Sex Sounds

An investigation of sexual themes in electronic music since the 1950s, with detailed case studies of “electrosexual music” by a wide range of creators.
 

In Sex Sounds, Danielle Shlomit Sofer investigates the repeated focus on sexual themes in electronic music since the 1950s. Debunking electronic music’s origin myth—that it emerged in France and Germany, invented by Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, respectively—Sofer defines electronic music more inclusively to mean any music with an electronic component, drawing connections between academic institutions, radio studios, experimental music practice, hip-hop production, and histories of independent and commercial popular music. Through a broad array of detailed case studies—examining music that ranges from Schaeffer’s musique concrète to a video workshop by Annie Sprinkle—Sofer offers a groundbreaking look at the social and cultural impact sex has had on audible creative practices.
 
Sofer argues that “electrosexual music” has two central characteristics: the feminized voice and the “climax mechanism.” Sofer traces the historical fascination with electrified sex sounds, showing that works representing women’s presumed sexual experience operate according to masculinist heterosexual tropes, and presenting examples that typify the electroacoustic sexual canon. Noting electronic music history’s exclusion of works created by women, people of color, women of color, and, in particular Black artists, Sofer then analyzes musical examples that depart from and disrupt the electroacoustic norms, showing how even those that resist the norms sometimes reinforce them. These examples are drawn from categories of music that developed in parallel with conventional electroacoustic music, separated—segregated—from it. Sofer demonstrates that electrosexual music is far more representative than the typically presented electroacoustic canon.
 Acknowledgments vii
Introduction xi
I Electroacoustics of the Feminized Voice 1
1 Schaeffer and Henry's "Erotica" (1950-1951) 3
2 Annea Lockwood's Tiger Balm (1970) 23
3 Luc Ferrari's Les Danses Organiques (1973) and Presque Rien Avec Filles (1989) 35
4 Robert Normandeau's Jeu De Langues (2009) 57
5 Juliana Hodkinson and Niels Ronsholdt's Fish & Fowl (2011-2012) 69
II Electrosexual Disturbance 89
6 Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" (1975) 105
7 Alice Shield's Apocalypse (1990-1994) 125
8 Annie Sprinkle's Sluts & Goddesses Video Workshop, Sound Score by Pauline Oliveros (1992) 163
9 Barry Truax's Song of Songs (1992) 177
10 TLC's "I'm Good at Being Bad" (1999) 199
11 Janelle Monae's "It's Code" (2013) 233
12 The Wobble Warp: THEESatisfaction's "Enchantruss" (2012), Janelle Monae and Esperanza Spalding's "Dorothy Dandridge Eyes" (2013), and Stas THEE Boss's "Before Anyone Else" (2017) 247
Conclusion 267
Appendix A: Alice Shields, Apocalypse, Track List 275
Appendix B: Works Incorporated in Fish & Fowl Listed with Instrumentation and Approximate Duration, and Organized Chronologically 279
Notes 281
Bibliography 329
Index 353“Sofer's work is exemplary... What Sofer offers us in Sex Sounds has profound implications for affect theory and the question of affective politics.”
—Journal of Extreme Anthropology

“Using theory and musicology, the author's critical position highlights the initial lack of any ethical rules for recording and acknowledging of women's voices and the slow progress in reclaiming women's right to first determine and then use these sound profiles in their own way, regardless of gender and style.”
—Neural

“Danielle Shlomit Sofer's Sex Sounds sets the reader on the hunt for things missing in most discussions of electronic music: sex, sexuality, libidinal drive. Guided by Sofer, once we start looking for the missing element of sex in electronic music, we begin to see it everywhere.”
—Music Works

“Feminist music theory 2.0… Sex Sounds is both a valuable contribution to gender and sexuality studies of music and a provocation for a different kind of music theory.”
—Music Analysis

“Readers interested in how race, gender, and sexuality are expressed in electronic musical forms… will find Sex Sounds a rich [and] insightful book.”
—Technology and Culture“Compulsively readable, Sex Sounds deftly explores what we’ve always taken for granted but never paused to consider in so much historical and technological richness: why exactly is music sexy? It’s a tremendous achievement.”
—Karen Tongson, author of Why Karen Carpenter Matters and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries
 
“Using a range of fascinating case studies, Sofer introduces the reader to minority voices that have hitherto been excluded. Admirably, this book demands a full-blown reappraisal of the electroacoustic canon and its masculinist, heteronormative tropes.”
—Stan Hawkins, Professor of Musicology, University of Oslo; author of Settling the Pop Score, The British Pop Dandy, and Queerness in Pop Music

“Groundbreaking and important.”
—Barry Truax, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser UniversityDanielle Shlomit Sofer is a music theorist and musicologist and cofounded the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group.