, it would be impossible to say that one particular sound or song would elicit the exact
same bodily reaction from everyone. It is my hope that the Sound Sex Project provides a better
understanding of the particularities that arise when certain bodies have engaged with specific
songs. The act of listening, the reception of audio, is a physical process by which “waves of
sound roll like tides to our ears, where they make the eardrum vibrate; this in turn moves three
colorfully named bones (the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup), the tiniest bones in the body”
(Ackerman 177). Furthermore, sound is comprised of “vibrations that the body may feel even
when it cannot hear” (DeNora, Everyday 86). As such, it should not be very surprising to read
how, especially during the very physical act of sex, sound acts upon the body in a visceral
manner.
Participants in the Sound Sex Project remark on the power that music has on memory and
the body1. One anonymous participant writes that they “get goosebumps” whenever they hear
Thrice’s The Atlantic. Goose bumps are perhaps an oft-heard physical manifestation of music’s
touch. Yet, other senses are at play as well. Peter, discussing Fischerspooner’s Emerge writes
1
I have not edited any of the texts sent in by participants. All texts were copied directly from e-mail, and then onto
the blog. Therefore, the responses featured in this paper have not been edited either, and as such, their original
spelling and grammar have been left intact.
18
Somewhere in the middle of the dozen or so tracked CD, Fischerspooner’s Emerge came
on. Its a really sexy song.. fast but sensual beats, very suggestive if not totally explicit
lyrics.. Anyway, I don’t know how much of it was the song or how much of it was the
general sexual tension that had been a longstanding fragment of our until then platonic
relationship, but “Emerge”, about fifteen seconds in, led us to do the same. The fact that
his best friend at the time was also my boyfriend is a separate (though important) part of
the story. Whenever I hear that song I can smell the musky mix of cologne and sweat that
he smelled like that night. It was an isolated event, and didn’t cause any damage, but if
that song ever comes on I can only think of him, and I’d like to think he does the same.
Another participant, AM, writes
i played slave to the rhythm by Grace Jones the night that a guy i liked(who later became
my partner for 15 years) first came over to my place. we were sitting on the floor by the
couch, and as it played i leaned back and swayed to the rhythm. he started kissing my
neck and by the time my room-mate walked in half an hour later, we were rolling around
on the floor.quite an ice-breaker.
East Coast Canada Greg writes about his musical selection, the Morphine song Test Tube
Baby/Shoot ‘Em Down
The song is rather rambunctious, and we did have sex for the whole duration of the
album, (Good) which is, in it’s entirety; amazing. But this particular person was not very
into having sex with music, he said it made him feel like he was in a movie and this
creeped him out, so the sex was not as great as it could have been or was when we
weren't listening to music and he was more comfortable. But I still always want to roll
around on the floor like a cat in heat when I listen to this album.
Skye, a “white woman who identifies as straight,” discusses her relationship to music and sex indepth. She writes about the Lovage album Music to Make Love to Your Lady By, a collaboration
between Dan the Automator, Mike Patton, Kid Koala, and Jennifer Charles. Skye exclaims:
The album is called ‘Music toMake Love to Your Old Lady By” ... and he isn’t joking
around! Thereare 2 songs on that album that really touched me in my heart and clitoris!
hahah! no but serious they are very sexy songs. “Sex (I’ma)” is probably my favorite for
sexiness and hotness and then “AngerManagement” is the other good one.
Marcus, a “36 year-old Vancouver-based faerie and UBC Grad student” often used the album
Deep and Sexy: A Wave Music Compilation for sexual purposes. Marcus writes
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I got in the habit of listening to Deep and Sexy when a fuck buddy came over. At one
point I realized I was subconsciously timing sex to coincide with it, hoping we'd finish
before it ran out. ‘Sweeter Love’ would usually coincide with the plateau before the final
orgasmic crescendo.
Selin, a “26 year old mainly straight pretty lady” writes about the Ratatat album Classics
A 26 year old mainly straight pretty lady, who made love to this ratatat album, starting
with swisha, the first time her and her long distance lover met after months of
corresponding. it was the first bout of music that he had introduced me to via email and i
often listened to it while i missed him, alone in my big city. coincidentally (perhaps not?),
it was playing when we finally met, got past the talking and into the most electric sex I’d
ever had.
every time this album plays, i get waves of nostalgia and an inherent sensation of feeling
loved. whereas our relationship no longer exists, the tangent feeling of what was really
does remain in musical association. it’s such a nice memory to have.
These stories are insightful for a variety of reasons. Peter’s account is a reminder of how the ‘I’m
telling you it’s there’ form of musicology that sees a musical oeuvre as a static text would fall
short of explaining the complexities of how a particular Fischerspooner song can, years later,
engage the olfactory senses. Music’s effect of conducting bodies is demonstrated in AM’s
account of how the Grace Jones track enabled them to sway to the rhythm. Likewise, it appears
as though whenever East Coast Canada Gregg listens to Morphine’s Good, he still feels the
traces of the album’s sexual encounter, because the music gives him the urge “to roll around the
floor like a cat in heat.” Skye says her musical choice touched her in her “heart and clitoris.”
Marcus admits that he subconsciously plans for his sexual activity to coincide with the arc of a
particular album, so much so that Sweeter Love is usually playing at the same pre-orgasmic
moment in each of his romantic encounters. The division between music and body almost
disappears for Marcus, at least on a semantic level. At first glance, it is dubious as to whether
“the plateau before the final orgasmic crescendo” is biological, musical, or both. Selin’s story is
interesting for two main reasons. Whenever she hears the album Classics, she experiences an
20
“inherent sensation of feeling loved,” a reminder that the album is the only physical
manifestation that remains of a relationship that has ended. Furthermore, Selin associates the
album with her lover because it was the first music he introduced her to, in addition to the fact
that the album was playing the first time they met face-to-face after a lengthy, long-distance
relationship. Hence, the reasons behind the music’s significance are interwoven and intensely
personal.
I believe that all of these anecdotes demonstrate that music has the ability to orchestrate
bodily reactions in the heat of the moment, so to speak, and that it becomes enmeshed with other
senses. Music influences not only what the mind recalls, but also what the body remembers.
One of the most in-depth discussions of music and sexuality came from an anonymous
“26-year old Caucasian female who likes boys.” She writes
My sexy sound story:
When I was younger I had quite a few fling-type relationships with men. I had a number
of shitty experiences being that I was very naive and gullable as a young woman.
Afterwards I refused to let my guard down or let myself be vulnerable to anyone, so I
never really spent much time with one particular man. When I was about 20 or 21 I met a
guy at a party and we started dating very casually. We had sex the night I met him, and I
assumed it would end there, so I was surprised when he called me. He was older than me
and seemed very kind and grounded, which was unlike the sorry collection of douchebags
I had dated previous to him. The first time I went to his apartment, we had a few drinks
and listened to music through his satellite TV. We have very similar tastes in music both of us were into 70s rock like Zeppelin and Pink Floyd - so we quizzed each other on
how long it took each of us to guess the song after the first few bars. After some quizzing
and a heated discussion about the Eagles, we ended up in his bedroom. The TV was still
blasting music - we were too distracted to turn if off - and I can remember hearing one of
my favourite Led Zeppelin songs, “Ramble On,” starting to play as we were having sex.
The song is loud and fast and always makes me want to move, so I focused on it as we
were having sex and it made everything feel even better. I remember wanting to yell
“fuck yeah!” (but I didn’t, because that would have indeed been very awkward, for both
of us) - I felt completely happy and confident in that moment and I couldn’t imagine a
better song to have played right then. Even though I stopped dating the guy shortly after
that, there were no hard feelings between us, and I look back on that moment as one in
which I felt totally empowere, in control, and satisfied (and, interestingly, I have no
recollection of the sex itself, but only of the song and how I felt at the time).
21
Other info:
The song, it seems, is what makes that sexual encounter memorable for me (without it, I
don’t think I’d ever have thought of that encounter otherwise). Led Zeppelin, for me, is
really empowering and makes me think of independence and strength (it’s loud, it’s hard,
it’s full of intent), so in that moment I felt totally in control of the situation, like I was
enjoying myself and he (as terrible as it sounds) was simply there to provide that for me.
There was no way he was going to take advantage of me, and no way that I would let
down my steely guard. That sounds kind of tragic, I know, but I sort of felt like “I’m
getting what I want from you” and, depsite the fact that he was a very nice guy, that made
me feel powerful -in an ‘I’m-samantha-jones-and-I’m-fucking-like-a-man’ type of way .
What I find to be so potent in the account from the anonymous Led Zeppelin fan is how
music is used as both a tool of recollection, and as a means of self-empowerment. She admits flat
out that she could not remember any details of the sex itself, and that without the help of
Zeppelin’s Ramble On, she would not have ever thought of that encounter otherwise. Like the
other participants, she comments on music’s physical vigour, writing that Ramble On “is loud
and fast and always makes [her] want to move.” It also appears that the song was partially
responsible for her sense of self-esteem and sexual empowerment, in that the song “makes [her]
think of independence and strength.” She states that hearing Ramble On while having sex made
everything better, leaving her with the feeling of being “totally empowere[d], in control, and
satisfied.” Therefore, there is a meeting of the music’s formal elements, such as its tempo
(“fast”) and its amplitude (“loud”), in addition to the ways in which the participant attends to the
song, through body, intellect, and memory. This combination is often utilized in music therapy,
where it is “important to emphasize yet again that it is not the music per se that is ‘doing’ the
work of achieving its social effects (though nor is music neutral), but rather, music is the catalyst
for self-help and self-extension” (Batt-Rawden et. al. 300, emphasis in original).
This project does have its shortcomings. While I think that the participants, myself
included, have done a great job of examining our relationships with music and sex, words can
22
only do so much2. This is not to detract from writing about one’s personal thoughts, feelings,
emotions, and critiques of music, because I believe that this process is integral to musicology.
However, the complexity of the body and its desires are discourses that are often outside of
discourse (Sawchuck, personal interview). In their introduction to the compilation Nerve:
Literate Smut, Genevieve Field and Rufus Griscom state that
describing the experience of sex – not just the positions – presents a challenge similar to
that of describing color: language does not yet have much purchase on these perceptual
realms. Describing the mechanics of sex presents the opposite problem: the process has
been described too many times with the same constellation of words. Too many lovers
have ‘warmed to the touch,’ then ‘purred like kittens,’ and eventually ‘switched into high
gear,’ and finally ‘thought they were going to explode’; too many of these were ‘religious
experiences’ followed by obligatory cigarettes. (XI)
While I would argue that Sound Sex Project participants have avoided clichés and articulated
their experiences into vivid tales, and that their discussions are invaluable to understanding
sexuality’s place in musicology, language still has its limitations.
