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Skylyne Spotlight: Transviolet
Indulge in the sticky-sweet and spicy cherry syrup that is Transviolet: Going Solo, The Power of Analog Marketing, and Distilling Feminine Rage.
Skylyne Spotlight: Transviolet
Photo by: @taylorlewisphoto
Drawing the attention of Katy Perry and Harry Styles with their first single, "Girls Your Age," in 2015, Transviolet had every upcoming artist's dream of overnight stardom. But this quickly turned into a reality check. Navigating the music industry so early in their careers, Transviolet faced the cutthroat nature of labels fighting for artistic control and struggled to find a stable partnership, ultimately leading the band to go independent.
I found Transviolet as a moody 12-year-old watching the first season of Supergirl. One of the episodes featured the song “Bloodstream", a mix of the 2016 quintessential EDM pop beat with Sarah McTaggart's powerful yet dreamy vocals that are reminiscent of Florence + The Machine. Eleven years after their first single, Transviolet has grown sonically and has embarked on a new solo project. I got a chance to talk to McTaggart where we chatted about her experience as a signed artist, the sticky situations that being signed comes with, and producing Big Mad, her upcoming album that details her experience as a woman in the industry.
Before diving into her solo career, I wanted to first talk about where her love of music stemmed from.
Transviolet: I grew up in a really musical family. My dad is a songwriter in the Cayman Islands, and my great great Aunt on his side wrote the Caymanian national anthem. Every time there's a family reunion, people are breaking out a guitar, and my aunts and uncles are doing harmonies. My earliest memories of making music were with my cousins, forming a band, and then recording me or teaching me how to write songs or play chords on the guitar. I moved a lot as a kid. I lived in 18 different cities by the time I turned 18, and music was always constant. By 15, I was writing heavily and doing open mics.
With a real passion for songwriting and an incredible support system, McTaggart pursued her music full-time, posting her music online to sites such as Reverb Nation and Band Mix. In the early 2010s, she met her bandmates, Jon Garcia and Michael Panek, and wrote songs over email until they finally met up and released their work online under the name Noise Floor. After a rebrand as the name was taken, the band settled on Transviolet, a blend of masculine and feminine energies, the crown chakra, and transcendence beyond.
Transviolet: By a fluke, my hairstylist was having dinner with a label executive, and he asked her, "Have you heard any good music recently?" and she said, "Actually, yes! I know someone who's making some music that's kind of cool." And then they called us and asked us if we wanted a record deal. We all thought that it was a scam.
However, it wasn’t a fluke. As their popularity grew, it enabled them to open for twenty one pilots, tour internationally, and be put in rooms with some of the best producers. As the band evolved and her bandmates slowly left the project, McTaggart ventured into new territory as a solo artist.
Transviolet: My bandmates did the bulk of the production and engineering, and then during the pandemic, I was really thrown into the deep end in learning how to record myself because we were all socially distant. In retrospect, I'm really grateful for that time. In terms of live performances, we went on a tour last year, and it was our guitarist, Judah McCarthy, and me. That was really scary because Mike Panek, our bassist, was handling the bulk of the music and lighting direction. It was a big challenge.
The fruits of her labor have paid off with her upcoming project, Big Mad, an album focused on feminine rage that could easily serve as the soundtrack to a horror film like Nightmare on Elm St. or Jennifer's Body. The seeds for this idea were planted in earlier singles in their discography, such as "Carnal"
Photo by: @taylorlewisphoto
Transviolet: I did that song with my friend Flavia, who's also such a badass and somebody who embodies feminine rage and the divine feminine. She's so esoteric and out of this world, and being in her presence made me feel like I was writing about her." "Carnal" is really about this sacred feminine that is chaos of creation and a bridge between the metaphysical and physical realms. A lot of people think of chaos as a destructive force, but it can also be a creative force and bring things together.
This idea of chaos as creation is streamlined through Big Mad with songs such as “LEECH” and "CHERRY” with distorted guitar lines, energetic drum fills, and anthematic lyrics. In creating music and marketing that hyperbolize unjust social dynamics, those dynamics become something you cannot ignore any further.
