Sarah Angliss and Her Disembodied Ventriloquist Robot Dummy, Hugo

The English electronic musician, composer and automatist Sarah Angliss is unlike most – among playing the musical saw and Theremin, she brings a 1930s disembodied ventriloquist robot onstage. Hugo, the robotized head of a ventriloquist’s dummy (named after the dummy in the 1945 British horror film Dead Night), is the mouthpiece of her vocal samples. Far more theatrical than the laptop-sampler-loop pedal formula of most electronic musicians, it was only a few years ago that Angliss began adding more instruments and machines to her live sets. She figured the stage act is more compelling when listeners have something to look at, too. Her performances really are unparalleled, in that sense. It comes across like spooky storytelling.

While Angliss began building musical stuff as a child in the 1970s, when she put together soundtracks on a cassette recorder, she studied engineering and robotics at university before going on to collaborate with sculptor king, Tim Hunkin, among many others.

Angliss also plays something called the Electric Lullaby on a polyphonic robotic carillon, which is inspired by a control panel in the Battersea Power Station in London – which is now being turned into million-dollar penthouses. The lullaby is written from a 1933 poem she discovered in the archives of the Electrical Association for Women, written by one of its members. Angliss ties together the past with the present like an old soul, snippets of similar archives pop up all the time.

As Angliss gears up for a gothic film show on December 14 with her band Spacedog, she will play a polyphonic, a robotic carillon (a bell-playing machine) and of course Hugo as part of a British Film Institute event (coincidentally, the dummy comes from the same vintage time of the century-old films). We spoke about darkness, dummies and goth. It gets weirder from hereon in.

Sarah Angliss and her band Spacedog perform with Hugo onstage during an award-winning Brighton Fringe festival performance. It is a homage to Stooky Bill, the ventriloquist sidekick of John Logie-Baird who appeared on the second television image ever in 1925.

Noisey: When did you start bringing Hugo onstage?
Sarah Angliss: I found Hugo around five years ago when I was a guest at a Magic Circle event. He was languishing under the table. An elderly magician had rescued him from his dead friend’s attic and was looking for a taker. At the time, I was seeking ways to give my act a more compelling physical presence—to break away from the laptop. I realized in an instant that I could make Hugo the mouthpiece for my vocal samples. I’ve robotized his strings and hooked up the motors up to a MaxMSP patch. This takes a vocal input and works out, in real-time, when his mouth should open and close. His inclusion in the act makes complete sense to me. Vocal sampling is itself a form of ventriloquy—of throwing and altering voices and suggesting the inanimate can speak. I’ve always had a fascination with this art form and been trying to fathom what makes some dummies more disturbing than others. For instance, I’m drawn to their garish early stage makeup. It makes their features visible at the back of the auditorium but looks grotesque at close quarters. Ventriloquism has a dark and venerable history. It harks back to early notions of "gastromancy" (spirits speaking from the stomach) as anyone who was a fan of the late, great Ken Campbell will know. I think Hugo points up the strangeness of recorded sounds, decoupled from their human sources - an oddity we’ve become blasé about. Hugo is named after Hugo Fitch, the dummy in that superb British horror film Dead of Night.

Why is it just the head of Hugo and not the body?
When I met Hugo, he was disembodied. I played around with making him a body, using those little suits they sell for page boys. But they made him look like an undertaker’s mute. So I didn’t go any further down that alley. He just works as a disembodied head. His wooden housing was built by Colin Uttley, originally as a temporary measure. But we quickly discovered its thrown-together nature helped the performance - I think that’s because it lets you see the workings. I’d say I’m exploring the uncanny in my act. I’m thinking of the word in its sense that Jentsch and Freud used it—Das Unheimlich, the familiar taking on a strange cast. There are many possible roots of this word, for instance it can mean "unhomely" or even "unhidden." I’m drawn to both these possibilities. We’re not used to seeing the guts of something as it operates, especially these days when so many mechanical actions have been replaced by virtual processing. I’ve found if I hide Hugo’s working parts to make him more tidy, people find him less disturbing. It’s curious.