Silence(s).
One of these limitations is shame. In the call for submissions to the Sound Sex Project, I
attempted to set a particular tone. Specifically, I asked that people send in a song they had used
in a sexual situation. The reason for seeking out people who had actively chosen music for sex
was that I wanted to keep the project as sex-positive as possible. If music can trigger pleasant
2
My personal addition to the Sound Sex Project was an admission that my musical choice came from the urge to use
sound as sonic camouflage so that my roommates could not hear what was going on in my room. Though I began
using Khan’s 1-900-Get-Khan as music to drown out my own sex noises, upon second thought, it is clear that I
was trying to ‘do’ multiple things with the record. After all, if I had wanted music solely for its noise factor, I
could have used a heavier record from my collection, such as White Zombie’s Astro Creep 2000, or Nine Inch
Nails’ The Downward Spiral. However, 1-900-Get-Khan just seemed to act so well as a sonic-sexual resource.
Of course, the album’s title, and the fact that the album’s cover art is comprised of explicit male-hustler personal
ads, probably made the record seem appropriate for a sexual encounter. After using it multiple times, the music
has developed its own physical meaning.
23
memories, so too can it elicit moments we would rather forget. One of the earliest responses to
the Sound Sex Project was this short entry from an anonymous participant:
I once had sex while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was very bad sex and
ended in tears. Though I still love Star Trek, that particular eppisode always brings back
bad memories.
At first, I did not post the Star Trek anecdote. I was not sure which Star Trek episode the
participant was referencing, if the audio was easy to download, or which segment of the audio
would fit on the compilation. Of greater note was the fact that I was uneasy with the prospect of
distributing a Sound Sex Project compilation that might contain sounds or songs that would
invoke unpleasant memories for the participant.
How does one look for shame? How can we detect it? Perhaps there are traces of it in the
unspoken. This negative space, this silence, is never singular. As Michel Foucault remarks,
“there is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie
and permeate discourses” (27). Silence is also important to music, in that rests are intertwined
with notes, integral to the structure of the score. I would argue that silence and shame are
connected in that shame is something we often carry “with us until we stop noticing the burden,”
until it becomes silent (Field, Shame 3). For example, the Star Trek entry looks stark for
something that wrestles with difficult subjects. What constitutes ‘bad’ sex? Why does bad sex
end in tears? If bad memories are triggered upon seeing the episode again, how does the body
remember? Through bodily shame?
Another entry stands out to me as being brief, but loaded. It is the only Sound Sex Project
submission that is not accompanied by a name, i.e.: “From: John Smith,” “From: Pseudonym,”
or “From: anonymous.” Instead, the participant dedicated the entry, The Fugees’ Ready or Not,
“for Stephan.”
24
i was 15. he was a street rollerblader who lied about his age. although we didn't have sex
we took turns arguing about it while he came in my mouth.
In regards to things left unspoken, the subject of deception is not expanded upon. There is no
mention of how this participant felt about the experience, or how the Fugees’ song made its way
into the event. It is also interesting that the participant makes a distinction between the acts that
constitute sex and the ones that do not.
Another entry that has silences:
1) bio: semi social male 1/2 of the time who cannot for the life of him make up his
mind...
2) used within “proper” relationships and “one nighters” not so much as for aid but for
atmosphere of the inevitable
3) actual cd’s played on a proper stereo.
4) these albums are stellar in their own right. classics even. great for the intended “mood”
of a given encounter and, therefore, your project. just great and honest music.
5) thoughts: i still keep f@#king it up!
It is unclear as to why he has to make up his mind, how he defines a “proper” relationship, and
how exactly he keeps “f@#king it up.”
These muted moments are complex, in that silence “is less the absolute limit of discourse,
the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions
alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies” (Foucault
27). While silence may not be the absolute limit of discourse, it nonetheless represents one of the
boundaries of this project.
Another aspect to consider is musical shame, rather than sexual shame. This is a different
kind of silence that is difficult to measure. While none of the participants indicates that they are
embarrassed by their song selection, I must nevertheless consider the possibility that people have
sex to music that they would not admit to liking. Talk about guilty pleasure! This takes into
account the idea that some music is ‘bad,’ and some is ‘good.’ These distinctions are, of course,
25
completely arbitrary, because there is nothing in music that qualifies it as negative or positive.
Nonetheless,
in addition to experiencing musical sound within a discursive context, the listener knows
– or at least has good reason to intuit – that others have also invested in an affective
relationship with it. Whether the verbal content is something the listener already knows
or something that he or she comes to know along with the musical style, the important
point is that musical sound affectively articulates this content against and with the
listener’s personal moods, emotions, and other mental states. (Volgsten 76)
In other words, if I can sense that my social circle has a negative affective relationship to
the music of Britney Spears, I might not admit to liking her music, and would certainly not
divulge the fact that I have sex to her albums. To be clear, I do not like Spears’ music3, but just
the act of invoking her indicates, albeit in a facile way, that I have some ‘knowledge’ of what
constitutes ‘bad’ music. Is there a line between ‘bad’ music that is acceptable due to its camp
value or ironic hipster credibility, versus songs that are pure abominations? Are people unwilling
to share their questionable musical tastes? Do people have sex to their sonic guilty pleasures?
Would someone be self-aware, or self-conscious enough to get up from a physical engagement
and turn the speakers off if an embarrassing song came on4? These are questions that, at present,
the Sound Sex Project falls short of answering.
Another problematic I have had to take into account is whether people always know what
turns them on. Consider the following passage about the complexities of desire and arousal:
Our earliest brushes with desire embed in our memories indelibly – the smells, the
textures, the places our eyes fell. The redolence of suntan lotion, cracked vinyl car seats,
grape Bubblicious, the retinal print of hands gripping stick shifts, dimples pooling,
crotches testing bikini tensile strengths. Some would say desire runs deeper still,
traceable in Play-Doh, Band-Aids, Mom’s hair. Before we had a word for it, sex was a
3
4
For the sake of pure transparency, I do like Spears’ song Toxic.
While working on this project, I remembered one of my earliest sexual experiences collided with my musical
tastes. I was having a casual fling with a guy I had met online. We were in his apartment, engaging in some
sexual activity, and his computer’s music player was on random. Suddenly, Chantal Kreviazuk’s cover of John
Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane came on. I paused our fun and ran to the computer to change the song,
explaining that I found it impossible to fool around to what I considered a sappy cover song that had appeared in
a Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck blockbuster.
26
warmth, a flush, a reflex arc of sensation that mingled blindly with anything available,
with anything that gave us pleasure.
Those minglings are of great consequence – early associations with sexual arousal
can become aphrodisiacs, or if we are scolded, blocks. Sensations repeated become deep
body memories. (Griscom, Habits 115)
I think that writing like this, and the practice of writing that investigates the intimate details of
our lives, brings us closer to understanding “deep body memories.” Likewise, this type of
exploration, via self-reflective writing and reception work, is integral to understanding how
music functions, as seen in DeNora (Everyday) and McCartney (Cyborgs).
There is one anecdote in DeNora’s book that I find underscores particularly well the
limits to participatory reception. A study took place at a liquor store. Two particular wines, one
French, and one German, were on sale. When the store’s background score was comprised of
French accordion music, sales of the French wine rose. Likewise, when traditional German
‘Bierkeller’ music was played, the German wine sold more. DeNora goes on the explain that
when these customers were then interviewed outside the store, they could not recall what, if any,
music was playing during their purchase (Everyday 142). Therefore, there is much to be said
about how music can alter our bodily reactions in a way that seems to bypass our intellect.
Likewise, I suspect that there are desires, non-sexual and sexual alike, that circumvent our
rational thought process. Perhaps there are outside elements that influence our bodily activities
that we do not recognize or fully understand.
27
The Mix Tape is an Aphrodisiac
“My headphones, they saved my life
Your tape, it lulled me to sleep.”
-Björk (Post)
The second component of the Sound Sex Project was initially going to be a CD
compilation of all of the music submitted to the project. It was my intent to make these CDs, and
give them away to everyone who had participated. However, for some reason, I could never
bring myself to go through with these motions. I did in fact burn a bunch of CDs that contained
the first fifteen songs of the project, but I never gave them out. The compact discs sit untouched
on my bedroom dresser. I was not sure how my apathetic rut developed until I began working on
a paper about sound, sex, and mix tape culture. Suddenly, I wanted to return to my practice of
mix tape making. In the past couple of years, I have been making CD mixes for friends, though
not with the same fervor I had previously reserved for tapes. Furthermore, I realized that even the
CD seemed Jurassic to most people in this age of digital music consumption via the Internet. I
could just as easily make a .ZIP folder of all the Sound Sex Project songs and send them out
through a file sharing site. A CD compilation would be exactly like the digital folder, only with
the added waste of a compact disc, track sheet, and plastic casing. The CD has become the
phantom of the MP3 playlist.
I have only recently distributed Sound Sex Project mix tapes to some participants. Before
I address this process, I would like to contextualize my mix tape practice in the larger body of
tape culture. I will explain why a mix tape functions like a musical composition. Finally, I will
detail the methodology that structured the making of this new batch of tapes, and I will briefly
discuss where I situate mix tapes in regards to gift culture.
28
From Analogue to Digital: The Ear Heart’s Ache
At this point in time, I have no way of knowing exactly how many mix tapes I have
made. I would say that I have been making tapes for just under a decade. However, one of my
closest friends is certain that I began making tapes for her as far back as 1996. A lot of my time
has gone into carefully conceiving of themes, compiling songs onto audio cassettes, transcribing
the track listings by hand, and giving the tapes away to acquaintances, friends, and lovers. The
act of tracking down all of the tapes is an impossible feat. The tapes I have made scatter the land.
I know there is one in Vancouver, and some in Toronto, California, and Virginia. There may be
some in Connecticut. The majority of the tapes I have created are in Montreal. Some people have
shoe boxes filled with tapes from me, while some acquaintances may have only ever received
one mix. I could send out a vast number of e-mails to people asking what tapes I have made for
them, but this would not retrieve the tapes that have fallen behind headboards never to be seen
again, or any of the random mixes I have given out that I have since forgotten. There are people
who have received mixes from me and with whom I have lost touch. I have had relationships that
were filled with mix tapes, which have ended in decay and silence5.