Transviolet: Especially for women, anger often feels like a dangerous emotion to embody. We actually have to do a lot of work to feel our anger. It feels like a natural progression of my body of work. When I look back at my earlier works, I'm just writing about my life in the world, and I felt like life was happening to me, and I was just recording it. But if you trace the line through our discography, you can see that through the songwriting, I become more empowered and reach for my future self in each song. In writing the song “Undo", I felt so helpless in a label I wasn't happy with, and had a team that did not get my vision and was picking me apart, and I felt so criticized. Yet, I was there in the studio singing "I'm not the kind of girl that I could undo."
For Transviolet, songs themselves are a manifestation of empowerment. Through each chapter of the discography, McTaggart brings in her present self and the self she hopes to become. In comparison to their most recent album, Softcore, which pulls from feelings of love and vulnerability, Big Mad is a sharp left turn.
Transviolet: Being that soft and feminine girl out in the world, I quickly realized that it's impossible not to get preyed upon. It's really tragic, but it's the truth. I think that I fall into the category of artists that use their music as tough love. I've been through hell and back in the music industry, and I am not afraid to say what has happened to me. As someone who's been in the industry for a little under 20 years, I think it's important that women my age step up and say what's happening to change it for the next generation, for queer performers, and for musicians in general. With the rise of AI and big tech, we might lose art if we're not careful and protect real artists.
In combat, with the rise of AI in creative spaces, Transviolet has been at the forefront of cultivating community engagement with their fans through analog formats. From their first single, they sent out cassette-tape-filled envelopes to 200 homes in California to promote their music. With the upcoming album, Big Mad, McTaggart has been stashing customized cherry soda bottles around California that have QR codes to teasers, the setlist, and more. Transviolet's online marketing is also a mark of dedication to human-led design and execution, with her video “LEECH”, where she is strung up on ropes in physically demanding positions and, throughout the video, is distilled into a red syrup.
Photo by: @taylorlewisphoto
Transviolet: I wanted to play with the manipulation of the male gaze and the commodification of the female body in songs like “CHERRY” and “LEECH”. The “LEECH” video uses extreme caricatures to force you to confront the objectification that is often so subtle and normalized, straddling the line between the Britney Spears Pepsi commercial and a b-rated horror movie.
Transviolet: I want to decouple myself from the commodification of women in the music industry and the larger capitalistic society. Objectification happens when we strip a person of their own experience and agency in order to experience them for our own pleasure. In the Leech video, the viewer is forced to experience objectification through the lens of the objectified, and it’s intentionally horrific. I hope the video provokes questions like "What does it feel like to be completely objectified? How does that make me feel? Are we okay with distilling women down into a one-dimensional product when it comes to advertising and entertainment?"
Given how physically demanding her art is to get her point across, McTaggart questioned the risk of tying herself up.
Transviolet: I was originally attracted to Shibari (a traditional Japanese rope-tying practice) for how visually stunning it was and how it captured the feelings I wanted to convey with “LEECH”. The night before, I was talking to Red Honey Ropes, the artist who did the shibari, about the process, and they was sending me consent packets, and I almost backed out. I met these people online, and now I'm trusting them with my life! But the process ended up being so healing. I felt so safe and so empowered, even when I was so vulnerable, because I had to depend on everyone around me to keep me safe. It reminded me a lot of when I'm onstage. Usually, I'm in fishnets and some booty shorts, and everybody knows that when it's my set, that's my stage. Especially coming from religious trauma, knowing that I'm able to command a space and that it's not for anyone, but me, is so sacred for me.
Photo by: @taylorlewisphoto
The response to the “LEECH” video has been mixed. While Transviolet has seen support from the Shibari, queer, and BDSM community, as well as from friends; it has also stirred up conversation about the female body and consent. One of the main questions McTaggart brought up was whether there is such a thing as consent for yourself when you're displaying your body so openly. She urges everyone to open up the conversation and hopes that the release of Big Mad will make the complacency of social injustices harder to ignore. With her final thoughts, she highlights her current fixation from the album and a passion project she’s been working on.
Transviolet: Listen to SWORDS, it's a silent banger on the new album, and it is an acoustic moment on the album where you can see where the inception of the rage begins. It's vulnerable and beautiful. I'm also a part of a documentary called Heathens, which is about deconstructing extreme religions and Christian nationalism. It comes out this fall, and links to tickets around the US will be in the links below!
Big Mad comes out September 16th, check it out on all streaming platforms.
FOLLOW TRANSVIOLET: Linktree / Leech Music Video / YouTube / Patreon / Instagram / Spotify / TikTok / Big Mad Presave / transviolet.com / bigmadsoda.com