What kind of archaic machines do you work with?
I perform with Theremin and with its unplugged alternative the musical saw—an instrument with a surprisingly ethereal, eerie sound. I also play assorted baroque and renaissance instruments. You’ll often hear me on recorder and spinet. There’s lots of bell action. Sometimes I also use old tech such as the Edison phonograph and the Geiger counter. Once or twice, when given safety clearance, I’ve perform live with Geiger counter and "minor" radioactive sources. Many of my songs refer to strange early notions of technology or sample early machines. "Find Me," a recent collaboration with Belbury Poly (Ghost Box Study Series no 10), for example, uses words from a writer in 1900 who was imagining a future where you could call distant loved ones using a ‘ loud electromagnetic voice’ , something rather like a mobile phone. The B-side "Quiet Industry" cuts and splices the sounds of 19th century cotton mill machines to create a teetering, rhythmic piece.

Sarah Angliss covers "Popcorn" with the robotic carillon.

Why are you drawn to darkness?
I’m not sure. It’s partly down to my musical tastes as a teenager. I was really into the darker English folksongs, such as the "Child Ballads." Here, themes such as murder, necromancy and so on are expressed through exquisitely beautiful, calming melodies. It’s the cognitive dissonance between the lyrics and the melody that really works, the way each undercuts the other. In my teens I had a serious illness—septicemia—and there were some days where I lived with such a dissonance. For long periods, my own bedroom would seem fearful, there would be visitations—hallucinations—and the dimensions of familiar objects seemed odd as I had a raging fever. Sometimes I wonder if I’m trying to fathom that feeling through sound. Or at least inviting others to feel it.

What is the "uncanny valley" you have referred to?
The uncanny valley is one aspect of uncanniness that gets a lot of press. Scientifically, it’s controversial. It’s a reference to that strangely unsettling feeling we have when we encounter objects, such as Hugo, that are very human-like but not human. Again, it’s down to the familiar seeming strange. Some people say objects in the "uncanny valley" are singularly disturbing, while others claim we grow accustomed to them over time. The uncanny valley is just a hypothesis—it’s not based on any firm data—but I do think it’s pointing at something, we’re just not quite sure what. So for now, I see the creation of uncanniness as an art rather than a science.

You also play the Ealing Feeder. What role does it play in the Electric Lullaby?
The Ealing Feeder is a 28-note polyphonic carillon (a bell-playing machine). I built it with Colin Uttley around five years ago and it features in most of my live shows. It’s named after a control panel in Battersea Power Station and we copied some of the styling from there. One of the songs it appears on is Spacedog’s The Electric Lullaby. This features a poem from around 1933, written by a member of the Electrical Association for Women. She was so thrilled by the electricity supply in her home, every night she would pass a small electric current through her baby to soothe him to sleep. And she wrote about this in her Electric Lullaby, a paean to domestic electricity. In Spacedog’s setting, we mix it with fragments of Long Lankin (Child Ballad 93). This is an early folksong about a malevolent creature who slips between the gaps in the window panes at night, finds your baby and pricks him all over with a pin. I loved the resonances between these two domestic invaders - one folkloric, another from the electrical archives.

What will you be playing at the upcoming Gothic concert you’re hosting? Have the films ever been shown? What will the tone and departure of the music be?
This is Vault: Music for Silent Gothic Treasures. An evening of live scores, written by some of my favorite electronic musicians. The music and films will be brought together for the first time in at BFI Southbank as part of the BFI’s nationwide project GOTHIC: The Dark Heart of Film. I’m composing a new live score for this event and will be joined by my band Spacedog, along with Exotic Pylon’s Time Attendant (Paul Snowdon) who will be supplying a new work on simmering, tabletop electronics. There will also be some extemporisations from Bela Emerson, a soloist who works with cello and electronics. Jon Brooks, composer of the haunting Music for Thomas Carnacki, will also be creating a studio piece for the event. Sourced by Bryony Dixon, the BFI’s curator of silent film, many of the short films we’re using are from the earliest years of the twentieth century. The Legende du fantôme (1908) and early split screen experiment Skulls Take Over (1901) are on the bill, along with the silent expressionist masterpiece The Fall of the House of Usher (US version, 1928) and more. The films are some of the strangest and most captivating things I’ve ever seen—playful, macabre, sometimes utterly unfathomable. It’s been thrilling to work with them and with such a brilliant ensemble of musicians who have the technique and sensitivity to create the most marvellous Gothic happening. We’re really grateful to the BFI for taking us on and to PRSF who have funded my new work.

All of Nadja Sayej's ventriloquist dummies' have bodies. Follow her on Twitter - @NadjaSayej