While an exact tape count will probably never occur, I believe it is evident that I have
participated in mix tape culture6. Only recently have I begun to accept that not everyone has a
tape player anymore, so I have turned to making mix CDs. Yet even the mix CD is beginning to
5
On July 1, 2008, I was walking down a street in Montreal, Canada, when I stumbled upon a pile of discarded
objects, a familiar symbol of ‘moving day.’ July 1, Canada Day, is also the day when most apartment leases in
Quebec terminate or renew. In this particular heap of household junk and mementos, I spotted some CDs. Amongst
them was a mix, entitled Forget It: Songs to Remember Me By. It was encased in a hand-made sewn material sleeve
with a printed track listing. It was clear that someone had put some time and thought into this mix. Was it a goodbye
gift? A break-up mix? Either way, it was telling that Forget It was left behind as a moving day casualty.
6
Please see Appendix F for documentation of some of the mix tapes I have made.
29
feel like a relic, with the overload of iPods, MP3s, and digital file sharing. Where does the mix
tape reside in this technological shift?
In his book Common Culture, Paul Willis writes that “rather than conforming to artistic
intention and industry practice, mixers treated the album as an open work and took the selection
and ordering of songs into their own hands, enabl[ing] people to make their own personal
soundtracks and compilations” (63). While the concept behind creating a music mix has not
really changed over time, the tools to do so have. The desire to choose and customize a personal
song list began in the late 1960s, when “mix tapers used the new technology of cassettes to put a
dent in the armor of the single-artist album” (Drew 535). At its earliest conception, the mix tape
was made by recording sound from vinyl records onto tape. Another practice involved recording
directly from radio and onto tape. The practice that I engaged in was CD-to-tape, indicative of
the shift from analogue to digital7. While the CD-to-tape method is certainly less timeconsuming than vinyl-to-tape, as it is much easier to cue a compact disc than an LP, the process
still takes place in real-time: the mix maker must listen to the songs play out as they record.
As the practice began to proliferate, mix tapes liberated people “from music stores and
radios in the same way radios and recordings liberated generations earlier from the need to be
present at the performance of live music” (Vieneger 35). Moreover, while radios and recordings
most certainly created an indisputably different way of consuming music, it was the mix tape that
allowed for a complete mutation, whereby suddenly “listeners attained control over what they
heard, in what order and at what cost” (ibid.). Therefore, while the mix tape is simply another
7 In reading many accounts from mix makers, and their process of recording from vinyl, I became curious about
making mixes from vinyl to tape, since the mixes I had made on tape had all been, up to that point, from CD. My
father has always been very protective of his record player, and I never had full access to it when I was growing
up. As such, my vinyl collection is quite limited. If I had to guess, I would say that I own fewer than twenty
records. As a mini-experiment in mix tape culture, I visited my parents’ house in the summer of 2008 and made a
mix tape with the records I own.
30
technological step in the history of music consumption, it is the ideological precursor to the MP3
playlist. Though the mix CD has freed music users from the time constraints of making mix
tapes, the MP3 no longer burdens the music consumer with any material object, other than the
MP3 player itself.
One of the purported benefits of the MP3 playlist, and even the CD mix, is that they will
not fade. Of course, CDs can become scratched, and computers can crash, but listening to a CD
or playlist ad infinitum will not cause the sound to change. However, in his online essay “Mixed
Feelings: Notes on the Romance of the Mixed Tape,” Kamal Fox explains that the more “you
play cassettes, the more worn out they become – the more garbled the content – the more likely it
is that the magnetic tape will tear on the next playing.” Perhaps the fleeting aspect of the cassette
lends it mystique or romance. Fox remarks that it is “ironic that the old worn-out tape is more
loved than the one that has never been heard and will always sound pristine. Decay is usually
rhetorically treated as a sort of anti-technology, so mixed tapes are in some way an antitechnological technology, very different from the digital accuracy of mp3 files [...].” Even if a
garbled tape might appear to be a less than ideal listening situation when compared to the digital
accuracy of MP3s, some suggest that the immaculate and sterile quality of the MP3 cannot
compare to the original mix tape. In his book Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture, Sonic
Youth’s Thurston Moore pontificates about his favourite obsession:
At this point with 10,000 CDs released each day and used record stores brimming over
with 99-cent CDs and thrift stores offering CDs and records pennies per pound, the best
way to really organize it all is to break it down onto tapes. Just plow through the records
and record the best bits onto cassette. If you really need to transfer it to CDR, go for it,
but remember: you’re turning it into a digital format and therefore your ear-heart will tire.
Huh? Yeah, your ear-heart. Dig it: normal bias cassettes rule. (Next to vinyl of course).
And it’s not a fetish either (well, not entirely...). Vinyl is analog – not a definitive sound
wave like digital, which is a numeric and perfect transcription. With digital, your brain
hears all the information in its numeric perfection. Analog has the mystery arc where
cosmos exist, which digital has not reined in. We used to listen to records over and over
31
and each time they would offer something new because the ear-heart would respond to
new resonations not previously detected. It was like each kiss had a new sensation.
Digital format offers one cold kiss. A mere peck. I, for one, grow weary after one taste.
(Mixelaneous 68)
I would argue that aside from the fleeting element of the mix tape, or the erotic quality
that Moore bestows upon analogue, it is the real-time process that goes into cassette making that
does not occur in the fabrication of a mix CD or playlist. As mentioned above, one key element
to mix tape culture is that the producer must make the product in real-time. Unlike a mix CD,
where songs can be dragged into a particular order and burned to disc in a couple of minutes, the
mix tape maker must sit there as the songs play from beginning to end, and be certain that the
cuts between songs are relatively seamless. This does not take into account the time it takes to
come up with an appropriate or creative mix tape theme. In his music-infused autobiography,
Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time, Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield
profiles a variety of reasons for making mix tapes. His classic cassette themes include The Party
Tape (18), I Want You (18), We’re Doing It? Awesome! (19), You Like Music, I like Music, I Can
Tell We’re Going to Be Friends (19), You Broke My Heart and Made Me Cry and Here Are
Twenty or Thirty Songs About It (20), The Road Trip (20), No Hard Feelings, Babe (21), I Hate
This Fucking Job (21), The Radio Tape (22), and The Walking Tape (22).8 Once a fitting theme
materialized, mixers would spend hours searching for the appropriate variety of songs, as they
“often thrived on haphazard and wide-ranging musical connections that transcended the genres
8 Some of my themes have been: Say No To Drugs/Say Yes to Songs About Drugs Mix, Sin’n’Sleaze Mix,
Soundtrack for Healing Mix, Mark’s Rock’n’Roll High School Mix (songs I listened to in high school, sequenced
in chronological order from grade 7 to 11) Nearing Beauty Mix, You Move Me Like Music Dance Party, Dancing
Across the Continent Mix, Under The Covers Mix (cover songs), We Are All Animals Mix (songs which reference
fauna), More Stories from the City Mix (PJ Harvey b-sides and other songs that were thematically linked to her
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea album) Rock’n’Roll Halloween Mix, Ghosts Spectres and All Things
Ephemeral Mix, Fuck The Lilith Fair Mix (music composed by confrontational women), and The Last Tape (a
mix which marked the end of a very long and complex friendship that had been filled with mix tape making).
This is just a brief list, and it does not include mixes that are compilations of songs from particular artists (the
Björk Mix, the Diamanda Galás Mix, etc.).
32
and marketing niches of the recording industry and its artists” (Drew 535). Therefore, regardless
of theme or content, one thing was for sure if someone gave you a mix tape: they had invested a
lot of time into turning that blank cassette into an aural collage.
Bodies End Up in the Mix: The Tape as Composition
The link between the music mix and sex is an important part of musicology if we
consider the mix to be a musical composition, and a cultural product influenced by bodily
knowledge. As discussed above, a major aspect of creating a mix is the time spent picking the
right songs. One might compare this diligence to that of the musician figuring out which chords
fit a composition’s chorus, or keeping the different instrumental lines of a song in a uniform time
signature. All of these acts involve varying degrees of knowledge as to what works and what
does not. In her thesis on mix tape culture, Melanie Lovatt remarks that the process of picking
which songs go into a mix “generates the most enthusiasm from mix tape makers, and the
selection and recording is perhaps the aspect of the creation process that could best be interpreted
as a performance” (Lovatt 54). While I would agree that a sort of performance occurs when the
mix tape is actually played, I view the tapes themselves as contained works. Creating a mix tape
feels more like an act of composition, rather than an act of performativity.
Regardless of its historical context, the mix will carry meaning in all of the forms it takes.
As Thurston Moore muses, “CD technology displaced the cassette in the mainstream, and it is
just recently that mix CDs have become a new cultural love letter/trading-post” (Intro 12).
Sheffield remarks upon a more modern vision of music sharing when he writes that “the
technology changes, but the spirit is the same. I can load up my iPod with weeks’ worth of music
and set it on shuffle to play a different mix every time. I can borrow somebody else’s iPod and
pack it with songs I think they’d like. I can talk to a friend on the phone, mention a couple of
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songs, download them on LimeWire while we’re talking, and listen together” (24). While I
would agree that the spirit of music exchange stays the same throughout the technological shift,
it would appear that the ability for song choice to function as a composition would be most
evident in a pre-determined mix, rather than an MP3 player set to shuffle.
The mix maker who diligently finds the right list of songs is engaged in a meditated and
mediated composition. Like any musical work, there will be various sites of meaning, whether
what the individual songs mean to the mix maker, what the music invokes for the listener, or the
quasi-narrative that forms as the mix plays itself out. What does this all mean for sex?
The potential for musical selection to function as a composition is pertinent if we
consider the amorous quality of the music mix. Music’s sexual qualities are remarked upon by
Joan Cusick in her essay “On a Lesbian Relation with Music: A Serious Effort Not to Think
Straight.” Cusick asks, “what if hands are sex organs? Mine are. What if ears are sex organs?
What if music-making is a form of sexuality in which (as in some other forms of sexuality) the
sites of giving and receiving pleasure are separated? If music IS sex, what on earth is going on in
a concert hall during, say, a piano recital?” (79, emphasis in original). I would argue that the
pleasure sites in mix tape culture are also separated. The giver might obtain pleasure from
choosing the right songs, while the receiver might find pleasure in the music or simply in
receiving the gift. The mix maker is definitely engaging in a form of composition that is played
in the bedroom rather than in a recital hall. The mix cassette is a musical score, quasi-sampled, a
patchwork collage, spliced together by hands working with whatever recording technology is
available.
