It’s time for a very special episode of Magical Synth Adventures. Armed with some rare and wonderful grooveboxes, host, artist, and music tech journalist Paulee Alex Bow turns their hate mail into songs – and surprise, you get some bangers.
“You know, at the moment in the world, it’s a tricky time to be a transgender or a gender non-conforming individual. There’s a great many number of people who simply don’t want to just let us peacefully live our lives.”
Paulee’s life is focused on doing peaceful things and sharing detailed articles and videos. Some people put tremendous amounts of energy into disturbing that peace without cause. So Paulee had the brilliant idea of turning the hate into lyrics, and the results are kind of awesome. It’s like an underground answer to Mean Tweets, but with higher stakes and … budget Yamaha death metal.
The letters are disturbing – one physical letter required intervention by the police. So this is a double-edged sword: it reveals how cruel these messages are, and how they can be unsafe. But transformed into music, there’s something liberating about the results. (The letter is just chilling and threatening; some of the others manage to transmute the meaning of the text.) Paulee gives the back story and has some surprisingly patient and reflective analysis.
And by the time you get to the KORG drumlogue-powered track, you get an unexpected autism anthem.
Paulee isn’t alone. Along for the ride are:
- Yamaha SU200 (a budget sampler, Yamaha’s lesser-known counterpart to the Electribe)
- Roland MC-307 (think a scaled-down MC-505)
- Gotharman’s Zaturn & Polyspaze from the Danish boutique maker
- KORG Drumlogue – underrated current machine in their lineup
- Casio PT-1 mini synth (an even smaller VL-tone, cute little number)
All but the Gotharman and KORG are vintage.
And there’s one final song, especially important to watch in case it’s hard watching the other tracks. “History Will Show.”
Hate mail and threats can become part of almost any presence online; coupled with the very real threats to gender non-conforming, LGBTQIA+, and neurodivergent folks, among other marginalized groups, they can have some teeth. And I know there’s a good chance a lot of our readers have received this kind of hate online for one reason or another. So it’s great to see that music and music machines can be a way to process this bullying and stay strong. Given the chance, I’d love to play one of these tunes out. (Club remix?)
