Peter's back! After Vibraslap and Resonator Guitars, he has a Christmas treat for you: The Blaster Beam:
It's a monster: 18 feet of machined aluminium, with numerous strings and moveable (sometimes motorised) pickups. Japanese new-ager Kitaro plays his with a bow (like in the picture), or you can use an old artillery shell as a slide.
It was invented by ginger child star turned new age music guru Craig Huxley, who played Kirk's Nephew in Star Trek in the sixties. Ironically, the Blaster’s most famous appearance was as the voice of "Veja" in 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' in 1979. You can hear its awesome vibrations at the beginning of this clip.
So the Beam was ready to sink into weird instrument obscurity. But something very strange happened. According to this report, when Craig Huxley played his Blaster Beam at a concert in Central Park a decade ago "over a dozen women reported having intensely sexual feelings from the Beam sound, up to and including orgasm".
Even a synth version of the sound can have the same effect. "When, in flipping through my Xpander presets, I came to a sound called "THE BEAM" in honor of Huxley's instrument, the expression on her face abruptly changed. When I asked her what was wrong, she blinked for a moment and said, "Please play that again. Louder." I did so, and had the odd experience of watching her eyes glaze over as she half fell into a chair breathing hard. "I...*like* that sound," she managed to get out in a whisper." You can download the preset from the site, assuming you're one of the 2,000 people with an Oberheim Xpander.
: 1:28 am