Writing about Cusick’s thoughts on music and sexuality, Victoria Moon Joyce remarks
that “she comes to see composers as lovers and in the position of initiating, composing the
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‘scenes’ and fantasies, [and] controlling the speed, texture, volume, and rhythm of their
expressions” (46). Mix makers, regardless of their chosen medium, use music to orchestrate their
own personal scenes and fantasies as well. While few participants in the Sound Sex Project have
submitted songs from mix tapes or CDs, I would still argue that their musical choices reflect
knowledge of what works and what does not. For example, the anonymous Thrice fan used The
Atlantic “more than once on diff. ppl.” INIR remarks that he chose Profanatica’s Unto Us He Is
Born, the “loudest and most aggressive” song he could find at the time, to enhance the mood of a
“one off” fetish/role play session, a song that he would probably not be “playing during a
‘romantic’ engagement.” Then there is the anonymous participant who used Nina Nastasia’s Too
Much In Between for both “ ‘proper’ relationships and ‘one nighters’ ”.
In her essay “Music and Erotic Agency,” Tia DeNora writes about how bodily reactions,
which are coded as natural, are actually learned behaviours from cultural products. The author
uses the crescendo orgasm as an example of the fact that “cultures arise from bodies as much as
vice versa” (50).
If we consider the mix tape as a form of composition, and musical choices in general as
reflecting a person’s knowledge of which songs fit particular situations, we suddenly see a
cultural product that has arisen from bodies. Consider again what some Sound Sex Project
participants have said. Chloe Revere describes easing the possible awkwardness of a sexual
encounter with a new partner by playing Iron and Wine’s album The Shepherd’s Dog. Revere
describes the music as “mellow but not romantic, dark enough to not be cheesy but not dark
enough to be morose[.] [The music] definitely opened the door for some mature, spectacular,
mutually appreciated sex.” Likewise, Skye has had such a history with choosing music for
intimate encounters that she is able to separate her musical choices into “old school sex and more
35
contemporary ones.” These examples demonstrate a general knowledge of a larger catalogue of
music, combined with a more precise ability to streamline musical selections for the specificities
of particular sexual relationships. Therefore, a mix is a cultural product that is influenced by a
bodily knowledge of how music affects certain situations. Furthermore, these anecdotes show
that choice is also influenced by the person’s ability to read what type of music their sexual
partner will accept as a soundtrack.
The complexities behind this type of song selection are heightened if we are indeed
discussing a physical mix. As Melanie Lovatt describes in her thesis,
the [mix] creator will, in effect, be judged by her selection of songs. This is particularly
true if the tape is being made for a potential romantic interest. To this end, the creator
must choose songs which they feel will portray them in a good light. However, at the
same time, the creator must be aware of the tastes and likely reaction of the receiver, and
so must not only select songs that will demonstrate their own impeccable tastes, but will
also be well received by the recipient. (64-65)
Therefore, mixes and musical selection, regardless of their technological shape, form a culture
that has emerged from bodies.
The Sound Sex Project Mix Tapes
There are a few reasons why I chose to forego the mix CD, and instead return to audio
cassettes. First, the CD mixes felt stagnant. As previously stated, a mix tape is created in realtime. The maker must be present as each song is recorded onto the magnetic ribbon of the
cassette. Because I was accustomed to this involved process, making the first batch of Sound Sex
CDs felt cold, sterile, and boring. I burned about a dozen CDs in twenty minutes, each disc
holding the same information, a small-time mass production of a commodity, a replica of a
replica of a replica. Perhaps this is why these CD mixes remain untouched on my dresser.
36
Second, I wanted to return to mix tapes because of the intangible quality of MP3s. I felt
that if I sent out CD mixes, they would just be swallowed by hard drives, and the physical CD
would be relegated to stacks of its dusty brethren. Therefore, I wanted to give out an object that
would stand out, and that would symbolize the physical process that goes into mix tape making.
I cannot deny that my mix tapes are small gifts. However, I am uncertain if my practice
sits comfortably in gift theory. In his classic work The Gift, Marcel Mauss writes that “the
producer-exchanger feels now as he has always felt – but this time he feels it more acutely – that
he is giving something of himself, his time and his life” (75). In the context of everything I have
written thus far, this statement is quite representative of my mix practice. I dedicate a substantial
period of time to creating a mix tape, which I then give away. Yet, Mauss also writes that “to
give is to show one’s superiority, to show that one is something more and higher, that one is
magister. To accept without returning or repaying more is to face subordination, to become a
client and subservient, to become minister” (72, emphasis in original). I admit that I enjoy
receiving feedback from people who get mixes, but I do not think that feedback constitutes a
repayment, or that mix culture is about a fight for superiority. If this is the locus of gift-giving,
then the Sound Sex Project mix tape does not function as a gift in Mauss’ tradition.
Instead, I prefer to think of these plastic tokens in a more symbolic sense. As John Frow
writes, “there is nothing inherent in objects that designates them as gifts; objects can almost
always follow varying trajectories. Gifts are precisely not objects at all, but transactions and
social relations” (124, emphasis in original). It is this transaction, and these social relations, that
compose the Sound Sex Project. The physical entity of the mix tape is important because “gifts
are not free, [nor are] they the products of generosity. Gifts are offers. They produce bonds. They
are a token through which social relationships are forged, managed and preserved. When we
37
receive the gift we must automatically consider the giver of the gift, the person behind the token”
(Purves 31). Therefore, the physical presence of the cassette lends to a stronger bond. The person
who receives a mix tape can consider the person behind it. In the case of the Sound Sex Project,
the recipient can consider the music’s significance, as well as the project as a whole. If a
compilation CD would have been transformed into MP3 files so that its songs would slip at
random into a person’s digital music library, I am not sure if this would lend to any sort of
consideration or reflection of social relations. If a Sound Sex Project song had popped up on
random on a media player, or had been assimilated into the alphabetical catalogue of an iPod, it
would lose its context.
Another reason I wanted to abandon the Sound Sex Project CD compilation and instead
make personalized mix tapes is to more accurately reflect the way in which music achieves
meaning. In his writing on cultural consumers and everyday readings of texts, de Certeau
remarks that “the reader takes neither the position of the author nor an author’s position. He
invents in texts something different from what they ‘intended.’ He detaches them from their (lost
or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something un-known in the space
organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings” (169). The mix tape
maker sits in this exact position, combining musical fragments to build something new. If I were
to send out a compilation CD that was simply a chronological document of the songs submitted
to the project, I would not have any agency in the work. In addition, if I were to send out these
compilation CDs, each one containing the same songs, the project would veer towards stagnancy
and it would not respect the fact that “musical affect is constituted reflexively, in and through the
practice of articulating or connecting music with other things” (DeNora, Everyday 33).
Essentially, the major error with the original CD compilation idea was that I thought recipients
38
would be able to listen to the songs and associate them with desire, sexuality, and sex, simply
because that was the context of the project. However, a standard replicated compilation would
not speak to each person’s particular musical tastes, nor would it reflect how each participant’s
song choice attained its original meaning.
Side A: The Mix Tape and Musical Genealogy
To return to my practice of mix making, I began by sending an e-mail to all of the Sound
Sex Project participants inviting them to create a dialogue, a literary mix. I asked that if anyone
were interested, I would send them a Sound Sex Project .ZIP file. They were then encouraged to
write about a theoretical mix: which songs would they take out? Which songs would they keep?
Which order would they put them in? Did they have their own sex mixes? If they had to make
one, what songs would they use? Were there any stories on the blog that resonated with them?
Unfortunately, only six participants agreed to partake in this part of the project, and only two
have sent in responses. Nonetheless, I was determined to bring mix culture to the project.
I sent a second e-mail to Sound Sex Project participants living in Montreal. I began with
this restriction simply to avoid excessive shipping costs. I asked the participants if they would be
interested in receiving a mix tape that would be thematically linked to the personal song choice
they had submitted to the project. I intended to make these mixes with music from my own
personal collection. A clear stipulation in this offer was that they needed to have a tape player
with which to listen to their personalized mix tape. Of the thirteen people I contacted, twelve
responded wanting a mix tape. Two people did not own a cassette player, but they wanted a mix
nonetheless. I created digital mixes for these two individuals, a process I will discuss later.
Before beginning a mix tape, I would consider how to personalize the mix in relation to
the recipient’s personal Sound Sex Project song. I recognize that there are limitations to this
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process, as musical taste is a complex and nuanced entity. It would not suffice to personalize
someone’s mix tape simply by genre. In his essay, “Popular Music is Plural,” Richard A.
Peterson writes
If anything, our understanding of how music is selected, enjoyed, and understood by
people is even less clear. What is clear is that the standard categories such as rock and
country are virtually meaningless. Take for example, three ‘country’ artists: Hank
Williams, Jr., Vince Gill, and k.d. lang. Persons who choose any one of these are very
unlikely to like the other two. Those who choose Hank Williams, Jr., are likely to also
like Steve Earle and Nine Inch Nails; those who choose Vince Gill are likely to add Mary
Chapin Carpenter and the likes of Aaron Neville as well as romantic pop singers; those
who choose k.d. lang are likely to select other feminist and lesbian artists who have never
flirted with country music. (55, emphasis in original)
I believe that Peterson accurately describes the difficulty in pinning down a song’s
genre9, and that as a mix maker, relying solely on genre as a mix’s theme would not necessarily
speak to the recipient’s connection with music.
When I began making a tape, I would choose a particular participant. I would then take
into account the song they sent in, and any other information in their story. I would then scan my
CDs carefully, searching for connections. The types of musical links I made were varied. I will
outline some of them here:
Tempo: INIR’s Sound Sex Project song is Profanatica’s Unto Us He Is Born, a heavy
metal track with a vicious tempo. I began INIR’s mix tape with the frenetic BPMs of
Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy.
Covers: For the anonymous participant who lists Led Zeppelin’s Ramble On, their mix
tape features 4 Non Blondes covering Zeppelin’s Misty Mountain Hop, and Rasputina’s
cover of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
9
It is suspicious how Peterson deals with the first two artists, Hank Williams Jr., and Vince Gill. He compares them
because, as I would assume, they share similar themes or sonic palates. However, k.d. lang’s musical elements
are not alluded to, but her sexual identity is. I do not doubt that many of lang’s fans do indeed consume music
composed by other queer women. I do not know if lang identifies as a feminist, but Peterson seems to collapse
lesbian/feminist. Furthermore, Peterson describes neither Nine Inch Nails front-man Trent Reznor nor Vince Gill
as heterosexual, thus perpetuating heterosexuality as the default norm, and lesbian as anomaly.
