Sarah Angliss describes herself as an automatist – a maker of musical automatons and sound-generating robots. She started making her own instruments not just because she wanted a unique palette of timbres for her recordings and concerts, but because she was looking for ways to mitigate the dullness of live electronic performance (typically a static figure hunched over a laptop). As well as diverting the eyes of the audience, machines like Angliss’s robotic ventriloquist dummy also give off a powerful aura of the uncanny, which fits well with her interest in magic, the supernatural, and British folklore. As seen in this clip, the Ealing Feeder is a mechanical carillon made out of 29 handbells, which can be programmed to chime in patterns much quicker and more intricate than any human player could manage. The name of the machine, incidentally, comes from a visit to the Battersea Power Station, in whose control room Angliss saw a lever, called the Ealing Feeder, that controlled the supply to the West London area. In addition to building her own contraptions, Angliss also repurposes existing inventions like the theremin, which she has adapted so that it can trigger samples of bird-song. You can hear that effect on “A Wren in the Cathedral,” a track off Angliss’s debut album Ealing Feeder, which was released last year and is highly recommended.