Mark Taylor on Siouxsie + The Banshee's SPELLBOUND

A vinyl record can be thought of as more than just a distribution device for music; it is a fetish used in ritualistic fashion, and some effort is required to make it speak. A record is an inanimate object with a voice used to create an atmosphere or invoke a particular feeling -- an object that is designed to cast a spell.

One such object, which still holds a particular sway over me, is Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1981 album Juju. A thing is thought to have juju if it can be used to conjure. Juju is also a synonym for witchcraft, especially when related to its practice in African or African diasporic cultures. This is the perfect title for a record album.

The lead single, "Spellbound," is also aptly named. A record is a piece of vinyl onto which the spell of music is bound. Without the benefit of a turntable, the record is an incantation that cannot be uttered. I was 15 when I first heard this song, and it changed how I heard music. There had been other bands (X, Dead Kennedys, Talking Heads, The B-52’s) that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before, but this song wasn’t merely a new noise; it was a different vibration. "Spellbound" compelled while dismantling the illusion of free will. It is a chant set to insistent tom-toms, a voodoo rhythm that keeps increasing in strength until it overcomes. In this period the Banshees sound like a tornado spinning, like falling down stairs or twisting in the wind, the music tumbles over itself while it speeds ahead, whipping up a frenzy that resists the urge to shatter.

Unlike most songs, which posit questions of love, create false revolutions, or house short stories of triumph or tragedy, "Spellbound" is a trap that seduces while it jumbles, celebrating an altered state of being. It's not about teenage rebellion, defiance, or even a statement of intent. It is a moment of perfect clarity that describes the loss of the self in the spectacle.

“From the cradle bars comes a beckoning voice. It sends you spinning. You have no choice…” The first lines of "Spellbound" describe the call of ideology, which formulates subjects before they are born. The song hails and forms you, describing the state that you are in while sonically creating that state. The pop single reveals a world that makes subjects abstract by issuing calls "that cannot be resisted."

You cannot see it, but it has always been, and you've been caught up all along. The laughter you hear cracks through the walls, rending the scenery. The laughter you hear may be only in your head, but that doesn't make it any less real. It is even more compelling because it dispels that which isn't, tearing down a constructed reality and revealing the truth — or possibly the nothing — that lies beyond.

In Siouxsie and the Banshees’ world, there are very few first person accounts. What is occurring is often just an image in space, among a series of images, like shot sequences from a nameless horror film. The song bewitches as its spell unfolds. We are its plaything, a rag doll whose limbs are being controlled by external forces. Siouxsie and the Banshees are in command and we are compelled into frenetic motion.

“Spellbound” is the first song that thoroughly and completely took hold of me. I have been inspired to move by many songs, but not necessarily captured. When the needle hit the groove for the first time, the song uncoiled and struck. “Spellbound” is the moment I began to understand something new about myself. There was another me waiting to become and this was the first time I could hear how that me might sound. Impish. Manic. Undeniable.

For a teenage listener, “Spellbound” is the place of no return. It is one of the toys that have gone berserk. Every pop song will sound undone from this point on because "Spellbound" has revealed and wrecked them. While you may be released from one glamour, the illusion of a world you always suspected was false, you have been trapped by another, the rhythmic juju of the song itself. In order to revisit this newfound freedom, the song must beguile again. The power of the 45 is dormant until it is taken for another spin; the memory of the song’s insistent hooks compels another revolution.

| Mark Taylor is a Bay Area artist and writer. He created KQED Arts, the public media station’s multimedia arts platform, in 2005 and served as its editor until 2015. He currently teaches Media Studies at the University of San Francisco and writes for SF Arts Monthly.