40
Instrumentation: East Coast Canada Greg’s submission, Morphine’s Test Tube Baby, has
a prominent horn line. I began his mix with Spoon’s rendition of Hedwig and the Angry
Inch’s Tear Me Down. The Spoon version also has a prominent horn section. Selin cites
Ratatat’s album Classics, which is largely an instrumental album. Therefore, I made an
effort to find many instrumental pieces to put on her mix tape.
Same artist, different song: I admit this is a relatively easy connection to make.
Nonetheless, in order to reflect personal music use, I often made mixes that contained
songs by artists that the participants mentioned. For example, Chloe Revere writes about
playing Iron and Wine’s album The Shepherd’s Dog during sex. Her mix contains an Iron
and Wine song from a different album.
Same artist, different incarnation: One anonymous participant cited The Fugees’ Ready
or Not. Their mix contains Lauryn Hill’s Ex-Factor, Hill being one third of The Fugees.
Collaborations: Skye cites the Lovage album, Songs to Make Love to Your Lady By.
Lovage is a group comprised of Dan the Automator and Mike Patton. Skye’s mix
contains Björk’s Pleasure is All Mine (Medulla), which is a collaboration between Björk
and Patton. As previously noted, one participant listed Led Zeppelin. Her mix contains a
song from The Sporting Life, a collaboration between Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones
and vocal/piano virtuoso Diamanda Galás.
Thematic: Many of the Sound Sex Project participants have written insightful blurbs to
accompany their songs. When possible, I made connections between these stories, and
the songs I put on their mixes. For example, the anonymous “American girl” who lists
Iron and Wine’s album Our Endless Numbered Days, writes that her encounter happened
on the fourth of July. In her mix, I included Elliot Smith’s Independence Day. Selin
writes about a relationship with a long-distance lover. For her mix tape, I included PJ
Harvey’s The Letter (Uh Huh Her), a song about a relationship that finds something
sensual in snail mail letter writing, and Earlimart’s Never Mind The Phone Calls (Mentor
Tormentor), a song about a long-distance phone conversation between lovers. Genny D
identifies herself as a “Canadian in New York City.” Her mix contains two songs about
the big apple, Death Cab for Cutie’s Coney Island, and Recoil’s New York Nights.
Rarities: As Melanie Lovatt mentions, part of mix making involves finding obscure
sources. In this time of digital music sharing, the idea of musical treasures becomes
erased by a near ubiquitous access to a vast number of songs. Nonetheless, I have made
an effort to partake in this tradition of pursuing the hard-to-find. Skye mentions liking
George Michael. Her mix features Michael singing Freedom 90 from an MTV Unplugged
session that was never released on disc.
Remix: The remix offers the possibility that a song the recipient is already familiar with
can be heard anew. I happen to know that INIR is a Diamanda Galás fan, so his mix tape
includes the La Diabla remix of Galás’ Hex (Do You Take This Man?), which brings me
to my next point.
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Personal knowledge: I will be fully transparent and admit that I know many of the Sound
Sex Project participants, and to varying degrees, I am aware of their musical tastes.
Therefore, I have made an effort to share music that I enjoy, but also songs that I think
the participants will respond to positively. As Lovatt writes in her mix tape thesis, “a
balance must be struck between the ego of the creator, and their knowledge of what the
recipient will appreciate” (65).
Of course, all of these types of connections can overlap and intermingle, and while I used
the music of some artists more than others, this was not for lack of diversity. Though I am most
certainly a fan of artists such as Björk, PJ Harvey, Khan, Peaches, Portishead, and The Hidden
Cameras, I have used a lot of their work in the mix tape creation because I have also used it for
my personal sexual soundtracks.
Once I had chosen the CDs containing pertinent songs, I would spread them out across
my table, and select the order in which the songs would appear. I must admit, this process was
far from an exact science, and for the most part, the element that constructed the narrative arc of
each tape was tempo: upbeat songs would accompany other upbeat tunes, slow songs were
grouped together, and so forth. As I made each mix, I would document, in a notebook, each song
that was being included on the tape. To make the cassette mixes, I used my stereo, which I have
had since 1994. I mention this because once again, the audio object, in this case the cassette,
becomes marked by time and place. The tiny dust particles that sit in the crevices of the tape
bobbins make their way onto the new mixes.
Each mix recorded onto a sixty-minute Maxell cassette. I usually made a point of having
something to read because I would sit next to the stereo as the songs played themselves out. My
stereo indicates the length of each song, so I took note of the approximate amount of time left on
each side of the cassette. This sort of presence is necessary while making a mix tape to make
sure that the edits between songs are smooth, and that the tape does not end with a song that cuts
off prematurely. During this process, I discovered another advantage to mix making with
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cassettes. Some albums have ‘secret songs.’ Essentially, after the record’s last song, there is an
extended amount of silence, followed by a secret song not listed on the album. On a CD, the
song, the silence, and the secret song are all a part of the same track. With an average computer
burner, if one wanted to include either a secret song, or the listed song that precedes this hidden
track, you would have to burn everything, lengthy silence included. However, with cassette
players, it is possible to avoid this silence by using the pause button. For example, I wanted to
include The Album Leaf’s Moss Mountain Town on Selin’s mix. While the song itself is
approximately three minutes in length, the entire track including silence and secret song is
almost ten minutes long. The cassette player facilitated editing out the bits I did not want, while a
CD burner could not have afforded me this luxury.
When it came time to make digital mixes for the two participants who did not own tape
decks, the creative process felt tepid at best. The temporal aspect one encounters when making a
cassette mix is drastically different when working with a digital medium. Each mix tape
constitutes just over an hour of my time, including prep work and the actual recording process.
The digital mixes only took a fraction of that time. Again, my ambivalence comes from the
knowledge that the digital mix will probably lose its narrative arc once downloaded into a media
player or onto an iPod. On a mix tape, songs take on significance when placed next to other one
another. As is my knowledge, it is possible to listen to a ‘mix’ on an iPod. However, from my
experience playing around with friends’ iPods, songs are organized by album, artist, or title. For
example, if I made someone a digital mix with David Bowie’s I’m Afraid of Americans
sandwiched between Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA and Erykah Badu’s Amerykahn
Promise, these pieces would be pulled from the mix’s context, and classified alphabetically
43
according to artist, song, or the song’s album of origin, and not necessarily the song’s mix of
origin.
One of the participants who requested a digital mix suggested I use a particular online
site called muxtape.com to facilitate the process. At first glance, the site seemed interesting, a
collection of tabs linked to personal mixes. Yet, when I clicked on a mix, it became clear that I
would have to pay to download the songs I wanted to hear. Again, this would decontexualize a
song’s place in its mix roster. While payment does not go to the mix maker, but rather to record
companies, I would nonetheless go so far as to say it contravenes mix maker code to ask a
recipient to pay for their mix. In her essay on relational aesthetics, Claire Bishop posits that
rather than a discrete, portable, autonomous work of art that transcends its context,
relational art is entirely beholden to the contingencies of its environment and audience.
Moreover, this audience is envisaged as a community: rather than a one-to-one
relationship between work of art and viewer, relational art sets up situations in which
viewers are not just addressed as a collective, social entity, but are actually given the
wherewithal to create a community, however temporary or utopian this may be. (54)
While relational aesthetics in art deals more with events and human interaction than with music,
I think that what Bishop says is appropriate to mix tape culture. Music’s meaning cannot be
separated from the environment in which it is heard, and the ways in which the audience attends
to it. In sharing mixes, a community is built along the temporal lines of song. People who inhabit
the mix making process create a culture and a relationship positioned around sharing, rather than
a transaction predicated on consumption and monetary exchange.
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Conclusion: End of Side B
As of now, I have completed ten mix tapes. I have listened to each one at least once, if
not more, and I have written out the track listing by hand for each mix. Though each mix is
different, they are all labelled Sound Sex Project Mix. I had originally thought it would be
interesting to name each mix after the song that inspired it. However, I realized that this might
interfere with a participant’s request for anonymity. I will now arrange to get each mix tape to its
proper recipient. I will also send a .ZIP file of all the music featured on the blog to everyone who
has participated.
Reflecting on the Sound Sex Project as a whole, I have realized that it has mutated a few
times since its inception. The project began while I was living at a friend’s house. I no longer had
a place of my own because the store below my apartment had caught fire and my building was
condemned. All of my belongings, along with my computer, were in boxes scattered between the
houses of four friends. Though I had previously done work with porn audio, watching stacks of
porn all day did not seem like appropriate house guest behaviour. Because my investigation of
porn audio had already led me to think about the kind of music that people use for sex, I decided
to forego porn viewing and instead set up the Sound Sex Project, a direction that felt more
relevant to the study of sound and desire.
It is possible that some of the people I invited to participate in the project expressly did
not respond because we know one another, and because they did not feel comfortable sending me
their stories. One thing I might do differently next time, in order to circumvent this problem,
would be to set up an e-mail account that I did not have access to, and have a third party forward
Sound Sex Project submissions to me.
45
Another facet of the project that has changed since it began is the limitation of what
constitutes appropriate audio. My original request was that people send in a song they had
listened to while having sex. Right from the start, this seemed problematic, as participants were
sending in multiple song titles from different artists, entire albums, or sounds that were not
music, such as the Star Trek episode. When I presented a paper about the Sound Sex Project at
the International Association for the Study of Popular Music conference at Brock University in
May 2008, a professor joked that if a participant had been having sex to music for years, he
hoped they would have more than just one song in their repertoire! In order to be more inclusive,
I have since made a blog post stating that all thoughts on sound and sex are welcome. I have
posted multiple submissions, television shows, and my own writing on my relationship with
scrambled porn audio.
Even the stipulation that someone would have to submit a song name has changed. One
participant did not want to include any musical details such as title or artist, because the music in
question was made by someone they knew, and revealing the name of the work would annul
their anonymity. Another friend mentioned a particular incident in which her lover played Chris
Isaak songs, which she considers cheesy, even though she likes the artist. In addition, she could
neither remember any of the song names, nor the album title. However, she never officially
submitted this story to the Sound Sex Project, which brings me to another topic to consider, that
of unofficial disclosure.
There were a few instances when friends mentioned that they had a story for the project,
but never actually sent it in. One friend said that her iTunes player is filled with random music
that people add whenever they stop by, and as a result, there are a lot of songs lurking in her
computer of which she is unaware. One day, she and her wife were having sex, when Marky
46
Mark’s Good Vibrations started pulsing from the computer’s speakers. They could not contain
their laughter, and had to stop having sex. To be methodologically fair, this anecdote was never
sent to the Sound Sex Project e-mail account, and I have not included it on the blog. Another
acquaintance expressed interest in the project, and said that they would submit a song by This
Mortal Coil. I even sent a reminder e-mail to say that the project was still accepting songs. She
responded that she still wanted to participate, but I have yet to receive any This Mortal Coil
songs. Another form of unofficial disclosure came from friends who wanted to participate but
could not, because the songs they would choose are connected to sex with their exes. This type
of historical/musical erasure or censorship was often for the benefit of their current partners. It is
unclear whether this was done to avoid mentioning past relationships, or to avoid tainting music
they use in their present sexual relationships. Other friends were interested in the project, but
admitted straight out that they never use music to “do it.”
I believe the future of the project depends on mix culture, the potential that music sharing
can have as a bio-feedback loop, and the temporal intimacy of the mix tape. I must now wait to
see how participants react to the mix tapes I have made for them. Ideally, I will receive feedback
on the mixes, but the reason I am not asking this expressly is to avoid suggested or forced
reciprocity. After that, I will probably make more mixes for other participants. Any mixes I make
will be on tape, because I do not actually own a CD burner, and I consider digital mixes flat.
Though not integral to the project, I would nevertheless like to organize a vernissage.
Theoretically, the show would be comprised of three elements. The first would be the
personalized Sound Sex Project mix tapes I have made for the participants. Each tape would have
its own listening station named after the participant’s original song, accompanied by the
corresponding story from the blog, and the tape’s track listing. The second part of the show
47
would be a documentation of all of the mix tapes I have ever made and am able to retrieve. I
have already begun a Facebook group called Mix Tape Round-Up, asking friends to rummage
around and find any mixes I have made for them, and asking if they would be willing to lend
them to me for the sake of this documentation. The third element of the show would be mixes
made by other people. I would invite Sound Sex Project participants, as well as friends, to submit
mixes for the show. In addition, everyone would be welcome to make mixes for the express
purpose of giving them away, or trading, at the vernissage.
I like the idea of people posting their own sex mixes, romance mixes, etc. This sharing is
integral to the bio-feedback loop. We learn what music turns us on, and consequently, we use
this bodily knowledge to select future sounds. Music makes its way into our bodies, and our
bodies make their way into music. The culture of mix making depends on this corporeal musical
selection, and a mix can create an entirely new soundtrack for its recipient. It is always
interesting to see a mix made by a friend containing music that I have given them. I, as well,
have made mixes that feature music given to me in mix form. The loop continues. This loop hits
a snag on sites like muxtape.com, which require monetary contributions. This demand for
payment derails the original impetus of mix culture, that of sharing music.
Unfortunately, I had a difficult time trying to locate scholarly writing on tape culture.
From my own personal experience, mix tapes become harder to track down over time. Tape
wears out or snaps, cassette shells break, track listing leaflets get lost, and some cassettes vanish
forever. Add to this the fact that digital music consumption now reigns, and academic thought on
the mix cassette seems obsolete. Writings on mix tape culture are somewhat sparse. This is a bit
strange though, as one might assume that people would want to write more about mix tape
culture in order to preserve this fragile history. Even in the midst of this project, it felt more
48
difficult to actually find and purchase new audio tapes than it has in the past. Before the Sound
Sex Project, it had been a couple of years since I had made a mix tape, and it appears that in that
time frame, the blank tape has become more of a rarity. Lucky for me, there is a dollar store a
block away from my apartment that has a stockpile of sixty-minute Maxell cassettes.
Whether you are popping it into your home stereo or car cassette deck, if you press play
and let the magnetic ribbon move like a conveyor belt, you can be certain of one thing: a body
made that mix tape. Maybe you made the tape. Perhaps it was given to you by a friend, or even a
lover. There is a chance that you found it in a thrift shop, sitting amid the rubble of other
forgotten or unwanted cassettes10. Regardless of its origins, the mix tape was put together by
hands and ears, fingers alternating between pressing record and pause, ears listening as each song
becomes engraved into the tape.
This romantic vision of the mix tape becomes harder to relate to as home stereo systems
and car cassette decks become obsolete. If the mix tape “is almost always fleeting—often more
so than the songs it comprises—and endures best as a time capsule of a vibe gone by,” so too are
the technologies which made cassette culture possible (Sante 22). Of course, the drive to create
music mixes remains the same, while the technology shifts from analogue to digital, away from
tape to CD, and even beyond that to MP3s. Even in the less tactile world of iPod playlists, a mix
maker must still take time to select a mix theme, find the appropriate songs, and arrange them in
the best possible order. Time invested in mix creation is the greatest distinction between digital
and analogue mixes. An MP3 playlist can be created relatively quickly, and a mix CD can be
burned in a matter of minutes, but the mix tape maker must sit with their creation in real-time,
10 A friend and I were once in a thrift shop, and spotted a cassette of WHAM!'s Make It Big. The friend spent a
dollar on what promised to be a great tape to play in the car on the ride home. However, when we pressed play,
we found out that the tape’s previous owner had taped over WHAM! with a very ambling radio mix, full of static
and dial changing.
49
listening as each song becomes part of something new. “The time spent implies an emotional
connection with the recipient. It might be a desire to go to bed, or to share ideas” (Wareham 28).
The body makes its way into music particularly in the case of the mix tape. The cassette
mix requires a much more physical presence from its maker than any digital mix. The mix tape
maker must be present to make sure that the cuts between one track and the next are to their
liking. The mix tape maker has to physically verify that a song does not get cut off when the tape
runs out. A severed song would put an abrupt end to the story the tape is supposed to tell.
The mix tape is a composition, the artist carefully choosing the right songs for the right
moment, the premiere being the first time the mix gets played out in full by its recipient. In
regards to sex and sound, many participants of the Sound Sex Project indicate that their
experiences aided them in choosing the right music for future sexual situations. For those who
create mixes for these intimate encounters, we see a bio-feedback loop taking place, where
bodies influence mix culture, and where music exerts its semantic power on participants. The
Sound Sex Project is an exploration of the mutation of bodies, and the forms that depict them. It
is my hope to continue with this work and to promote mix culture and sharing, in order to add to
the feedback loop, where music orchestrates bodies, and bodies end up in the mix. The tape
ribbon offers intimate secrets that a CD would only conceal. As Rob Sheffield declares in his
memoir, “I’m a mix tape, a cassette that’s been rewound so many times you can hear the
fingerprints smudge on the tape. Press play.” (12)
50
Appendix A: Sound Sex Project Call for Submissions
The Sound Sex Project needs your help. Any varying degree of participation is welcome, but my
basic request is:
-Please send me the name of an audio track and artist which you have played during a sexual
encounter. If you have an mp3 file of the sound/song, e-mail that as well. Please send your
submission to:
soundsexproject@gmail.com
I will post all submissions chronologically on the project’s site
http://soundsexproject.blogspot.com
Please indicate if you would like your name to be used, if you would like to use a pseudonym, or
if you would rather remain anonymous.
My aim is to compile a Sound Sex Project mix CD for everyone who participates. After the first
compilation has been completed, feel free to submit to the project again.
I would love to post additional information about your song choice. If you are willing to share
more than just the sound selection, other information you might include could be:
-your biographical info
-how your musical choice affected your sexual encounter
-what type of technology you used to play your soundtrack
-why you chose that particular work
-any other thoughts or reflections
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you. Once again, please send all
entries to:
soundsexproject@gmail.com
For additional information, please visit http://soundsexproject.blogspot.com
51
Appendix B: Mix Invite
Hello,
If you are receiving this letter, it is because you have participated in the Sound Sex Project. It
has been a few months now since I started the project, and I have received a lot of amazing
responses.
The Sound Sex Project will end up being my Master's thesis. Another component of this thesis is
an examination of mix tape culture. Because I have been an active mix tape maker for many
years, my initial impulse to collecting all of this music was to make Sound Sex mixes.
I would like to keep the ethics and practice of mix-making as parts of this work. Therefore, I
want to engage in a theoretical mix, an aural cut-up, a sonic bio-feedback loop, with the people
who have participated in this project. If this of interest to you, please respond to this e-mail. If
you would like to partake in this mix, I will send you a .ZIP folder containing the majority of the
songs featured in the Sound Sex Project (I've scanned the files for viruses, but please do a scan
yourself to be on the safe side!) From there, I will ask you to consider any of the following:
-Which songs stand out as being good soundtracks to use for sexual encounters? Why?
-Which songs would you remove from the Sound Sex playlist? Why?
-If you had to make your own mix/playlist with the Sound Sex songs, which pieces would you
use and what order would you put them in? Why?
-Do you have your own mixes designed for sexual encounters? If so, what's on them? How did
you go about selecting the songs for your own mix? How often have you used this mix?
-Are there any quotes/passages/stories on the blog (www.soundsexproject.blogspot.com) that
resonate with you? If so,which ones?
As always, all information received will be posted on the project's blog, and will possibly be
used in my thesis.
Before you respond to this questionnaire, please view the project's consent form:
www.soundsexprojectconsentform.blogspot.com
Again, please indicate if you would like to have your full name published, just your first name, a
pseudonym, or if you would prefer to remain anonymous.
52
Appendix C: Mix Tape Offer
Hello
Because you participated in the Sound Sex Project, I would like to make you gift.
I want to make you a personalized Sound Sex Mix Tape. The theme of the tape will be loosely
based on the song you submitted to the project.
Ideally, you should have access to technology that will allow you to listen to your mix tape.
Once the tape is made, we can make arrangements as to how I'll get the mix to you.
Would you like a mix tape?
53
Appendix D: Sound Sex Project Mix Tape Track Listings
Tape #1
Side A
Aphex Twin – Come To Daddy
Manu le Malin – The Blood Line
Venetian Snares – Pervs
Nine Inch Nails – Happiness in Slavery
Diamanda Galás – Hex (La Diabla mix)
The Soft Pink Truth – Homosexual
Side B
Death From Above 1979 – Turn It Out
White Zombie – Super-Charger Heaven (Adults Only mix)
Meat Beat Manifesto – I Am Organic
Khan & Jon Spencer – Fishes Fuck
Tool - Stinkfist
Faith No More – Be Aggressive
KMFDM – Adios
Venetian Snares – Output
Tape #2
Side A
Spoon – Tear Me Down
The Hidden Cameras – High Upon the Church Grounds
PJ Harvey – As Close As This
Handsome Boy Modeling School & Cat Power – I’ve Been Thinking
Gentleman Reg – It’s Not Safe
Camera Obscura – Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken
The Ballet – Personal
The Soft Pink Truth – Kitchen
Side B
Kelly and the Kellygirls – Bloodletting
Madonna – Waiting
Khan – On The Run
Cocorosie & Antony Hegarty – Beautiful Boys
Goldfrapp – Utopia
Björk – Pluto (live)
54
Tape #3
Side A
Lords of Acid – Lover
Khan & Françoise Cactus – Les Gros Nichons
Robyn – Cobrastyle
Peaches – Downtown (Simian Mobile Disco remix)
Underworld – Push Upstairs
Tricky – Overcome
Björk- Pleasure is all Mine
Hanin Elias – Cat People
Side B
George Michael – Freedom 90 (MTV UnPlugged)
Missy Elliot – Sock It 2 Me
Leslie Hall – Blame the Booty
Mary J. Blige – Work That
LeTigre – I’m So Excited
Cazwell – Watch My Mouth
Sade – Haunt Me
Tape #4
Side A
Spacehog – In the Meantime
Patti Smith – Summer Cannibals
Fleetwood Mac – Monday Morning
Blind Melon – Out On the Tiles
T. Rex – Calling All Destroyers
Hole – Gold Dust Woman
Beck – Deborah
Side B
Iron and Wine – Woman King
Neko Case – Star Witness
Chris Garneau – Between the Bars
This Mortal Coil – Kangaroo
Jay Brannan – Soda Shop
Low – Laser Beam
Earlimart – Gonna Break Into Your Heart
Max Avery Lichtenstein – Tarnation
55
Tape #5
Side A
Lauryn Hill – Ex-Factor
Björk – I Miss You (Dobie Pt. 2 mix)
Kelly & The Kellygirls – Desperado (Shroom’s Spanish Fly mix)
Eurythmics –The Last Time (live)
Me’Shell Ndegéocello – Soul Searchin’ (I Wanna Know if it’s Mine)
Sneaker Pimps – 6 Underground (Nellee Hooper edit)
Side B
Peaches – Tent in Your Pants
Kellis – Milshake
Missy Elliot – I’m Really Hot
Salt’n’Pepa – Shoop
Tweet – Oops
Kym Mazelle – Young Hearts Run Free
Pink, with Peaches – Oh My God
Sophie B. Hawkins – Damn, I Wish I was Your Lover
Tape #6
Side A
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Into My Arms
PJ Harvey – The Desperate Kingdom of Love
The Hidden Cameras – A Miracle
Death Cab for Cutie – All is Full of Love
Tegan and Sara – Call It Off
Hawksley Workman – Don’t Be Crushed
Elliot Smith – Independence Day
The Black Heart Procession – Not Just Words
Elsiane – Morphing
Side B
Iron and Wine – My Lady’s House
Chris Garneau – Baby’s Romance
Earlimart – The Movies
Björk – Cocoon
Eva Cassidy – Time After Time
Low – Closer
Diamanda Galás – Interlude (Time)
56
Tape #7
Side A
4 Non Blondes – Misty Mountain Hop
Hawksley Workman – Striptease
PJ Harvey – Harder
Missy Elliot – Work It
Death From Above 1979 – Sexy Results
Spoon – I Turn My Camera On
Patti Smith – Glitter in their Eyes
Juliette Lewis – Hardly Wait
Side B
Erykah Badu – Penitentiary Philosophy
Frank Black – Sugar Daddy
Elastica – Car Song
Diamanda Galás and John Paul Jones – You’re Mine
Peaches – Two Guys (For Every Girl)
Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You
Rasputina – Rock’n’Roll
Tape #8
Side A
The Album Leaf – Window
Sigur Ros – Vaka (live acoustic)
Portishead – Mystereons
Björk – Come To Me
Angelo Badalamenti – Mulholland Dr. Love Theme
This Mortal Coil – Song to the Siren
Nine Inch Nails – A Warm Place
Side B
Ratatat – Seventeen Years
PJ Harvey – The Letter
Earlimart – Never Mind the Phone Calls
Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism
The Album Leaf – Moss Mountain Town
Antony and the Johnsons – Frankenstein
57
Tape #9
Side A
Grace Jones – Nightclubbing
Khan & Françoise Cactus – Fantômes
Goldfrapp – UK Girls (Get Physical)
Junior Boys – Count Souvenirs
Timi Yuro – What’s A Matter Baby
The Notwist – Pick Up The Phone
Imperial Teen – Freaks
Antonio Carlos Jobim – Insensatez
Side B
Stereo Total – Holiday Inn
Recoil, with Samantha Coerbell – New York Nights
Portishead – Glory Box (Scorn mix)
Petula Clark – Downtown
Death Cab for Cutie
Sook-Yin Lee – Lunar Lament
Tape #10
Side A
Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug (remix)
Meat Beat Manifesto – Radio Babylon (Luke Vibert mix)
The Chemical Brothers, with Richard Ashcroft – The Test
Tool – The Grudge
Side B
Khan – Jet Lounge Blues
Grace Jones – Ring of Fire
Peaches – Diddle My Skittle
Madonna – Erotica (Kenlou B-Boy mix)
My Brightest Diamond – Golden Star (Alias remix)
Pale 3 and Louise Rhodes – Escape
Elsiane – Vaporous
58
Digital Mix #1
Madonna – Bedtime Story
Fischerspooner – Turn On
Björk – Hunter (Skothùs mix)
The Knife – We Share Our Mother’s Health
Leslie Hall – How We Go Out
Basement Jaxx – Get Me Off (Preaches remix)
Cazwell – Watch My Mouth
Lesbians on Ecstasy – Tell Me Does She Love The Bass (Sean Kosa remix)
Hanin Elias – The Bee
My Brightest Diamond – Freak Out (Gold Chains Panique mix)
Nine Inch Nails – The Beginning of the End (Ladytron remix)
Louie Austen & Peaches – Grab My Shaft
Khan – Strip Down
Sneaker Pimps – Spin, Spin, Sugar
Robyn – With Every Heartbeat
Pale 3 and Alison Goldfrapp – Bodo
Digital Mix #2
Antony and the Johnsons – The Mysteries of Love (live)
Sparklehorse – It’s a Wonderful Life
Aimee Mann – Save Me
Sook-Yin Lee – Knock Loud
Chris Garneau – Relief
Cat Power – I Found a Reason
Cocteau Twins – Cherry Coloured Funk
Low & Dirty Three – I Hear Goodnight
Eleni Mandell – Too Bad About You
Xiu Xiu – Hello From Eau Claire
Me’Shell Ndegéocello – Ecclesiastes: Free My Heart
Elsiane – Ecclesia
Patti Smith – Wing
Nightwood – Elephantine
Marianne Faithful – The Mystery of Love
Sinéad O’Connor – Hold Back The Night
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Spell
PJ Harvey – 66 Promises
Röyksopp – What Else Is There?
Diamanda Galás – Interlude (Time)
59
Appendix E: Sound Sex Project Mix Tape Documentation
60
61
62
63
64
65
Appendix F: Mix Tape Documentation
From the collection of Daniel Allen Cox
66
67
68
69
70
From the collection of Jordanna Vamos
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
Appendix G: Ethics Form
CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN The Sound Sex Project
This is to state that I agree to participate in a program of research being conducted by Mark Ambrose Harris of the
Media Studies Department of Concordia University.
Mark Ambrose Harris
514-278-1182
markambroseharris@gmail.com
A. PURPOSE
I have been informed that the purpose of the research is as follows: to investigate the relationship between music and
sex, specifically which types of music people use for sex, and how music affects what the body remembers.
.
B. PROCEDURES
The research will take place primarily on-line. Participants are invited to send their responses via e-mail, and all
participants, unless they indicate otherwise, will have their responses published on the project's blog. All
participants are free to chose how they wish to be represented, either with their real name, a pseudonym, or
anonymous.
C. RISKS AND BENEFITS
There is the potential risk that even if a participant remains anonymous, their story or song selection may indicate
their true identity should someone they know recognize the story or song selection.
One of the benefits are participating in this project is that all participants will receive a copy of The Sound Sex
Project compilation compact disc.
D. CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION
• I understand that I am free to withdraw my consent and discontinue my participation at
anytime without negative consequences.
• I understand that my participation in this study can be CONFIDENTIAL (i.e., the researcher will know, but will
not disclose my identity)
OR NON-CONFIDENTIAL (i.e., my identity will be revealed in study results), depending on how I choose to be
represented.
• I understand that the data from this study may be published.
I HAVE CAREFULLY STUDIED THE ABOVE AND UNDERSTAND THIS AGREEMENT. I
FREELY CONSENT AND VOLUNTARILY AGREE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS STUDY.
NAME (please print) __________________________________________________________
SIGNATURE _______________________________________________________________
If at any time you have questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact
Adela Reid, Research Ethics and Compliance Officer, Concordia University, at (514) 848-2424
x7481 or by email at areid@alcor.concordia.ca.
83
Appendix H: Ethics Approval
May 26, 2008
Mr. Mark Harris
MA Media Studies Program
Concordia University
Re: The Sound Sex Project
Dear Mark,
I am pleased to inform you that the above-referenced request for Ethical Approval for Research has
been approved by the Communication Studies Research and Ethics Committee.
A copy of your Summary Protocol form and this letter will be placed in your department file. I wish
you the best for your research.
Sincerely,
Bill Buxton
Research and Ethics Committee
William J. Buxton
Professor
Communication Studies
Concordia University
7141 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal H4B 1R6
(514) 848-2424 (x 2547)
FAX: (514) 848-4257
84
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Mediography
Audio
4 Non Blondes. Featured on Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin.
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Album Leaf, The. In a Safe Place. Sub Pop Records, 2004.
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---.
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Universal Motown, 2008.
---.
Mama’s Gun. Motown, 2000.
Ballet, The. Mattachine! Independent, 2007.
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Björk. Medulla. Elektra, 2004.
---.
Live Box. Elektra, 2003.
---.
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---.
I Miss You. CD single. One Little Indian, 1997.
---.
Hunter. CD Single, CD1. Elektra, 1998.
---.
Post. Elektra, 1995.
89
---.
Debut. Elektra, 1993.
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by Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Off Records, 2003.
Black Heart Procession, The. The Spell. Touch & Go, 2006.
Blige, Mary J. Growing Pains. Geffen, 2007.
Blind Melon, appearing on Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin. Atlantic, 1995.
Blue 6, featured on Deep and Sexy: A Wave Music Compilation. Wave Music Records, 2001.
Bowie, David. Earthling. BMG, 1997.
Brannan, Jay. Appears on Shortbus Motion Picture Soundtrack. Team Love, 2006.
Case, Neko. Fox Confessor Bring the Flood. Anti, 2006.
Cassidy, Eva. Time After Time. Blix Street, 2000.
Cat Power. The Covers Record. Matador, 2000.
Cazwell. Get Into It. West End, 2006.
Camera Obscura. Let’s Get Out of this Country. Merge Records, 2006.
Chapman, Tracy. Tracy Chapman. Elektra, 1988.
Chemical Brothers, The. Come With Us. Astralwerks, 2002.
Clark, Petula. Downtown. Nixa, 1964.
Cocteau Twins. Heaven or Las Vegas. 4AD, 1990.
Collins, Edwin. Gorgeous George. Setanta, 1994.
CocoRosie. Noah’s Ark. Touch and Go/Quaterstick Records, 2005.
Cohen, Leonard. Blossoms of Heaven, Ashes of Hell.
Live bootleg.
Death Cab for Cutie. Transatlanticism. Barsuk Records, 2003.
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The Photo Album. Barsuk, 2001.
90
Death From Above 1979. You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. Last Gang Records, 2004.
Earlimart. Mentor Tormentor. Majordomo Records, 2007.
---.
Everyone Down Here. Palm, 2003.
Elastica. Elastica. Geffen, 1995.
Elias, Hanin. No Games, No Fun. Fatal, 2003.
Elsiane. Hybrid. Vega Music, 2007.
Eurythmics. Live 1983-1989. Arista, 1993.
---.
Greatest Hits. Arista, 1991.
Faithful, Marianne. Before the Poison. Anti Records, 2005.
Faith No More. Angel Dust. Slash, 1992.
Fischerspooner. No. 1. International DJ Gigolos, 2001.
Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac. Reprise, 1975.
Fugees, The. The Score. Ruffhouse Records, 1996.
Garneau, Chris. Music for Tourists. Absolutely Kosher, 2007.
Diamanda Galás. Guilty Guilty Guilty. Mute Records, 2008.
---.
Plague Mass. Mute, Records 1991.
Galás, Diamanda and John Paul Jones. The Sporting Life.
Mute Records, 1994.
---.
Do You Take This Man?
CD single. Mute Records, 1994.
Gentleman Reg. Darby and Joan. Three Gut Records, 2004.
Goldfrapp. Pilots. CD Single. Mute Records, 2001.
---.
Felt Mountain. Mute Records, 2000.
Hall, Leslie. ceWEBrity. Independent, 2008.
91
Handsome Boy Modeling School. White People. Elektra, 2004.
Hawkins, Sophie B. Tongues and Tails. Columbia, 1992.
Hidden Cameras, The. I Believe in the Good of Life. CD Single. EvilEvil, 2004.
---.
The Smell of Our Own. EvilEvil, 2003.
Hill, Lauryn. The Miseductation of Lauryn Hill.
Ruffhouse Records, 1998.
Hole , appearing on The Crow: City of Angels Motion Picture Soundtrack.
Hollywood Records, 1996.
Imperial Teen. Featured on Wig in a Box: Songs from and Inspired by
Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Off Records, 2003.
Iron and Wine. The Shepherd's Dog. Compact Disc.
Sub Pop Records, 2007.
---.
Woman King. Sub Pop, 2005.
---.
Our Endless Numbered Days. Sub Pop Records, 2004.
Jobim, Antonio Carlos. Rio Moods. E-2 Classics, 2007.
Jones, Grace. Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions. Island Records, 1998.
---.
Slave to the Rhythm. Island Records, 1985.
Junior Boys. So This Is Goodbye. Domino, 2006.
Kellis. Tasty. Star Trak, 2003.
Kelly and the Kellygirls. We Love You, but not as Much as we love Ourselves.
Renaissance Projects, 2006.
---.
Swing Swing. Renaissance Projects, 2004.
Khan. Who Never Rests. Tomlab, 2007.
---.
No Comprendo. Matador Records, 2001.
---.
1-900-Get-Khan. Matador Records, 1999.
KMFDM. Adios. Wax Track!/TVT, 1999.
92
Knife, The. Silent Shout. Rabid Records, 2006.
Kreviazuk, Chantal. Featured on Armageddon Motion Picture
Soundtrack. Sony Records, 1998.
Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin II. Olympic Studios, 1969.
Lee, Sook-Yin. www.myspace.com/sookyinlee. 2007.
Lesbians on Ecstasy. Giggles in the Dark. Alien8 Recordings, 2005.
LeTigre. This Island. Universal Records, 2004.
Lewis, Juliette. Featured on Strange Days Motion Picture Soundtrack.
Lightstorm Entertainment, 1995.
Lichtenstein, Max Avery. Tarnation Film score. Not released. 2004.
Lords of Acid. Our Little Secret. Antler-Subway Records, 1997.
Lovage. Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By.
75 Ark Records, 2001.
Low. Things We Lost in the Fire. Kranky, 2001.
Low & Dirty Three. In the Fishtank. In the Fishtank, 1999
Madonna. Bedtime Story. Maverick, 1994.
---.
Erotica. Maverick, 1992.
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Erotica. CD Single. Maverick, 1992.
Mandell, Eleni. Thrill. Zedtone Records, 2000.
Mann, Aimee. Magnolia. Warner, 1999.
Manu Le Malin. BioMechnik2. Level 2 Records, 1999.
Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Music for the People.
Interscope Records, 1991.
Mazelle, Kym. Featured on Romeo and Juliet Motion Picture Soundtrack.
Capitol Records, 1996.
Meat Beat Manifesto. Original Fire. Nothing Records, 1997.
93
Missy Elliot. This is not a Test! Goldmind/Elektra, 2003.
---.
Under Construction. Goldmind/Elektra. 2002.
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Supa Dupa Fly. Goldmine/Elektra, 1997.
Morphine. Good. Rykodisc, 1992.
My Brightest Diamond. Tear It Down. Asthmatic Kitty. 2007.
Nastasia, Nina. Dogs. Touch & Go Records, 2004.
Ndegéocello, Me’Shell. Peace Beyond Passion. Maverick, 1996.
---.
Featured on Higher Learning Motion Picture Soundtrack.
Columbia, 1995.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.
Mute Records, 2004.
---.
The Boatman’s Call. Mute Records, 1997.
Nightwood. Big City EP. Grenadine Records, 2008.
Nine Inch Nails. Year Zero. Nothing Records, 2007.
---.
The Perfect Drug Versions. Nothing Records, 1997.
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The Downward Spiral. Interscope Records, 1994.
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Broken. Interscope Records, 1992.
Notwist, The. Neon Golden. Domino, 2002.
O’Connor, Sinéad. Faith and Courage. Atlantic Records, 2000.
Pale 3. Princes and the Warrior Motion Picture Soundtrack. Sony, 2008.
Peaches. Impeach My Bush. XL, 2006.
---.
Downtown. CD Single/Digital Download. XL, 2006.
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The Teaches of Peaches. XL, 2000.
94
Pink. Try This. Arista, 2003.
PJ Harvey. Uh Huh Her. Island Records, 2004.
---.
A Place Called Home. CD Single. Island Records, 2001.
---.
Good Fortune. CD Single. Island Records, 2000.
---.
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. Island Records, 2000.
---.
Send His Love To Me. CD single. Island Records, 1995.
Portishead. Glory Times. CD Single. Go! Discs/London, 1995.
---.
Dummy. Go! Discs/London, 1994.
Profanatica. Profanatitas De Domonatia. Hell's Headbangers, 2007.
Ratatat. Classics. UK: XL Recordings, 2006
---.
Ratatat. XL, 2004.
Rasputina. The Lost and Found EP 2nd Edition. Instinct Records, 2003.
Recoil. Strange Hours. CD single. Mute Records, 2000.
Robyn. Robyn. Konichiwa, 2005.
Röyksopp. The Understanding. Astralwerks, 2005.
Sade. Stronger than Pride. Sony, 1988.
Salt’n’Pepa. Very Necessary. Next Plateau/London, 1993.
Sigur Rós. Hvarf-Heim. XL, 2007.
Smith, Elliot. X O. Universal Records, 1998.
Smith, Patti. Gung Ho. Arista, 2000.
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Gone Again. Arista, 1996.
Sparklehorse. It’s a Wonderful Life. Capitol, 2001.
95
Sneaker Pimps. Becoming X. EMI, 1996.
Soft Pink Truth, The. Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?
Tigerbeat 6, 2004.
Spacehog. Resident Alien. Sire, 1995.
Spears, Britney. In The Zone. Jive Records, 2003.
Spoon. Gimme Fiction. Merge, 2004.
Spoon. Featured on Wig in a Box: Songs from and Inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Off Records, 2003.
Springsteen, Bruce. Born in the U.S.A. Columbia Records, 1984.
Stereo Total. Monokini. Bungalow, 1997.
Tegan and Sara. The Con. Vapor, 2007.
This Mortal Coil. It’ll End in Tears. 4AD, 1984.
Thrice. Vheissu. Island Records, 2005.
Tool. Lateralus. Volcano II, 2001.
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Aenima. Zoo/BMG/Volcano, 1996.
T. Rex. Futuristic Dragon. EMI, 1976.
Tricky. Maxinquaye. Island, 1995.
Underworld. Beaucoup Fish! V2, 1999.
Tweet. Southern Hummingbird. Goldmind/Elektra, 2002.
Venetian Snares. Nymphomatriarch. Hymen Records, 2003.
Workman, Hawksley. (Last Night We Were) The Delicious Wolves.
Isadora Records, 2001.
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For Him and the Girls. Isadora Records, 1999.
WHAM! Make It Big. Sony Records, 1984.
96
White Zombie. Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds. Geffen, 1996.
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Astro Creep 2000. Geffen, 1995.
Xiu Xiu. The Air Force. 5 Rue Christine, 2006.
Yuro, Timi. What’s A Matter Baby. Rpm Records, 1963.
Television Broadcasts
MTV UnPlugged: George Michael. USA. Originally broadcast in 1996.
Star Trek: The Next Generation. USA. Broadcast information unknown.
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